Zach Cochran

Thanks Audible

Revisado: 08-29-22

I'm very glad Audible has stepped up and gotten these recorded. There were some odd gaps in availability for a lot of Gene Wolfe's work, and Long Sun is perhaps my favorite. I hope it's all in accordance with the late author's wishes, but either way, I'm glad to have them to listen to now. This is the 4th book, so you probably don't need my review of the story if you're considering it, but if you're looking at the series in general, well, Gene Wolfe is a challenging author on some levels. I love his work, but I don't always recommend it. You probably already know who you are if you're a fan.

The performance is excellent. All the names and archaic words come through clearly. All the characters are very distinctly read. Pace is great.

One important thing for me with audiobooks is clarity; can I hear the book well in the car or even in the shower? Some of this is the narrator, and some the recording. Both are excellent here.

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Enjoyable and enlightening

Revisado: 05-03-18

I loved this. I'm a little surprised. But I found the subject to be really interesting and Professor McWhorter's narration was great. I will never think about the word "snow" again without a smile as I wonder about the "s".

I also loved learning about how languages evolve, including thoughtful discussion of pidgins and creoles.

I don't know if it's for everyone. But I'm not a linguist, and I only speak the tiniest bit of awful high school Spanish. So I think this series is great for anyone who's even a little curious about language and words.

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Not Stephenson's best, and narration wrecks it.

Revisado: 09-01-16

What did you like best about Seveneves? What did you like least?

Well, it's not awful. It's certainly not his best, though, nor is it among the better recent scifi novels. Some of the characters are quite good; I liked the interplay between Ivy and Dinah quite a bit. I did not think it was particularly creative that so many of the other characters had such obvious real-world analogues. I particularly didn't like that the villains had a bit of a Disney channel level of evil to them; here the narration in particular didn't help. I thought the near-future science was fair; it seems like a lot of the problems, solutions, and technology were about right, based on my amateur levels of space nerdery and Kerbal Space Program chops. Good not to underestimate coronal mass ejections and radiation in general. Some of the writing I thought was a little bit of Arthur C. Clarke in his worst pedantic mode, with a bit of a bad Nova episode thrown in. Kim Stanley Robinson pulls this sort of thing off better, and Andy Weir makes it downright fun. It might be also (and please don't think I'm being stuck up here) that these are concepts I'm familiar with, so the explanations were a bit boring at times. Readers/listeners who are similar to me (space nerds, read a lot of other scifi, play KSP) may feel the same way.

If you’ve listened to books by Neal Stephenson before, how does this one compare?

I've read or listened to Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and Anathem. I think this is probably tied for last with The Diamond Age, but maybe The Diamond Age has an edge for sheer creativity. Anathem is as good as anything out there, and in spite of its length, it was better paced than Seveneves.

Would you be willing to try another one of Mary Robinette Kowal and Will Damron ’s performances?

Will Damron is just fine. No complaints. He doesn't get in the way. Mary Robinette Kowal; ouch. This sucks to say, because I like her from the podcasts and blog posts where I've encountered her before. But this narration was just dreadful. The accents were so poorly done that I'd have just left them out. The Russian and German (one Swiss character has some sort of mashup between a bad Arnold impersonator and Sgt. Shultz; hard to listen to) were ear-killing, and the British wasn't great. It would have been better if she read them straight rather than trying for the accent. When she read male voices it just came out as comedy. I am not a woman, nor am I a voice talent of any sort. But I've heard women read male voices well, and I've heard men read female voices well. It didn't work here at all. There were cases of plain old mispronunciation as well. That's not the end of the world, but there was one sequence where the word "concatenate" came out all wrong several times in a row. Those are simple things to fix.

Was Seveneves worth the listening time?

In spite of my griping, I think it was still worth listening to. I got it on a sale, so maybe that helps. There's a lot of good story here, and many good ideas. If you haven't got your Vernor Vinge, Gene Wolfe, or even Dan Simmons listening in, though, get one of those instead. Or get one of Stephenson's better books; Anathem in particular is an excellent choice. If you're looking for something a little more pulpy, Leviathan Wakes (James S. A. Corey) is a lot of fun. But if you've done all that and need something for the commute, this would be fine.

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