Greet book. Moderate quality audio.

Excellent book. Audio is of moderate quality - it randomly fades in and out at the beginning and end of sentences. You get used to it over tune.

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the narrator is far too hard to hear

the book itself is a great piece of science fiction, the person reading the novel did a terrible job. it's hard to hear them speaking most of the time.

I'd find a different reading and go with that one over this. it's been a source of frustration trying to listen to this book.

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Good story and imagery, audio issues

Story is quite fun and a nice take on the space pirates genre. The slang and language devolves a bit at points and can been seen as a bit too much, but the good flow and interesting events keep it on track. Main issue is that the audio mixing is not good in a general sense. Easier to listen with headphones, but the highs and lows in speaking volume makes it nigh impossible to listen to in the car.

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1 person found this helpful

Much fun

Great story!

Audio production is screwy intermittently which can make listening hard at a few points (sounds like an over active compressor kicks in). That’s too bad because the narrator is really great.

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2 people found this helpful

Arya Stark's space adventure

Firstly, don't let others' complaints about the audio dissuade you. The complaints aren't baseless, but it's manageable enough and I really liked Clare's narration.

The story itself has many familiar hero's journey elements but what sets it apart for me is the world the story inhabits. Many things are left mysterious, but they feel like they'd have full explanations if there was time and if the characters knew them. Reynolds excels at creating lived-in feeling universes. I'd compare this story's universe to that of Terminal World in that we find it past its peak, but for whatever reason this one worked for me where TW did not.

As for the story, think something like Arya Stark and Osha meets Pirates of the Caribbean in space.

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Bad mixing

The mixing is quite bad. They've cut the trebles and the end of words are faded to whispers. It makes it hard to focus on the words. It's hard to listen when there's any noise around. Can't really fault the reader, I'm sure with a better mixing she'd be very audible.

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2 people found this helpful

cool universe, a bit unbelievable at the end

it started strong and got a little contrived at the end. A neat universe but it'll be a while until I feel like reading the next one

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Not Alastair Reynolds best. Audio quality poor.

Audio: as described by other listeners; could really only listen with headphones and not speakers. The narrator has a tendency to swallow the ends of some sentences. That coupled with poor audio balance made me nearly send it back.

Story: I wanted to complete the story enough not to send it back because of the poor audio quality. Narrator made it sound like she was telling a YA tale and she didn’t quite like young people. Reynolds has written some good but not great space opera. This is on the bottom end because of predictable plot twists and trite conveniences. I will really the rest of the series in print, borrowed from the library.

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story ok , audio quality is terrible

I could not finish the story because there is a big problem with the quality of the audio recording. the performance is fine , however there is a lot of whispering and very often I can't distinguish what the heck the characters are staying! whoever was balancing the audio doesn't seem to be very good at their job.
I'm wearing expensive soundproof headphones so that's not the issue either.

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it's not science fiction, it's space opers

The completely unexplained technology is excused by the setting, but setup in a way to ne very frustrating to anyone used to hard science fiction.

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