World Engines cover art

World Engines

A post climate change high concept science fiction odyssey

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World Engines

By: Stephen Baxter
Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Christopher Ragland, Damian Lynch, Stephanie Racine
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About this listen

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the combined crews of a crashed Russian spaceship, a British expeditionary force and a group of strays from the future must work together to survive, escape and discover what led them to this point. All are from parallel universes where small changes in history led to different realities, and the tensions between the groups are rising.

But some changes were not small. The solar system has been altered, changed, shaped in the various realities, and the World Engineers - unspeakably powerful, completely unknown - are still active. Why have they populated this planet with humanity's ancestors and dinosaurs? What is on the moon of Saturn that gives off such an odd light? And even if they can be found, can they be stopped - and should they be?

Malenfant, Deidra and the rest of their party must find a way off the planet, back into space, and into the many dimensions seeking the answer....

©2020 Stephen Baxter (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Solar System
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2/3 of the book is inconsequential and just drags on and on. There are flashes of interesting ideas, but they're drowned out by everyone's damned life story, which somehow leaves the characters still flat and underdeveloped while jarring you from what's going on. I wasn't expecting much after the middling World Engines Destroyer, but this fell very flat.

Dull dull dull. Did I mention dull?

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long descriptions and long tangents disconnected from the story accompanied by poor character development and frustrating flatly PC protagonists making black and white assertions in ethical grey areas was frustrating. The usual redeaming qualities of Baxters writing so far are few and far between compared to my favourites SPACE and TIME. The alternate histories from divergant timelines are somewhat interesting but felt unnessicary. Baxter in my opinion is a brilliant brilliant man and I respect and admire him but this book was not for me. I'll finish the book and update my review.

Too many narrators. 2 narrators can work eg stormlight archive with Kramer and Reading but it didn't here especially with inconsistant character accents and apparently ages. one narrator reads Malenfant as a 30 year old pilot the other reads him a lot closer to what you would imagine a 60+ year old man would sound. Fake russian accents were awful though

Shallow characters, slow plot, poorly narrated.

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