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Stars and Bones

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Stars and Bones

By: Gareth L. Powell
Narrated by: Rebecca Norfolk
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About this listen

From the multi BSFA award-winner comes a stunningly inventive action-packed science-fiction epic adventure. A brand-new series for fans of Becky Chambers and Ann Leckie.

Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arks—each shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities.

When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanity's survival.

Gareth L. Powell's Embers of War won 2018 BSFA Award for Best Novel and was shortlisted for the 2019 Locus Awards and the 2021 Seiun Awards in Japan. Its sequels, Fleet of Knives and Light of Impossible Stars, were both shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Novel, and Fleet of Knives was also shortlisted for the 2020 Locus Awards.

©2022 Gareth L. Powell (P)2022 W F Howes Adventure Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction

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Critic reviews

"Gareth Powell drops you into the action from the first page and then Just. Keeps. Going. This is a pro at the top of his game." (John Scalzi)

"A headlong, visceral plunge into a future equal parts fascinating and terrifying." (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
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A pacey action driven slice of hard SF. It's a little light on character development and the ending is a bit weak but other than that it's enjoyable, engaging and I will read the next in the series.

Action SF

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To begin with I thought this may be a really absorbing story, but it quickly became plodding and predictable with a rather odd ending.
The narrator has a nice voice and I enjoyed listening to her but she had trouble pronouncing a number of words that in the end rather irritated me (damask, chasm & a few others).

Not a patch on Becky Chambers or Anne Leckie

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Some, if not all of the narration is a bit flat and there is a number of peculiarities in the pronunciation of some words eg chasm said with a soft ‘ch’ as in cherry rather than a hard ‘k’. Overall off putting.

Peculiar pronunciations. Possibly AI narration.

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A good start to a space opera series. Humanity is saved by a god like entity that banishes it to be eternal nomads. A scout ship encounters a lifeform that has the potential to destroy humanity for good.

Enjoyed it.

A good start

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The latest book from Gareth, is a sharply written science fiction thriller, but it does borrow heavily from other writers especially Jeff Vandermeer and Adrian Tchaikovsky. Sadly what spoils this enjoyable romp, is the awful reading; littered with mispronouncing of common words, for example chasam is pronounced with a soft C rather than the typical hard C. The pronunciation issues grate on me, yet I struggled on with it, to get to the conclusion of the novel. I would think twice about listening to a book, being read by Rebecca Norfolk, very off putting.

Sharp writing, poor reading

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