a good read/listen

A little repetitive in places but a masterpiece none the less.
Would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Sci fi.

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great lessons

not anti space as some suggest, rather just addressing the real issues of trying to settle in places other than our home planet. excellent narration.

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Good

A cool story, entertainingly read. Definitely drags at times, seeming a bit repetitive, but keeps moving along. KSR certainly knows his way around Sci Fi. The message is a bit bleaker than I had hoped for, but an interesting take on the space exploration/colonisation genre.

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A Luxuriant Profusion of Detail

Ever since reading Niven, Clarke and Anderson I've enjoyed obsessing over the humdrum everyday minutiae of a hypothetical interstellar voyage. Even though this one ends sadly, the content pushed all my need-to-know buttons without, as Niven would put it, locking the gate to the playground. KSR at his finest and, like his other epic works, worth the slog, every minute of it.

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Hmmm

Decent voice acting but hindered by a story that loses its way and bad audio post processing that makes it sound over compressed for most of the book.

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Genius

Another pen stroke of genius by Kim Stanley Robinson. Evocative imagery, intricate science and beautiful composition.

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3 people found this helpful

Visionary epic tale

Combines realistic science with perceptive societal observation embedded in breathtaking innovative narrative. Wow! Read it!

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2 people found this helpful

Heavily political and anti space travel.

Not just a fantasy Sci Fi
This was surprisingly deep with human phsychology and philosophical currents running throughout the book. Heavily centered around the human needs and problems of interplanetary travel, settlement and life.


The Interplanetary travel, is on a ship which is a moving planet, a living biome. The ship is a cyborg, a conscious AI quantum computer with biological components.
Humans are a variable entity living as a symbiote within the living biome.

Their destination planet Aroura, was a beautiful planet like earth but.....

It is a very philosophical book that looked at fear, history, hate, anger, animal pack mentality, conflict and religion, but also gives a very scientific and engineering viewpoint.

A bit too political for me, possibly as I was looking for an uplifting escapism book rather than one that was fixated with human obsessions and conflicts. But I could see alot of people who are obsessed with politics and activism really liking this book.

This book is more anti space travel than pro space travel. A view I don't personally share.

The naration was excellent.
The ship is the narrator with clearly defined change in voices when other characters speak.

The naration was excellent.
The ship is the narrator with clearly defined change in voices when other characters speak.

Live as if you are already dead.- Japanese proverb quoted in book.

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not what I wanted

i went in with an expectation that the book didn't give me. I wanted a book about humans overcoming difficult challenges in colonisation on a alien planet and prevailing. but this is not really an optimistic book and it's too loaded down with the author's anti-space rhetoric.

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Overly indulgent

I enjoy a detailed story but a lot of this felt like I was listening to a text book.

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2 people found this helpful