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On the Steel Breeze

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On the Steel Breeze

By: Alastair Reynolds
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
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About this listen

 Chiku Yellow is earthbound: living a peaceful life on a changing world as humanity explores a thousand new ways to experience life.

Chiku Red is space-bound: blasted into deep space to investigate Eunice Akinya's last journey, and maybe discover the final secrets of space travel.

Chiku Green is planet-bound: travelling thousands of lightyears to the planet Crucible. A new home for humankind; it's a habitable planet hosting a fascinating alien labyrinth.

All three are Chiku Akinya.
All three are pivotal to our future in space.
All three are in danger...

Read by Adjoa Andoh

(p) 2013 Orion Publishing Group©2013 Alastair Reynolds Adventure Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction

Critic reviews

As good as contemporary SF gets. (Jonathan Wright)
On The Steel Breeze is a brilliant, self-assured, colourful space opera- with talking elephants. (John Wyatt)
The book is not merely a sequel, but a standalone adventure with heart. (Val Nolan)
Clever, thoughtful, feel-good SF. (John Wyatt)
Alastair Reynold's On the Steel Breeze moved his ambitious Poseidon's Children's series into interstellar space. (Adam Roberts)
All stars
Most relevant
Read all of AR's books barring this Poseidon trilogy. Loved revelation space and the standalone novels.

The first in this trilogy, blue remembered earth - is excellent. But this second instalment takes his 'shatterling' idea from House of Suns, and tried to add to an A.I versus humans concept but never quite delivers. For me, it's a bit confused, mixing the primary plot lines with concepts and ideas more clearly realised in his other books. Really liked the idea of the emergent Africa however! Would be nice to know more about the other superpowers and how they played a hand.

Good narrator too! Great use of African dialects!!

Middle of the way for Alastair Reynolds

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Really good, wow the first book in the series had been a pretty slow starter. In my opinion this one jumped right into it and I really enjoyed it. I definitely felt this was an approved first book. Looking forward to last one.

Really good

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The second book in the series started slowly and the change in performer took some time to get used to, but once I did; the story continues at an even more vast scope than the first book. Hugely enjoyable if you like a big, bold and imaginative story.
I am downloading the final book in the series; Poseidon's Wake now and can’t wait to get listening.

Vast and hugely enjoyable space opera

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This is proper hard sci-fi. It's nearly twenty-four hours of story, so you need to let the plot develop - Reynold's stories are chess, not draughts. Anyone who's read (or listened to) Reynolds knows that he wants to explore the universe he's weaving and this trilogy is no exception.

Adjoa Andoh is the perfect narrator for this story. Although, I suspect that Andoh could read a telephone directory and I'd still be enthralled.

Artilects, generation ships and Akinyas

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A sci fi story with a bit of a difference. Not something I would necessarily choose over any other but it's a good palette cleanser. Thought the ending was a bit meh but the rest was fine. Generally, a very good reading, narration and voice characterisation by Adjoa but her little girl voice needs more work.

A nice diversion away from standard sci fi.

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