Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
The Echo cover art

The Echo

By: James Smythe
Narrated by: Rupert Farley
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.00

Buy Now for £13.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Lead Cloak cover art
The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 10 cover art
Honor Among Thieves cover art
Meeting Infinity cover art
Steal the Stars cover art
The Settlers cover art
Elder Race cover art
Stasis cover art
Forbidden The Stars cover art
Dancing with Eternity cover art
The This cover art
This Splintered Silence cover art
The Last 8 cover art
All Systems Red (Dramatized Adaptation) cover art
The Amber Project cover art
Contagion cover art

Summary

The stunning sequel to James Smythe's critically acclaimed The Explorer.

Twenty years following the spacecraft Ishiguro's disappearance, humanity is setting its sights on the heavens once more.

Under the direction of two of the most brilliant minds science has ever seen - twin brothers Tomas and Mirakel Hyvönen - this space programme has been tasked with one of the most difficult missions in its history: to study what is being called 'the anomaly' - a vast blackness of space thought to be responsible for the loss of the Ishiguro.

But as the anomaly tests Mira and the rest of the handpicked crew's sanity, Tomas will have to use all his ingenuity if he is to save his brother and their mission.

©2017 James Smythe (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"If you love Gravity try James Smythe." (Buzzfeed.com)
"Creepy, compulsive Science Fiction." (Metro)
"Science Fiction for those who don't think they like it." (Independent)
"A tightly knotted, expertly constructed space trip of a read." (Guardian)
"A wonderful examination of coping with loss, time and death." (SFX)
"It's like an episode of Star Trek written by JM Coetzee." (Guardian)

What listeners say about The Echo

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

My god - it's full of eyes!

Actually, what I mean is "I"s - as in 'first person singular': this book is full of them. Yes well it would be, as it's written from a first person perspective, but it becomes somehow very obvious: this story is about just one person - with a monkey named Tomas on his back, eroding his psyche from start to finish!
I found the 'setting up the mission' chapters pretty vague as to technology and distances, and does ANYONE ever really check out the crew's mental stability in fiction?
The central section of the story was the most intriguing, but then the protagonist starts to lose it and things begin to come apart, leading to a long drawn out, unsatisfying and ambiguous denouement. Sorry but there it is.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful