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Seveneves cover art

Seveneves

By: Neal Stephenson
Narrated by: Peter Brooke
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Publisher's Summary

The astounding new novel from the master of science fiction. What would happen if the world were ending?

When a catastrophic event renders the Earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain....

Five thousand years later, their progeny - seven distinct races now three billion strong - embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown, to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is at once extraordinary and eerily recognizable. He explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

©2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited (P)2015 Neal Stephenson

Critic Reviews

"Genius." ( Time)
"He makes reading so much fun it feels like a deadly sin." ( The New York Times)
"Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the 21st century." (William Gibson)
"[Stephenson is] the hacker Hemingway." ( Newsweek)

What listeners say about Seveneves

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    242
  • 4 Stars
    149
  • 3 Stars
    64
  • 2 Stars
    23
  • 1 Stars
    12
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    205
  • 4 Stars
    135
  • 3 Stars
    76
  • 2 Stars
    13
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    13
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    232
  • 4 Stars
    110
  • 3 Stars
    63
  • 2 Stars
    23
  • 1 Stars
    12

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

Good book, terrible performance

The story was insightful and really interesting, however the narrator made it very hard to stay engaged. Mispronunciations and some jarringly awful attempts at accents for the characters kept pulling me out of the story and made the characters hard to relate to. You'd be better off reading the book yourself.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • RFC
  • 11-01-2016

Great story idea, poor narration

The story is very intriguing and all details of the scenario seem to be well researched and thought through. The voicing of many of the characters by the narrator Peter Brooke, however, I found really off putting.

Story ****
The story could have been 5* but the book frequently drifts into lengthy descriptions of mechanisms and machines. Of course you would expect that in a Stephenson novel.
In Seveneves, however, the descriptions were overbearing and distracting from the characters of the story. Often I felt myself longing for technical drawing or diagram of the modified ISS or any of the novel devices explored in the story. It would have made many a chapter shorter or easier to follow.
Reading rather than listening to the novel makes it much easier to go back and re-read passages that were not clear the first time around.
The third part of the book might have been better as a more fleshed out second book in its own right.

Narration *
My main beef with this audio book is the narration. Peter Brooke does an "ok" job reading the non-dialog passages but as soon as people are talking to each other I really would have preferred to switch to reading that passage on a page.
The British accent he is trying to put on is anything but. He switches from Jamaican to Indian - the closest he gets to the UK is the Irish inflection that sometimes creeps in. Then there is a German-speaking Swiss guy who sounds more Eastern European and sometimes Dutch. Another one of the main characters (Doob) is American , and yes, he does sound American. But the voicing suggests that he has a potatoe in his mouth and suffers from indigestion. Many other characters I also felt were not very well interpreted by the narrator. Even some of the descriptive passages had odd pausing or stressing of words.
I have the impression that the narration lacked appropriate preparation. Maybe it was hastily prepared so it could be published at the same time as the print version.

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11 people found this helpful

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

This should have been read by a woman.

The majority of the main characters in the book are women. But it's very tech heavy and not a whole lot of character development or emotion felt at all.
Great story but overly technical. The last third of the book is great.

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5 people found this helpful

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

A stretch too far?

Neal Stephenson is a great story-teller and this is the only reason I stayed with this book to the end. This time his characters were drowning in excess technical and scientific detail. If I were reading this book it would be possible to scan and skip these lengthy and tedious passages, but this is difficult when listening. Secondly, I found the technology 5000 years in the future somewhat difficult to imagine from his explanations. I couldn't 'see' the shape and colour of the things without listening to the passages a few times. Overall, I think this one was a clunker and I'm hoping for him to regain his narrative strength.

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5 people found this helpful

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

Gripping and structured

What a story. Totally believable and takes into account both the scientific and social ramifications of the unfolding story. Left me volunteering to strangle a few of the characters whilst driving along listening! Well characterised by the teller and I forgave the accents

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Who auditioned the narrator???

Who auditioned the narrator???
Seriously… Did everyone think, “Ok, he has White American Male down - we’ll use him!”
The Northern English guy, called Rhys, sounds Indian, or even Pakistani (but done badly)… & every now and then a word sounds Irish or Scottish, but even then, not enough.
Hard to take the story seriously.

The Dr DuBois (meant to be of Black, Canadian and Louisiana ancestry) sounds like a terrible cartoon character (white, of course), of a whacky scientist.

Early on the female school teacher is made to sound passive (& how you’d expect that 19 yr old, Pre-School teacher, Princess Dianna) to sound. Not like an intelligent woman, who can wrangle 30 kids on an excursion to a night-time astronomy exhibit.

Japanese women’s names are mispronounced, and when they speak, they sound passive and Chinese…

And I haven’t even gotten to hear the Australian woman talk yet - I shudder to think.

He makes the female US President sound like a harried Mum, who’s a bit unsure of herself.
This could be the writing- but it’s so hard to not be drawn out of the story, or listen to the actual writing!

Let’s see if I actually finish this train wreck!

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2 people found this helpful

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

Epic

Firstly, this book is long. You probably knew that, but don't say it didn't warn you.

The story is expansive and consuming. It's very technical about spacial mechanics/physics etc, most of that went over my head. The narrative follows many different characters as the moon is broken up by an "agent" and the consequences for the Earth are severe. I enjoyed it, but it took me quite a while to get through.

The vocal performance was done well, there are many characters with various accents which Brooke pulls off. I personally hated the voice that he did for Doob, but that could just be a personal choice.

Best suited to sci-fi lovers.

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2 people found this helpful

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

Wierd. Bad wierd.

So the Earth's doomed, and it follows mankind's survival.

It starts super realistic then becomes silly. From there it turns into some high fantasy crud, that was hard to follow. There are dozens of new words, items and people that don't make sense in English.

Every chapter feels like the first chapter to another book. It's constantly laying groundwork for a world that is never completed.

It reads like bad fan fiction.

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1 person found this helpful

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

long winded

The story itself is quite interesting, though I questioned a lot of things throughout for their feasibility...Too many technical, scientific details, which makes listening to the story quite hard at times. It finishes very suddenly, so I guess there must be some sort of a sequel. I don't think I will buy it!

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1 person found this helpful

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

dry details of science drown a great idea

I started listening excited that i may have found a good new scifi authour. the publisher blurb made the storyline sound very interesting and unique. but after 7 hours of listening to dry science explanations and still no story really developing. ...i had to give up and delete it.....couldn't possibly sit thru another 20 hours of it. only a hard core nasa geek could like it ...and even then....just too boring. maybe his other books are better but after this in not even going to try.

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1 person found this helpful

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