Matt Orienter

Clever and Interesting

Revisado: 04-12-23

I enjoyed this experience. The story did a really good job of unfolding naturally, so the final reveals did not feel like a cheat. While the book is entirely self-contained, I will seek a sequel.

The performance was a little trickier. Some of this is due to the reader's limited range--and she performs very well within that range--and some is due to how the nonhuman speech is rendered. Regardless, it was more than enough to keep me to the end.

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Disappointingly Soft and Repetitive

Revisado: 09-13-22

This is a fine way to spend a few nights, but it's far from the Reynolds I like. Aside from a plot that shares many components with another recent work, the concepts around the primary conceit are under-baked, making the work much closer to fantasy. Maybe if the ratio between the various timelines were different I would have liked it more.

The performance was very good. Harry Myers sounds very much like John Lee, who has read numerous Reynolds titles.

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Beautiful and Satisfying

Revisado: 03-02-22

This story is simultaneously exactly Jonathan Strange and exactly not. Clarke brings a particular (in my opinion particularly wonderful) lens to her stories and cares not one whit about genre. The story is literally wonderful--you will wonder at the world she creates and the people who inhabit it, actively--and satisfying as a world and a story. People will try to put a genre on it, and that's a shame.

The performance was equally excellent. Though there wasn't a huge range of characters, each was distinct; and I got a sense of the characters' personalities from the way they were read.

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Moving Character Study (if you ignore the science)

Revisado: 01-24-22

I liked this story as a story about identity and self worth, and I'm glad that I stuck through it; but there are some real problems.

It's probably the softest SF I've read, so don't expect any internal consistency or a cohesive universe.

Also, the performance was kind of off-putting. The reader has a throaty whisper, as if every sentence was an earth-shattering revalation; and characters are not alway discernable.

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Very Interesting & VERY Speculative

Revisado: 01-19-22

Firstly, all the people with trigger warnings about self-harm are right. It's not glorified or anything like that, but it is there.

The story itself is pretty neat; it's a good way of combining institutional racism with government conspiracy. The institutions are everywhere.

It all comes down to the characters, and this is where the writing and the performance come together. The amount of pathos generated by the story is palpable; and the way it's read really seals the deal.

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Interesting Concepts with Excellent Narration

Revisado: 01-10-22

Firstly, you should note that approximately two hours of runtime are appendices about the science, as opposed to the story.

I enjoyed this experience. Some of the concepts are different than what I'm used to seeing, which is a little rare for me in this kind of SF. The lead character was a believable 'strong woman,' and each of the remaining characters are fully-realized. It also works very well as a standalone book, while leaving opportunities to explore other aspects of the same universe. I appreciate the author's work on the speculative science as well. It is internally consistent, which is really all you can ask for.

The narration here was superb. M. Hale had so many different voices, to cover genders and species, that it was really easy to know what's going on. That's no mean feat with this much material.

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Excellent on most every level

Revisado: 08-19-21

This book has most of the things that I seek in SF - life that evolved under completely different conditions than humans did, an explicit lack of "found artifact" technology or convenient-to-the-story scientific breakthroughs, and a compelling story set simultaneously on grand and tiny scales. Grounded in real biological and relativistic sciences (and set very much in the present day), it's not difficult to identify with the characters and their situations. I also really want to know more about many of the secondary and tertiary characters.

The performance and production are both of very high quality. They use a neat trick to represent what I presume is a different font in the book, but provides a closer representation than is possible in flat text. Mr. Porter's various voices and characters are distinctive and diverse, and always comprehensible.

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Nothing New

Revisado: 06-17-21

This is an acceptable re-telling of an ages-old tale of woe. The SF is a backdrop, which is a good thing; but the story itself was far easier than most of Reynolds's other work

The reading was also OK. I might have given it a 4 if not for the musical breaks between sections.

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Wish fulfillment... just not mine

Revisado: 05-15-21

This was a very good story. I got invested in the characters, and the eerily-believable future setting is reminiscent of recent William Gibson titles. It was satisfying along numerous dimensions, many of which are topical right now. I imagine M Burke got a lot of pleasure in how she conveyed certain concepts and archetypes.

What this book is NOT--and I'm not saying anywhere that the material represents otherwise--is a follow-up to the Semiosis Duology. Don't expect the content to bend the way you think about consciousness, community, or communications.

The performance here was good. I would have liked a LITTLE more differentiation between the voices of the protagonists, but I recognize that the similarity is exactly the point of the story.

In summary, if you understand this genre you will probably like this title.

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Not a ton of movement

Revisado: 05-03-21

This was a passable entry in the Murderbot series. The narration was very good, which is consistent with the earlier installments. As a chapter in the larger arc of the titular character, this felt like a whole lot of setup for some larger story elements, without moving many of the pieces directly.

Regardless, I will pre-order the next one.

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