Best listen of 2019

Favourite sci-fi audio book of the year. Gripping from the first word.

Great narrator, want to hear more of Fred Tatasciore! If we see some regular content, RC Bray might have some serious competition.

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3 people found this helpful

Great story. Terrible recording

I enjoyed the story but the sound would go quiet suddenly and then go loud again after a while. Very annoying.
As in an Aussie I cringed when he did the Australian accent. Oh well not many can get it right.
All in all a good read. Looking forward to the next one.

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I wish there was a follow-up book

Great story love integration of AI morality.
My only hope is that there is follow-up books before and after sequences to the series.

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3 people found this helpful

Not quite as good as Galaxy's Edge

The narration is extremely stilted and i cringe at the attempted accents. I did enjoy this but i think anyone new to the series would struggle to finish.

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2 people found this helpful

Great Story, Shocking Audio Editing

Okay so massive fan of the GE series. listened to and read most of the books.

Why is it 3/5 Overall then you say? Well ...

The Good:
Story is great, for being a different author and writing style, but very much inline with the GE series.
The narration is good too. Although R.C.Bray is a legend, Fred does a good job putting feeling into the story and makes the characters come to life.

The Bad & The Ugly:

The audio editing is RUBBISH!!
Honestly if I was doing the editing on this job and I released this pile of steaming garbage I would seriously reconsider my profession.

Reasons:

The db level of the audio drops significantly so you turn it up then gets loud, then intermittently get soft, loud ,medium, soft ,loud, LOUDER, soft etc.

It feels like the recording was done in different location with different mics and then slapped together.

The end product is the audio equivalent of the elephant man.

Just balance the damn volume levels and it would have been better.
Use the same Mic and location and it would be great and EQ the thing for the sake of quality.

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10 people found this helpful

good story

I really enjoyed the Best of Us, both story and narrator Tateshore are excellent. However, it is a very vague and tenuous connection to the principal Galaxy's Edge universe: I was hoping for a more thoroughly rounded origin story, but am not at all disappointed it hasn't all been revealed yet. to the contrary, I am looking forward to the next book in the Nomad series.

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3 people found this helpful

Promising start to a new series

Overall it’s quite good. It’s definitely a bit different from other galaxy’s edge books but is a nice slower entry to the world which leaves you keen for more.

As others have said, some of the production is really jarring, I only noticed it in the first quarter of the book and then either forgot about it or it didn’t happen again until a couple of times right at the end.

But don’t let the handful of dodgy moments of production put you off unless you really can’t stand that sort of thing. The book is well worth pushing past those moments, especially if you enjoy the galaxy’s edge universe.

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3 people found this helpful

Great story

I really enjoyed this one. The narrative was good, but the Aussie accent......needs work lol, it was a shocker!
Really looking forward to the next in series, enjoying the whole Galaxy's Edge saga.

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2 people found this helpful

Great story, average performance

The writing was great but the performance was lacking, making it difficult at times to get into the story. I haven't heard previous readings by this performer but can't say I'll be seeking them out after this one.

Some of the dialogue felt forced and awkward, but that may be due to the way it was read, rather than what was written. The performance made it hard to connect with the characters, and this was compounded by the problem that some characters sounded similar - especially more noticable when those characters would have a conversation with each other and I'd have to rewind the recording to work out which character was saying what line.

Some lines of dialogue or narrative appear to have been either recorded at different times, on different equipment / locations, or have been mixed differently. It happens frequently throughout the book, but in the early stages it's highly noticable - within the space of a minute you can hear a number of different sounding lines play out, sounding disjointed and badly cut together. On the same note, some cut together lines clip slightly, whilst others have long, distinct, and at times awkward pauses.

Accents and character voices are definitely not a strong skill for the performer, and most character voices came off more as a parent reading to their small child with an overly exaggerated "different" voice to the one reading the story, as opposed to fleshed out and unique performances.

Of particular note: the Australian accents sounded more like a Simpsons parody (a mix of New Zealand, Scottish, South African, British, and random other accents) rather than a legitimate attempt at the accent.

4 stars overall because I still recommend the book for the story, but advise that at times the going is tough and especially cringe worthy if you're an Australian listener. Definitely had to force myself to power through this at times.

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2 people found this helpful

excellent introduction to the galaxys edge series

being a fan of the galaxys edge books i immediately picked this up. at first i struggled to come to grips with the story, setting and timeline but this was due to my own interpretation of what i believed had happened to earth. karen Travis delivers with excellent characters and an incredibly well done story that as far as I'm concerned is a hallmark of the galaxys edge series of books. This has made me excited to see where she takes this part of my favourite sci fi series.

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2 people found this helpful