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The Supernova Era

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The Supernova Era

By: Cixin Liu
Narrated by: Bruno Roubicek
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About this listen

From Cixin Liu, the New York Times best-selling and Hugo Award-winning author of The Three Body Problem, comes a new science fiction masterpiece in Supernova Era.

In those days, Earth was a planet in space. In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth. On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end. Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of 13 will die. And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running. But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And though they imagine a better, brighter world, they may bring about a future so dark humanity won't survive.

©2004 Liu Cixin (P)2019 Head of Zeus Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Fiction China Astronomy Imperial Japan Russia
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It started so well and then about a quarter of the way through it went downhill. The story was very thin, the characters unpleasant and I found it hard to believe in just how poorly written these supposed children are

I struggled to finish it

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Loved the story but gets a bit long and meandering towards the end. Having read 4 other books by the author this was unexpected. This may have been better in a short story format.

Strong start but uncharacteristically for the author poor finish

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The premise is fascinating and I was hoping for an interesting read. However the very masculine take on things was very disappointing. It's given me plenty of food for thought though!
The narrator of this and Liu's other works is very flat, I would hesitate to chose him again unless it was a 'must read' book.

Starts off well but ...

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Earliest of the author's major works - so he was still finding his feet.
Some great ideas - but quickly gets preposterous.
Ignore unless you are on a mission.

Great start - loses its way - never comes back

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I very much enjoyed listening to the book. this is my third book that I've read from the author and I'm not disappointed. The plot line follows certain logic and there are many instances of unsaid horrors and side events that kind of support the story. for example, the book never really says that most nations collapsed but it did only mention top super powers. even the great usa is implied to be down to 5 states (with their five star flag) also, if it wasn't for the Chinese quantum AI, China would have also probably dissolved into 1000s of pieces of smaller kingdoms. I kind of don't buy into the whole "30 years later and there is a colony in mars". sure, lots of work and money was probably invested because of the fact that the kids really wanted to see mars but yea, I would have thought that there should have been at least a few decades or centuries of a super mediaval dark age because kids can't really take care of themselves in such massive groups.


anyway, it's a good story if you already like this kind of literature.

Awesome but strange

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