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Lucifer's Hammer

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About this listen

 The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization.

But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival - a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known....

©1985 Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (P)2009 Audible, Inc. Adventure Fantasy Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Classics

Critic reviews

"Take your earthquakes, waterlogged condominiums, swarms of bugs, colliding airplanes, and flaming what-nots, wrap them up and they wouldn't match one page of Lucifer's Hammer for sweaty-palmed suspense." ( Chicago Daily News)
"Massively entertaining." ( Cleveland Plain-Dealer)
All stars
Most relevant
I've been on a journey for a while now in the post apocalypse scene reading books like Swan Song, The Stand, The Passage, etc etc and this is book gives the reader nothing too special to be honest. Its not a bad read.. just not really a exciting one. I read a lot of reviews on this book before reading and I hear the word aged a lot.. I think the book has aged well and the age is a credit to the book in my opinion. This book will appeal to a few but doesn't scratch the itch I'm having for the genre sadly. Even so I want to say thanks to the author as I have a lot of appreciation for the Post apocalyptic genre and hope future authors are inspired to create my next read.
Thanks

Kaine

Nothing new

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Having listened to this book to the end, I'm not sure that I want to dedicate 24 hours of my life to listening to books that aren't going to add anything to my life. As a piece of fiction that tells a great yarn, it's fantastic. The detail and the character stories are great; character development is ok but they are who they are at the start and though their situations change dramatically, they generally stay that way to their end.

If you want a well told story that will take up your head for 24 and a half hours - this is the book for you. If you'd like to ponder and grow with a story (and that's what I learned from this experience - if I'm going to listen to a tome, I need more than a good yarn) - then this is for you.

I have a strong desire to reference 'Hammer Time' but I'm too restrained to do that.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel

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I really enjoyed this story. it was written on 77 and yet the first half is very similar to the film Deep Impact that came it in 98. This is a fun story worth the read.

A truly 'Deep Impact'

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Enjoyed the story and made me think of what could possibly happen IF! Well narrated.

Good SF story may be?

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Concept is nice. It suffers from a LOT of preamble though. I was about to give up on it but decided to push through. Glad I did as it has picked up. Have read a Niven book before (Rimworld?) and there was a bit too much sex in it. Not so in this one, it is there but it makes sense for it to be there. Other than a pretty long build up to the main event - the comet, not the sex - my only thoughts are that sometimes they are trying to describe things just too vast for words. The forces in play when the hammer falls, the things that happen... I can hear that they are happening but I'm not feeling it. Not because they are failing, but because things like that can't fully be realised in language. Also, if I was on top of a mountain and blinded by the flash of a comet, I'd be screaming like a madman, not sitting there listening to a description of what my buddy could see ;) 4-4.5/5

Love the concept

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