Very good

An generally excellent extrapolation of ideas first popularised in Fred Saberhagen’s ‘Berserker’ series. That is to say, malevolent Von Neumann Machines.

Plenty of ground covered here with a well-crafted blend of outlandish science and political drama, though assumed social dilemmas are strangely skirted around.

Whilst there are some definitive five star moments things are slightly pinned back by plodding pacing and the fact events never feel quite as frantic as they should.

Still its worth persevering as the last third considerably ups the ante and features some truly harrowing and haunting moments.

Narration is very well handled with a decent spectrum of character voices.

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Well read but awful accents

The narration is let down by the excruciating Australian and English accents. English as in RP English spoken in England. Up there with infamous cockney accent in Mary Poppins.

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Still WOW!

I've read this book many, many times. it's great to have listened to it here. Well read.

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2 people found this helpful

performance...

the performance was almost cringy in places especially with the Australian accents. I found it hard to keep listening to the performance, it lacked in emotion and emphasis throughout.

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vividly described and at times moving..

I'd read the story some years ago and the audio book didnt disappoint. Well constructed and told

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1 person found this helpful

A little dull and dated.

To be honest it was background noise, no characters that I had any empathy with.

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Fabulous sci Fi

A wonderful story told by great actors. If you have not discovered Greg Bear yet do so now.

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3 people found this helpful

The End of The World realised

The melange of personalities and motivations in this cataclysmic tale accurately portray just what it would be like to face an impending existential doom.. The 'end' left me feeling terrified and devastated.. Great read spoiled only by the terrible British and Australian accents...

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Dont buy it it doesn't add anything to story

Ugh what rubbish Greg Bear at his worse. Did i really waste my time listening to this self centred driveal. By the end i was hoping all of them had died or would die

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Slow, dull, wordy and painfully long

I bought this because I was intrigued by the premise and love a good sci-fi story. However, by the end of the 19+ hours, I had lost the will to live and just wanted it to be over. Here are some reasons why:

1. there is far too much description about everything - the scenery, the science, the characters' inner thoughts - all of this just slows down the action. There were entire sequences were nothing much happened and, half way through the second part, the story stopped to allow the characters to have long moments of introspection about the meaning of life, death etc. For what seemed like hours (and it probably was) - nothing much happened. In fact, I ended up fast forwarding the book by 30 seconds at a time to see when the story would pick up again. I was totally bored and frustrated by this stage

2. there are so many characters that it was difficult to keep track of them all (especially on audio). This also resulted in a huge amount of 'he said, she said, he said, she said' which was distracting. The number of characters also made it difficult to know who was the hero. I presume this was Arthur since he was in the story the longest, but he wasn't all that relatable and I found it hard to warm to him. In fact, I didn't really care at the end what happened to him - which is never a good sign.

It wasn't all bad - the idea is good, reasonably original and raises some interesting questions. The narration by Stephen Bel Davies is excellent - his accents were superb and he brought the different characters to life. The ending did not disappoint.

If you like your books full of inner thoughts, descriptive sequences and philosophical debate then you might enjoy this. I prefer books to have strong characters and a good brisk pace that keep me hooked to the very end. The only reason I managed to finish listening to this was out of curiosity to find out what happened in the end, not because I cared. I’m not sure this was the best use of 19 hrs of my life.

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3 people found this helpful