Gary R Zarback

I tried this 6 hours before giving up

Revisado: 03-12-22

I got this because of the new series, I wanted a background.
I could not get into this. It started off feeling like I was a delinquent 3rd grader being scolded by a 60yr old English professor. When it finally broke away from that, it just jumped into 1st and 2nd person story view for people I had no history with, or any interest. No ramp up, no introduction, no setting up the plot - just jump right into something excessively uninteresting and have meaningless dialogue. I stopped about 3 hours in and read a couple other books, tried returning a couple more times and just can't find the determination to utterly waste another couple hours of my life.

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great book

Revisado: 12-17-21

loved it. enough continuation from absolution gap to feel like a sequel, and or a stand alone.

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A childrens novel, like Harry Potter but in space

Revisado: 07-25-21

I'm a huge fan of Alastair Reynolds so I was excited to start reading this new series. Unfortunately, I expected more of his usual hard sci-fi and serious story arcs. This book feels like it was written specifically for the 8-14 year age group. The words are pirate shanty, and the story makes as much sense as Alice in Wonderland. For somebody hoping for another Revelation Space style universe, it leaves you feeling distinctly shamed.
I would strongly recommend to any youth with a fascination in pirates and interest in space.

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Incredible story, simply amazing narration

Revisado: 01-09-20

I've owned this book in hardback for about 15 years, read it at least 3-4 times.
Now I'm into audiobooks, I'm rolling back and giving a listen to some of my old favorites and Steven Erikson's book of the malazan series is THE top for me. It is such an incredible story, such depth of characters and in an original fantasy-scape, that it seriously ruined other writers for me.
So I already knew I loved the story.
But this narrator, holy smokes. Ralph Lister is amazing. He is quite possibly the clearest speaking narrator I've had the pleasure of listening to. He narrated this and the 2 previous books so far...and when I started book 4 this morning and immediately noticed it was a new narrator it was heart breaking. Not because the new narrator is bad, but because Ralph Lister is so incredibly good that I miss his oration already.

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Amazing narration, excellent cadence & energy

Revisado: 12-17-19

I"m not a big fan of military novels normally, but this was a very enjoyable listen. The author is full of genuine military wit & sarcasm, and the narrator's cadence & pace really made this fun. I will both look up the author and narrator to explore additional books.

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Amazing audible experience

Revisado: 10-29-19

I started reading this series around 1993 and really enjoyed it. Gardens of the Moon was always my least favorite, it felt dry and too slow. However, as an audio book it really added so much more depth, the narrator is simply awesome and the story really came to life.
Super book, amazing series. I'm really enjoying re-reading / listening to these.

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I tried it, had to stop 7 hours in...

Revisado: 09-13-19

I tried to indulge in some non-fiction as opposed to my typical scifi fantasy stuff. 7 hours in and I just cant take any more. The narrator did a good enough job, but the subject material is just so incredibly bloated with superficial nothings, as if a student trying to expand a 3000 word essay into a 20,000 word requirement. Just so much fluff that the little bits & factoids about washington are hopelessly lost in a sea of oblivion.

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difficult to understand narrator

Revisado: 09-07-19

As a 3-book summary for the series, sort of typical Reynolds. Really slow starts, long drawn-out story arcs that eventually get interesting but then are simply dropped without any conclusion or suggestion of fate. Some neat sci fi concepts.
The narration is horrible, simply impossible to understand so much due to the heavy african accent imparted for effect.

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Such a slow storyline + bad narration = fail

Revisado: 09-07-19

The storyline vaguely continues, and like everything else by Reynolds has a 15-hour build up until you hit something interesting that makes you decide to finish the book.
The narrator...wow. The first book had a narrator that was so exceptionally difficult to understand that I created a "black list" of narrators just to prevent ever accidentally getting something by him again. I was especially looking forward to this and the 3rd book being by a different narrator....obviously a result of reader complaints I assumed.
Boy was I mistaken. This narrator was even more difficult to understand. The main character sounds like yodeling Yoda with a cold trying to mimic Scooby Doo. It drove me nuts. And the accents trying to give african characters some realism just alienated readers because we cant understand it. I dont know how many hundreds of words & sentences that were lost to me, and going back 30 seconds never helps because they are completely and entirely incomprehensible.

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Really slow & boring starter, difficult narration

Revisado: 09-07-19

On the story...typical Reynolds on the slow story start, reinforced with super dry droning on of conversations between supposedly smart adults but with social skills and behavior of 3rd grade elementary students. In the end, the interesting story line does exist and the 3-book series is worth adding to your collection. This book specifically is like a never ending scavenger hunt.
My biggest issue with this book was the difficulty understanding the narrator. The characters are African so the narrator takes great pains to ensure he sounds like what you would imagine a native would sound like attempting to speak english. Hundreds of words just lost to pure gibberish and yodeling / yoda / kung fu master dialects. Multiple times I stopped this book to go double check to ensure the remaining 2 books were by a different narrator. Had they been the same, i would have cancelled and demanded a refund.
Even by the end of the book, after I had trained myself to understand the narrator a little easier, the book is still overly difficult to understand for zero reason. While I have a list of "favorite" narrators, this book is responsible for the creation of a list of narrators I will black-list forever.

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