Great

I have read / listened to several or Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books now and this was probably the best. The interludes of alternative timelines and the different paths of evolution were themselves worthy the listen, but there was also a decent story stringing the whole thing together. The performance was also great; the accents were decent and didn’t make me cringe. Buy it.

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Excellent allegorical adventure

Fast-moving speculative adventure with some thinly-veiled parallels to our world, ironically enough. Brilliantly narrated by Sophie Aldred - looking forward to finding more of her work on here.

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A brilliant, angry and pointed novel

A scream of frustration at human pettiness and selfish and a fierce reminder that we're at our best we we look at what we have in common. Unity saves. Devision destroys.
Tchaikovsky does it again and Sophie Aldred effortlessly bring his novel to life.

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Great Scifi

Occasionally a book comes along that you can't put down. This is one of those. Interest all the way through.

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Beautiful parable - highly recommended

I loved this book. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but this is not the monsters on the moor adventure you might expect from the description on Audible. It is a beautiful story, complex yet engagingly told, and excellently narrated. At the time of listening I felt like I could do with something uplifting at a difficult time for the world. I expected the book to be good. What I didn’t expect was it to be such an uplifting, joyful parable showing what we might achieve if we could learn to get along with those who seem different to ourselves.

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A triumph of innovative sci-fi and perspective

Having been thoroughly impressed with Children of time and loving how Tchaikovsky writes from wildly different points of view in that book this is very similar he can somehow put himself in others shoes and write from their perspective.
He also writes from a women's perspective in many cases and always seems comfortable in that role.
The plot had some hole's in it but trotted away at a good pace and never felt drawn out or too unrealistic but he develops character's and role's very well.
All in all a good read 😃

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3 people found this helpful

Awkward Accents and unsatisfying conclusion

The narrators American accent every few chapters was cringe-worthy, and hard to listen to. The ending was an underwhelming damp squib. Disappointing, especially considering some of the author's other works.

If you like Tchaikovsky, you will probably enjoy this; it's standard stuff for him; history, evolution, language, spiders, sentences ending in prepositions, technology, humanity's tendency to destroy itself. I just don't feel like this was great, and parts of it were tedious. The interesting bits were underdescribed while ages was spent on snooze-worthy stuff.
On the plus side, no awkward scenes, the author keeps it classy.

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Ace Narrative

This is more science fantasy, than hard science fiction, like the Children of series. In this novel AT looks at different minds and how if evolution had stuck with certain designs, how life on Earth could be different, using the idea of parallel multi verse as the way of viewing these different takes on evolution from Space fairing Trilobites to an Ice mind made by fish. It definitely plays a homage to TV shows such as Sliders and Doctor Who, with great world building and enjoying the vocal work of a former Doctor's assistant, is just Ace! For me there were a few moments in the story that didn't quite work, the bad guy was a bit too Nigel Farage for me, not very smart but irritating as hell! Then there was the lack of character awareness, the UK government spooks seemed to be very slow and dim, not very smart at all. I know this is a standalone novel, but it does seem itself up for a sequel, maybe in a few years, after the events at the end of the book and the world changing to deal with these events.

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⭐ 3.25/5 ⭐

My first dive into Tchaikovsky's work. A girl falls through a crack between parallel worlds on Bodmin more. Neanderthals appear in London. The universe is under strain, cracking, and all these parallels have to work together to stop it collapsing

- The premise of this story was awesome and I appreciate the idea. At times it because a little boring or just too weaving and I found myself zoning out but overall it was enjoyable.

- I really enjoyed the interludes between the plot chapters where the reader is treated to the history of lots of different parallel earth's and their sentient species. I'm a sucker for prehistoric life and speculative evolution and this very much appealed to that side of me.

- The characters sometimes felt a little flat. There were a lot of them and I think that prevented some of them being fleshed out properly.

Enjoyable but not stunning sci-fi. Would recommend for those who enjoy speculative evolution, parallel worlds and portal sci-fi.

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High quality but not that engaging

Very high quality as usual from the author. Although I felt much less engaged with the characters. Very interesting evolutionary ideas. Although the material feels rushed and rough. Perhaps the pressure to finish a book, or simply too many characters for a single storyline. Also the end is a bit scrambled. Anyhow the ideas are there and the concept is great, so not so sure, but definitely less impressive than the Children series or other earlier stuff. Narrator is great.

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