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Proxima

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Proxima

By: Stephen Baxter
Narrated by: Kyle McCarley
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About this listen

The very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous Galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light...

The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun - and (in this fiction), the nearest to host a world, Proxima IV, habitable by humans. But Proxima IV is unlike Earth in many ways. Huddling close to the warmth, orbiting in weeks, it keeps one face to its parent star at all times. The 'substellar point', with the star forever overhead, is a blasted desert, and the 'antistellar point' on the far side is under an ice cap in perpetual darkness. How would it be to live on such a world?

Yuri Jones, with 1,000 others, is about to find out... Proxima tells the amazing tale of how we colonise a harsh new eden, and the secret we find there that will change our role in the Universe for ever.

©2013 Stephen Baxter (P)2014 Tantor Media Science Fiction Fiction Interstellar Fantasy
All stars
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Great hard sci-fi but character motivation was a bit weak. As an exploration of self destruction, I don't think author convinced himself, which is kinda nice all things considered.

Great book

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At first i wasnt sure. Then it carried me away with its characters and i could not put it down!

wonderful!

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the story was good but it was almost like the author ran out of time and rushed the ending

story good

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Inspired writing, but the narration turned me off so much I returned the book after 6 chapters. His character voices where good but his usual voice came across as petulant, sneering through every sentence - reminded me of Malfoy from Harry Potter. Sorry guy, that's my honest opinion.

A good story spoiled by a petulant sounding narrator.

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Its not that the narrator has a "british" accent that is not the problem. Its that its an obnoxious distracting type of british accent. It was hard to listen to and took a lot of concentration to absorb the story. Yuck. Hope the next instalment has a different narrator.

Narrator Ruins a great story.

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I loved this book, having been quite disappointed with the long earth series .... The story was great, science was fun and informative, and the hint of an intelligence Other than ours intriguing ...

Can’t wait to read the sequel

Baxter is back

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Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Maybe the book, in written form, definitely not the audiobook.

As others have said, some of the accents were really bad, especially the Australian and Hispanic; to me, the Hispanic accent was so bad that it, at times, bordered on being a racist caricature.

Would you be willing to try another one of Kyle McCarley’s performances?

No.

Performance

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enjoyed the story, struggled with the narrator - posh nasaly accent and mispronounciation of words, plus main character I couldn't figure out the accent, then it turns out he's from where I grew up!

Good long book

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I don't like to be rude but the narrator's voice is downright grating. I couldn't stand more than ten minutes of it.

Like fingernails down a blackboard

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What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

If the characters were not completely loathsome. If the plot didn't borrow from some of the dumber elements of "Lost". If anything remotely plausible or interesting happened.

What will your next listen be?

After this I listened to "The Medusa Chronicles" by Baxter and Reynolds. MUCH Better

How did the narrator detract from the book?

This was a HARD book to narrate. It called for maybe 25 different accents. Unfortunately Kyle McCarly wasn't good at any of them and narrated down his nose. I thought he was ok at the English and European voices "Ewen McGregor" for our protagonist but there are plenty of complaints from the Euros about THOSE accents. His Aw-sees and Hispanic characters were laughably bad.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Proxima?

Well lets see, the idea of sending prisoners to populate new planets was incredibly dumb. All of the dialogue was laughable. I am trying to think of a plot point that was remotely plausible or interesting but I can't. The scene where Mardeena describes herself as a "full blooded Aboriginal" is particularly offensive to Aboriginals.

Any additional comments?

Avoid avoid. Baxter is a good writer but this turned me off of him for a while

turrible

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