Ripe

By: James Hider

Narrated by: Doug Greene

Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Everyone remembers exactly where they were, the day the ships came.

What no one knew back then, though, was that there were people who were already expecting them.

Scottish psychologist Elspeth McGann thinks her patient Lester Rains—a suave, enigmatic man who claims to be have been alive for 2,000 years and to be part of a team of extraterrestrial "farmers" waiting on Earth for an alien harvest—is a delusional schizophrenic. But when vast ships suddenly appear over Moscow and vacuum up 50,000 people in a matter of hours, she realizes she must track down the elusive Rains. In her search, she stumbles upon a group who are already trying to track down the farmers. This band of renegades is led by Cassius C. Trenton, a former NSA analyst who has been on the run since he broke the code on a mystery transmission beamed into space from Earth years ago, and which bore a single, chilling message: Ripe.

With the aliens set to return, and some world leaders complicit in their plans, Elspeth and Trenton must seek out Rains and find a way of escaping the impending apocalypse, a hunt that takes them from Edinburgh to the White House, only to discover the harvest is just the beginning.

©2023 Black Rose Writing (P)2023 Beacon Audiobooks

the aliens

very weak story line not what I expected, I really tried to give it a chance but it never took off for me.

Terrible narration

Great story. Horrible narration! I wish I had just read it. It was very difficult to finish.

Disappointing

Both the story and narration were big issues for me.

The idea behind this book was very good, but the actual execution of the story felt stilted at best. By the end I found myself not caring too much what happened.

When the narration first started, I thought he was reading a news headline….but then in the next chapter I realized that no, that’s just how he was going to read it the whole time! It was agonizing to listen to this book. I think I could have had a much better experience had I read it instead.

Not for Audio-Listening!

I’m not being mean when I give this book 2-stars, honestly. The story carried a deal of potential, but it didn’t quite flow as I’d hoped. The characters didn’t get cleanly developed and the narration was… what’s worse than horrendous?

WARNING: slight spoiler
The story on aliens coming to life is mindless humans in with promises of growth and prosperity never gets old, but we never got to find out what was made available to us and if the aliens actually took us to another place, or dumped our headless bodies into the Arctic. There was no clarification. And the Queen dying… no answer as to why. The drones- did they stop alien advances? Is there another book to clarify? What the heck did I listen to??

Lastly, the characters were from Europe and England, yeah? The narrator, other than stating such info didn’t give any voice adjustments whatsoever! The men and women all were deadpan. And I mean Deadpan! His voice was worse than my 19 hours of labor with my firstborn- and I barely remember that! But this guys voice… it’ll never leave me. I’ll always remember and if I see his name on another book, I’ll be sure to avoid is as quickly as I’ll avoid listening to this book ever again!

Solid story, want more.

Was a bit underwhelmed for about five minutes. Story build, and never stopped building. Universe weaving lore. Only criticism might be that I wanted more character development, but hoping there will be time for that.