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Serengeti  By  cover art

Serengeti

By: J. B. Rockwell
Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
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Publisher's summary

It was supposed to be an easy job: find the Dark Star Revolution Starships, destroy them, and go home. But a booby-trapped vessel decimates the Meridian Alliance fleet, leaving Serengeti - a Valkyrie class warship with a sentient AI brain - on her own, wrecked and abandoned in an empty expanse of space. On the edge of total failure, Serengeti thinks only of her crew. She herds the survivors into a lifeboat, intending to sling them into space. But the escape pod sticks in her belly, locking the cryogenically frozen crew inside. Then a scavenger ship arrives to pick Serengeti's bones clean. Her engine's dead, her guns long silenced; Serengeti and her last two robots must find a way to fight the scavengers off and save the crew trapped inside her.

©2016 J. B. Rockwell (P)2016 Tantor

What listeners say about Serengeti

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Only for people who aren't old enough to read

What disappointed you about Serengeti?

The story started out interesting, but devolved until it was at the level of a 5 year old. Most of the book is a supposed 10 generation AI talking to maintenance robots like they were Ewoks. The robots have to communicate VERBALLY with the Ships advanced AI. The AI can't interpret the flashing lights and beeps of the robots. Most of the book seems to be the AI trying to pry information out of the robots shen it could link in and take in a thousandth of a second. Stupid, stupid stupid!

Would you ever listen to anything by J. B. Rockwell again?

Never, ever, no way, no how!

What aspect of Elizabeth Wiley’s performance would you have changed?

Her performance was fine considering the material.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Not really

Any additional comments?

If you need something to put your toddlers to sleep, this will do it.

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36 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A fun read Ta Da

This is a different and interesting story. Serengeti is a Valkyrie class Warship with a sentient AI brain. The AI ships are special. Their personality depends on the kind of spaceship they are in. They have complete authority over the captain.

Serengeti belongs to the Meridian Alliance fleet and they are at war with the Dark Star Revolution fleet. The two fleets have a battle and Serengeti is badly damaged and is on the edge of total failure. She was unable to evacuate her human cryogenically frozen crew and send a distress signal. Scavengers board the ship and Serengeti and her two robots must fight them off and save the ship and crew.

Rockwell made the AI and robots very humanized almost too much so. Had the feeling this book was written for young people. I had to suspend belief a few times but overall it was a fun book and a bit different from the usual space operas. The book was well written and the robots were cute. The book dragged a bit in the middle of the book.

Wiley does a good job narrating the book particularly between Serengeti and her robots. Wiley is an actress and an award winning audiobook narrator.

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33 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Cute, but no relation to physics

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This is a cute droid novel, but it has absolutely no relation to the reality of physics. Unfortunately it is all contrived and is not believable and also not very satisfying. I barely made it through at 2x speed. The narrator was fine.

Has Serengeti turned you off from other books in this genre?

The author needs to study basic physics. Obviously J.B. Rockwell has no knowledge of basic science.

What does Elizabeth Wiley bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narrator was great!

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

NO

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

So good!

So much action and emotion. Unlike AI characters in other books, I actually cared what was going to happen to Serengeti. Also enjoyed the range of depth in the story, from massive space battles down to the intimate struggle to survive.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

I haven't loved a book like this in years.

This isn't the story of Space Marines. This isn't a story of human verses aliens. This is a story of a the wreck of Serengeti. A proud and distinguished Valkyrie class warship and her duty to her crew.

Follow Serengeti and her Herculean efforts to save what is left of her crew. Stuck in Cryogenic hibernation. Through power droughts. Invading scavengers and her own slowly devolving physical structure. Nothing will stand in her way of saving her crew. She has her exceptional wits and the hands of two small repair droids fending off entropy and working to save the crew.

The narrator brought Serengeti to life. She was brilliant and I will look into other books she might have narrated. If you like SciFi I highly suggest trying Serengeti for the off beat and generous story the author has weaved for our entertainment.

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22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

beautifully told AI relationships

The premises of this book were so good. During a battle between the Meridian Alliance and the Dark Star Revolution, Serengeti, a war spaceship, suffers important damages which make her to retreat, but with the bad luck that the ship gets lost and the navigation system breaks down. The few survivors go into the cryogenic pod to be ejected and send a stress signal, but the power failure prevents it. For some reason the stress signal cannot be send if the pod is still inside the main ship, so Serengeti and her robots will need to find a solution to this.

Ships AI are very special in Rockwell’s world. Their personality depends on the kind of spaceship they are in, and they have complete authority over the captain.

Here are two different story lines for different public. The first third of the book is about the battle and some character introduction. This part could be a little bit confusing because we also get presented with how ships AI work and the different kinds, but I would say it is the most science fictional part of the book. The second part is about how Serengeti and her robots try to get the lifeboat ejected. There is little science or science fiction here. If you are looking for science fiction facts, like me, you will be disappointed. There are some faulty attempts at techy babble, but it is just that, babble. On the contrary, there were a lot of characteristics and actions from the AI and the robots that you will never see in other science fiction books, like: shrugging, shivering, laughing, getting angry, blushing, melting with pleasure, being on the edge of robot tears. I also wonder how Serengeti stroked her electric fingers across the robots’ cheeks. This second part seems indeed a Disney movie for children, due to the fact that the AI is too humanized to be realistic, has feelings and a will, and addresses the robots like they were her children. And they behave like so repeating ‘tada!’ again and again.

