Ok narrator, go no-where story

What was most disappointing about Ian McDonald’s story?

I *really* loved The Dervish House. That was a compelling and complete story.

This story is about some rich kid that decides to run away from his marriage at the last minute, so this other guy's family decides to obliterate them. Then the book is over.

None of the build up matters. I'm kind of ok with the *extensive* non-English rally names and words. But all it adds up to is an extended instance of Dallas on the moon. Mixed with rich teen angst.

The ending was the most unsatisfactory part. It just ends with no resolution.

6 people found this helpful

Dynasty on the Moon

This was like a 1980s soap opera like Dallas or Dynasty, but on the moon. And really I would read any book with that premise. It's kinda crazy no one has done this before. Lots of fun.

Main narrator is adequate. The supporting narrators are quite good.

6 people found this helpful

Bad narration ruins this

I was confused for most of this story. The narrator sounds flat and bored - he sucks the excitement out of every scene. The women narrators are better, but a small portion of the book.

Beyond that there is some sort of sex scene or description every 5-10 minutes, there is an arc of intrigue and a very shocking ending. The only thing I came away with is that the author paints a future with lunar citizens who are all pretty much a**holes. I guess this has been a successful recipe for many stories, but in such a long book it's wearying. There are no heroes.

2 people found this helpful

The Godfather on the moon with gays

Seriously, if gay sex offends you, skip this book. An interesting take on free market enterprise. The moon is controlled by five family cartels. Everything is for sale on the moon, from lives, to environment, to resources. Failure to pay will cost you, and may cost your life.

I will not be buying the sequels. Although well written, it drags through scores of details that could be skipped with no loss to the storyline. Reminds me of a student's paper they hope will be graded not by content but by weight.

5 people found this helpful

Game of Thrones meets Dallas on the Moon

This was a much better story than I was expecting. There is a bit too much sex in some places (I'm no prude, but I sometimes felt there a page quota the author needed to meet), but I liked the world of the moon. Corporate anarchy (there is no criminal law, only contract law) makes for interesting architectures for fictional societies. I look forward to seeing how some of the characters will continue to develop going forward.

1 person found this helpful

not my style

Narration was great. I guess this just isn't my type of book. Once i got into it I was committed to the story line but sometimes i found it hard to follow or pay attention to detail.

1 person found this helpful

Disappointed.

A long character list recitation was a bad omen. The story was just stupid. The narration boring and droned on and on. I just never could get engaged. This is the first Audible book I am returning.

There's something for everyone, but this one is not for me.

10 people found this helpful

Disappointing

Unappealing characters, and unremarkable world. Poor science fiction and uninteresting social fiction. Lacks vision. So many authors have told the potential stories of the moon better. And voice acting — outside of the older lady voice — sounds stilted and robotic.

Such a struggle

The book getting started is so hard to get into. The first "chapter" is 8 (?) minutes of names and descriptions. Like one sentence descriptions. Totally useless in basically any context, but especially in audiobook form - so I just skipped it. When you get into the story, it's extremely hard to follow because of the hard foreign words. The readers have, for better or worse, spent a lot of time making sure they got the pronunciations perfected. The problem is they are all over the language spectrum and there isn't a lot of context. They use the non-english words for locations, titles and other bits. I think it took me a chapter or two just to figure out one specific word was a city on the moon. It totally takes you out of the story when there are reference to something in what sounds like Mandarin or Cantonese. Could be a city, state, zipcode, phrase, word, title. Who knows. If you don't have any base for that language its hard to remember that detail.. .which makes adding more story on top of it that much more confusing.

Never got into the story

Didn't get to the end, maybe because I'm bad at remembering names. Just couldn't capture my interest.