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Rare Earth

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Rare Earth

By: Kurt Allan
Narrated by: Derek Shoales
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About this listen

A lost mining crew, 400 million miles from Earth. A retired miner journeys to find out why.

"There's something out there...."

Waldo Packwood has had a rough time of things lately. He's lost his job, his friends, and finally his family. At 50 years old, he's living alone in a small apartment wondering what's happened to his life. He's unexpectedly asked to travel to Hector 1, a lone asteroid in the Jupiter Trojans, to investigate the missing crew.

"That's just it, Waldo", sighed the director, "we don't know what happened."

His trip is a struggle from the beginning, as he discovers more about those around him and what they're willing to do to keep Hector 1 to themselves. Instead of answers, he's cast into the fight of his life as he struggles to uncover the secrets and lies that have been built around this distant world.

Rare Earth is a gritty science-fiction thriller and debut novel about an unconventional hero and second chances.

"It's going to be that kind of story, so buckle up."

©2019 Kurt Allan (P)2020 Tantor Adventure Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Thought-Provoking
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Never read/listened to anything by this author and I was very pleasantly surprised by this title. The author takes a great deal of care explaining the science behind the fiction in this story, which I personally like. The characters are also well detailed and the plot develops nicely. Will have a look at other titles by him.

Very detailed space sci fi

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I liked the pace and structure, with good periods of tension and drama. looked for the next effort

a good first novel

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the swearing was unnecessary though not excessive. Some facts were contradictory eg light or darkness of space

short is good despite the swearing

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Things I liked:
The overall premise, and a more emotive performance than you normally hear from audiobooks.

Things I disliked:
1. The constant internal monologging by the protagonist at the worst possible times. Yes, it’s a first-person narrative, but it seemed that the narrators would go out of their way to interrupt a critical moment, and spend the next few minutes over-explaining everything in excruciating minutia, before returning to the climax of the story beat.

It meant that you lost any sense of real-time or urgency, and hurt the overall cadence of the story. The hard hitting beats hit less so, because of the narrative chasm between cause and effect.

2. I also was jarred a number of times when I would hear the narrator think something, then proceed to vocalise that same thought almost verbatim.

e.g. I saw the food on the plate before me, and I thought it looked delicious. “That food looks delicious,” I said, pointing at the food on the plate.

Not an actual line from the book, but more or less that structure. I am prone to hyperbole, but it happened often enough that it stood out. At one point, even a support character verbalised a thought that the narrator had just thought themselves, word for word. It broke me out of my revery and it made it hard to see these characters as “real”.

3. Please assume that if there are two characters in a continuous exchange, we don’t need to hear them voice each others’ names. We generally know who is talking, and if it needs to be clear, then either pronouns or narrative can handle the clarification rather than saying the persons name. People don’t talk like that.

4. [SPOILER]

…
……
………


Don’t dedicate a large part of the book towards over-explaining details that don’t move the story forward, and then resort to having the antagonist reveal their guilt and motivation through a single, late chapter, in order to deliver the bombshell.

Neither the listener nor protagonist stumble upon the truth via clever deduction; instead it’s spoon-fed to us in one clumsy swoop. Nobody had a chance to sneak up on the facts, or share in the elation of being right, or shock of being wrong. It stole the protagonists victory moment, and the loose ends are neatly tied up without the protagonist having any direct input. No confrontation, no levelling of evidence, no speaking to power, no catharsis.

Conclusion:
I am aware this review reads harsh. And I am personally aware that being a creative means you are forever at risk to have your work attacked by idiots like me. I know that I personally couldn’t write anything of this level or length, but when we are spoiled by the world building and effortless dialogue of Weir, Stephenson and Alanson, this story was tough to listen to at times. The performance got it an extra star, but only just.

If Mark Watney had no word limits…

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I was skeptical about this book, I’ve listened to quite a few beginner authors sci-fi and most felt short. This one I truly enjoyed. The storyline is great, characters well written, a very engaging tone and it felt realistic and very… human. The writing style and tone felt similar to the Martian by Andy Weir, I like that. The only thing I didn’t like was the overly explaining of the process in some parts, I skipped some of that. Not saying it wasn’t relevant, but it was hard to follow specially in tense parts of the book.

Great realistic story

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Enjoyable futuristic space book, not a disappointment at all. Liked the quirky characters and the evolving mystery. Definitely worth reading or listening to. Narrator is great too adds irony to the character

Great mystery

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The style of the book, read like a first person account of events, caught me a little off guard at first, but I quickly settled in and got used to the style.

The strong is good, it develops nicely with a few twists along the way.

Nice little gem

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Sorry to the author - but the narration was so irritating it overwhelmed the story. It seemed like a great story. It's such a shame that new authors don't rate decent narrators - way to make it even more difficult for them! And to the narrator- I hope you've since learned that speed reading out loud and putting emphasis on words where it's either not needed or unnecessary makes listening to you unbearable.

dreadful narration

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