Something that made me cringe too were the failed attempts to express techy concepts that were in fact, like explaining them to children: Serengeti’s interference over the lifeboat was explained like there was too much of her for the lifeboat to be able to send a signal; the cameras were called electronic eyes; Serengeti had ‘subminds’ (strange word for multitasking). It is also mentioned a couple of times that Serengeti’s mind is a hundred times more powerful than human. Well, that’s quite poor, I would say. There is also the fact that Serengeti asks one of the robots to fix his translation routine because talking to him is becoming tireless. From here the robot switches from beeps to actual words. This is just nonsense, since machines communicate at a much lower level. With all these details you see that Rockwell does not know much about science or IT, something essential if you want to venture into writing science fiction.

The second part of the book is full with Serengeti’s ramblings with many repetitions and reiterations, making it very slow paced. The goal here were saving the humans, which Rockwell tried to introduce in the first part and then later on in Serengeti’s dreams. Even like that, except for the captain, they were one dimensional and it is difficult to connect with them.

Elizabeth Wiley did a very good job in transmitting the endearing atmosphere between Serengeti and her robots, but sadly it also accentuated the fact that this book is like a movie for children. Male’s voices sounded like cartoon characters and the robots’ voices were just too cute and sounded like a movie from Pixar.

All in all, even with all the eye rolling I did while I was listening to it, I remember now the book with a smile. It is not a book for science fiction lovers, but I expect it to have much success among those who are not into science fiction. The story between Serengeti and her robots is beautifully told, and it would work well with the younger readers.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Endearing Space Opera

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book was not what I expected but charming and worth the listen. Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book (audiobook version) in exchange for an honest review.

Serengeti, by J.B. Rockwell, opens with an epic battle, armada against rebel armada. After the first fifty pages (nearly an hour of the audiobook), I realized the pace was diverging from what I've come to expect with such a scene and genre. Rockwell takes her time in unfurling the relationships between the human crew and AI crew of the Valkyrie class starship Serengeti, and an interesting dynamic guides these relationships. In Rockwell’s universe the AI are in charge while remaining humbly indebted to their human creators. AI minds are master’s of their own fates while still harboring human crews inside their starship hulls.

The story is not a military sci-fi at all. Instead it becomes quite the AI drama. Without spoiling the story, I'll simply say that Serengeti herself is the central focus. This much should be obvious by the title, but the reader could easily start off by thinking of "Serengeti" as "Enterprise." This is not at all the case.

Serengeti is a stark and slow-blossoming story featuring moments that made me laugh and a couple that brought me to the verge of tears. Rockwell's strengths are the intimate, small-scale moments. She seems to recognize this. Even the epic battle at the beginning of the story is broken down and parsed out amidst continuously developing relationships and growing tension.

A couple of times I was jolted from the story when plot elements made me furrow my brows. Once, Serengeti overlooked an important aspect of her own schematic. For a super AI this struck me as convenient for the overall plot. And a few phrases were overused. Perhaps these stood out more due to hearing the story rather than reading it.

But these are small complaints for a story that I rather enjoyed. The audio performance was excellent as well. As all good books should, Serengeti left me asking a handful of deeper questions: What is intelligence? Organic? Artificial? Can the two be bridged? What of morality? What of life? Is there a universal created order/pattern that will emerge within all intelligence if given time? Or will the things humans create always gravitate toward human characteristics—imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? Thoughtful questions from a well-told story.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Serengeti is by far the most important and impactful character. TIG and her human captain are also portrayed nicely.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I indeed laughed a few times and almost cried once.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Honestly, not that great of a story

This could have been a great story, but it wasn't executed well, it became nore of a slog than anything else. Add to that the highly unlikely way the author wiped out characters starting with the gunner. Sure they were under attack, but how do you explain every bridge station had nothing worse than burnt out circuit boards, and yet the toughest structure there, the gunner's pod was crushed? Really? Then they are on their way to the life pod, there is very little air in the hall, yet not only did the breach not prevent them from getting to the pod, it also didn't prevent them from having a conversation while standing in the doorway of the pod. Then you're going to tell me that a lifeboat launch is going to have a system so complex to launch it that it requires a fully functional ship to launch it? Who would design an emergency system to require a fully operational ship to launch it? No, too many things wrong with this one. I give it 3 stars, but 2.5 would be more accurate. And we haven't touched on robots having so little power that they all suicided to make sure there was enough power to run the ship, then tig creates another one? Not the best use of resources. Plus it was never explained why recharging the dead bots wouldn't work. Not one of the better books I've read on audible.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

wasted credit

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

no idea

What could J. B. Rockwell have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

highly emotional AIs and silly humans--what more could you want?
Oh, wait--space battles fought at short ranges with manually controlled artillery.

How could the performance have been better?

poor sound quality. very dull and hard to make out words. other books from audible just fine to hear.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

disappointment.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Welcome to the Crew of Serengeti!

Who would have guessed that a book mainly about a ship and some robots could be so fantastically captivating?! I wish Serengeti was a series. The narrator does great voices for each character and the author did a wonderful job of giving each artificial intelligence a full, rich personality. I cannot recommend this book enough!
Now, off to try more J.B. Rockwell books!

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10 people found this helpful