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  • Revelation Space

  • By: Alastair Reynolds
  • Narrated by: John Lee
  • Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (263 ratings)

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Revelation Space cover art

Revelation Space

By: Alastair Reynolds
Narrated by: John Lee
Free with 30-day trial

$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

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Publisher's Summary

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself.

With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason. And if that reason is uncovered, the universe - and reality itself - could be irrevocably altered.

©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2008 Tantor

Critic Reviews

"One of the best books of the year." ( Science Fiction Chronicle)
"Ferociously intelligent and imbued with a chilling logic - it may really be like this Out There." (Stephen Baxter, co-author of The Light of Other Days)

What listeners say about Revelation Space

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • 2 Stars
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

very heavy with character interaction

I love this author when he's exploring ideas, not so much when dealing with characters and their thoughts and dialogue. unfortunately this book was very heavy on character stuff and lighter on the ideas and science..

much preferred house of suns

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

great book but

I found the pace of the narration strange and a bit off-putting. Perhaps if I was reading the text it would be different and the typography would have given the sufficient clues. As it was one paragraph flowed into the next and there was insufficient pause or change in inflection to clue me in to the change of scene or character. Still I listened to the end, but am not sure I'll get the next audio book. Still I had the same problem with the Three Body problem (psychical reading) and that was worth finishing

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • JT
  • 05-07-2020

A Hard Listen

A good story with some interesting concepts hinted at, enough to get me to read the next books in this universe

Great expressive performer let down by poor audio quality, maybe compression issues? Hard to hear quiet spots, then very loud parts sneak up on you, with the harder scifi content it was sometimes a little hard to follow on this audio version, will read the following books in print.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Mr
  • 20-08-2018

Great story!

Best Sci-if I've read in a long time :) Narrator does an excellent job of creating all the characters.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Good book, but narrator voices all sound the same

The story is good, takes a fair while to get going. I found I really had to pay attention as all the voices sound very similar, which makes it especially hard when the scene changes to a different character during the same chapter. I don't really think all the Russian /French accents are really necessary, I get the idea was to match them to the names, but it didn't work so well in the execution

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great Sci Fi book, glad I finally gave it a go!

Just like other reviews It was slow at the start but definitely worth the wait. The characters although hard to remember in the start do eventually take form.Almost mind blowing descriptions of what might be, even if just a sci fi dream! Wasn't too fond of the narrator in the start but got used to him, eventually grew on me.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Kai
  • 05-04-2017

Excellent sci fi

This is a fantastic hard sci-fi space opera, something that (especially if you've read other Reynolds) you would do well to listen to. The characters are cleverly crafted, and the story keeps you interested and intrigued right until the end.

Lee is an awesome narrator too, by far the best I've heard on Audible so far.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Struggle with this narrator

As the narrators voice is the same for all characters I struggled early on to understand who was talking. Then he developed accents which made it even more confusing. Pretty good story but not really my favourite genre

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Well read, great story, for hectic to follow in the end.

This is great monster scale hard space opera. No warp drives and worm holes to zoom around with only near light speed transport and all that entails. Reynolds does an awesome job of keeping a massive plot wowed together across huge scale. The end is satisfying although the plot is really straining at the bounds of complexity and g some of the decisions characters make seem a bit implausible. But that’s a minor quibble.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A well told and complex narrative

Reynolds starts the story with several seemingly unrelated narratives that he gradually weaves together, generating interest, along with a lot of questions. Although he doesn't answer all of them in this book it would appear he has answers for them, which gives a confidence to the story typical of his other works.

The narration is the only let down, with Lee starting every sentence with an accent and ending every sentence by trailing off as if running out of breath. This makes the book difficult to listen to, especially in noisier environments like a car.

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3 people found this helpful

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