Great story, mediocre audio book.

I love the universes that Alastair Reynolds creates, and the stories he weaves in them so I was a little disappointed to see how short this story was (it's only an hour long, take note of the price as it's probably worth purchasing it rather than wasting a credit). Length complaints aside, this is a great story and I really enjoyed it. It vaguely echoes some of his other work but it's definitely new and interesting material, telling the story of some off-track astronauts, shuttling between brief vignettes of "now" and "not too long ago" with a nice psychological twist at the end to keep you wondering for a while.

That said, this audio version of it verges on terrible. I don't know if it's because I now unconsciously relate John Lee with Alistair Reynolds but the narrator (Tom Dheere) just didn't work for me. He sounded like he'd been challenged to read through the story as fast as possible and, to draw a traffic analogy, treated sentence ending punctuation much like a speedhump or chicane rather than stop signs or red lights. Additionally, the vignettes are separated by 15 seconds of music. WHY??? It's an audio version of a book, it doesn't need extra music or sounds effects, it just needs someone to read the words! If it's imperative to draw a distinction between separate passages then leave 2 seconds of silence to indicate it or something, don't start introducing lengthy chunks of foreign material where the author never intended them to be!

7 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Good story, rushed narration

The story was good, and what I'd expect from this author. The narrator, however, seemed to be rushing through it as fast as he could, sounding almost breathless at points, which seemed generally inappropriate for the story.

3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

I forgive you Alastair Reynolds

i wanted to like this. but the experimenting with this form of narrative didn't work for more.

4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

the narrator is in a rush to finish.

extremely low quality narration. very frustrating with out color, as he was trying to finish the story. this listening was stressful.

amazing

just as good as the episode for love death and robots. was so much fun to read

Great Story

the story was great but I thought the performance was a little to fast paced.

Kind of a weird book

I have to say, until the last 10 minutes of the book, it wasn't very interesting.

absolutely lovely story

this book was really well read, the narrator was good and the story was phenomenal.

Short and sweet

Grate story. The narrator read a bit too fast for my liking, but overall a good book. this needs a sequel

Probably my favorite short story.

After seeing the animated short on Netflix's Love, Death, and Robots, I really wanted to discover more of the story. Like usual, the source offers much more detail. My only issue with the audio book is they annoying music and bassy heart beat between chapters.