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Seeds of Earth
- Humanity's Fire, Book 1
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
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Summary
First contact: the dream that became a nightmare when the first alien life encountered swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable.
With little hope of halting the invading forces, Earth's last, desperate roll of the die was to send out three colony ships - seeds of Earth - to different parts of the galaxy. Earth may perish, but the human race would live on, somewhere.
Fully 150 years later, the human colony on the planet Darien has established a new world for humanity and forged a peaceful relationship with the planet's indigenous race, the gentle, scholarly Uvovo. But there are secrets buried on Darien. Life is about to change for the last children of Earth, as surprises spring from below and above. How will the Darien colonists react when all they have worked for is overturned at a stroke? And what choices will the Uvovo make when their true nature is revealed - and the skies grow dark with enemies?
From the author: "Audible did a great job with the audiobooks of Seeds Of Earth and The Orphaned Worlds - and David Thorpe is one versatile guy, able to lend his vocal talents to every strange character I was able to think up. Just excellent!"
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Overall
- Peter
- 15-04-12
Disappointing, this book needed a good editor
The reader makes a valiant effort. The book isn't bad, nor is it good. So what's wrong? It's a fairly strong story line and some of the characters are nicely drawn. Yet, overall it doesn't work. I think the reason is probably because the author set out to write a multi-book series. This book needed a good editor to cut it down and turn it into the tightly written, exciting book it could have been.
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Overall
- mr michael peter hale
- 12-02-12
tedious..
if you need to know what shirt button he got done up , enjoy endless description of things that really do not need you might like this. I think that he had so little story that he feels the need to pad it out so it looks like an epic.
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Overall
- Nick
- 22-08-11
Excellent narration but too many alien 'extras'!
David Thorpe's characterisation is excellent and nearly worth listening to just for that! But as others have said, the story does jump around a bit, there are lots of alien races and names that you feel you need to track. But some just pop in to add depth and disappear again, others hang around for longer. My advice is to sit back and enjoy the story. Don't worry about all the smaller detail as it does settle and the main threads are strong and interesting. I've just downloaded the second book now but when I first started on book 1 I couldn't image I would.
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Overall
- Robert Wheatley
- 13-08-11
Lacking in many ways - Story and Narrator
First off, I refrained from giving this 1 star as maybe this is the sort of thing people like. However, not me - here's why.
The story first, then I'll get onto the narration.
For me, a good saga needs both breadth and depth. What do I mean by this? Well, breadth I think comes from the number of characters, worlds and civilisations whereas depth comes from objects (e.g. technology) back-story and the interaction between everything. The story lacks depth. It gives the illusion of breadth by introducing lots of characters and places, with complex names - I say illusion because I feel nothing is thought through - lots of civilisations are mentioned once, just for the sake of it. There is also a lot of unnecessary flowery language. All this just creates a distraction rather than real breadth and I feel it's just there to try and make a weak story feel better than it really is.
Also, the story doesn't weave together in a way that grips you. It's all very serial (nothing spans) and predictable.
It's a far cry from the breadth and depth of Peter F Hamilton's Nights Dawn saga for instance.
As for the narration - many people have had a dig at the accents. I get that, but at least there was an effort to differentiate characters. Where David Thorpe really lets the storytelling down is with his intonation while not speaking character dialog - it's far too light, making every statement sound like a question, lacks pace while needed and lends no gravitas to the story.
Sorry - I'll not be buying the other books in this series.
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Overall
- Beddoerocks
- 09-08-11
Good But Hard to Follow
Really good story and very well narated.
However the story is incredibly difficult to follow and i have to say I was relieved once I got through it.
The actual story being told is great, the people potrayed are believable and certainly help to draw you in. The back and forth nature of the book which jumps between various side stories is very difficult to follow, however I really enjoyed and was relieved that it was not as "spacey" as I first thought it would be.
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Overall
- bhavna
- 03-08-11
Excellent book
Excellent story, Enjoy it alot, best audio quality and narrator did the great job. simply love this book.
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Overall
- Janders
- 13-05-11
Mr Cobley, your roots are showing...
A mostly harmless trek through deep space, with unfeasible aliens, strange new worlds, galactic cultures and evil scheming robots aplenty.
There's a lot for your ears to master: chiefly the array of bizarrely named characters, places and empires, but the plot appears more complicated than it actually is, and although there are several parallel threads, you don't really have to struggle to keep a track of it all.
The plot is mostly typical Space-Opera fare, with hidden ancient weapons, battling empires, AIs and trips into hyperspace. Much use is made of 'last minute rescue from peril' plot devices, which could be cheesy, but seem appropriate within a fun, if heavily 'influenced', narrative.
It's clear that the author has spent much time with his nose in the 'classic' sci-fi literature, games and movies of the age: producing a brew of everything from Halo to Hitchhikers, Star Wars to Star Trek, Avatar to the Algebrist, and well, you get the idea... Sometimes the influences are clatteringly direct, although I assume it's all intended to be homage rather than theft. At least I hope so. That all said, the overall story is a good yarn, it's just that many of the set pieces within it clearly betray the writer's influences.
The end result is engaging, even oddly charming, and I liked it. Plus, the narration is pretty good, with David Thorpe coping well with distinguishing the many characters involved. In the end, it's more 3.5 stars than 4, but let's err on the generous side. It wasn't the aural page turner that I found Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy to be, but I will be listening to Book 2.
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Overall
- Mrs. Jane Brian-boys
- 11-05-11
avoid
This is the first ever audio book that i am seriously thinking of giving up on...If you thought war and peace was unnecessarily longwinded with a story that was complicated unnecessarily then you will hate this. The narrator is excellent, and I guess it is his energy that keeps me listening ...I would suggest that anyone else dosen't bother to even start!
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Overall
- Paul
- 16-04-11
Interesting but too fragmented
This book has some interesting concepts and some likeable characters but unfortunately it seems to be trying to do too much in one book. The time you spend with any one character is short and fragmented and you never really get a good connection with nay of them, I did enjoy the book and perhaps the characters get a bit more flushed out as the series progreses. The themes are good except the slightly happy clappy tree hugging undertones that seem extraneous at best.
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Overall
- Alex
- 16-04-11
Seeds of Earth
I was prepared to give this a go, based on comments and reviews that were available at the time.
Unlike one reviewer who posted here, I don't have a problem with the narrator or his accent, but the author's command of the important English language terms leaves a lot to be desired:
hegemony |həˈjemənē; ˈhejəˌmōnē|
noun
leadership or dominance, esp. by one country or social group over others : Germany was united under Prussian hegemony after 1871.
ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from Greek hēgemonia, from hēgemōn ?leader,? from hēgeisthai ?to lead.?
The narrator did a good job with what was available: namely a classic example of a badly written FANTASY set in the FUTURE.
It doesn't fit my definition of SCIENCE FICTION, but if it works for you go for it. I lost both the plot and the will to continue at chapter 15.
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