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Bear Head

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Bear Head

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard, Nathan Osgood, William Hope
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About this listen

In a sequel to the much-praised Dogs of War, Honey the genetically engineered bear takes a ride in Jimmy the Martian's head and starts a revolution on the Red Planet.

Mars. The red planet. A new frontier for humanity: a civilisation where humans can live in peace, lord and master of all they survey.

But this isn't Space City from those old science-fiction books. It's more like Hell City, built into and from a huge crater. There's a big silk canopy over it, feeding out atmosphere as we generate it, little by little, because we can't breathe the air here.

I guess it's a perfect place to live, if you want to live on Mars. At some point I must have wanted to live on Mars, because here I am. The money was supposed to be good, and how else was a working Joe like me going to get off-planet exactly? But I remember the videos they showed us - guys, not even in suits, watching robots and bees and Bioforms doing all the work - and they didn't quite get it right.

©2021 Adrian Tchaikovsky (P)2021 W F Howes Fiction First Contact Genetic Engineering Science Fiction Space Exploration Solar System Genetics Mars Interstellar Space City Robotics

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All stars
Most relevant  
Loved the story and the ridiculously grand way it expanded. Narrators pitches didn’t always ring right for me.

Genius story, narration confusing

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The story somehow didn't flow that well for me. Maybe it's the switching narrators. But! The point the author made about us being governed by people who are good at getting power and getting to the top of social hierarchies, not good at governing was so mindlblowingly well made! The book is worth it for the social commentary alone.

Food for thought

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I loved the story and philosophy of distributed intelligence but the choice to have different narrators read out the different narratives was weird and distracting.

Maybe a better read than listen

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The plot was great, top notch writing (with one exception). The character Jimmy is one of the most compelling I’ve encountered.

What fell a bit flat for me was the villain. He was just the caricature of a metaphor. How did someone who was human only by birth become powerful enough to subvert all society to his desires? I get the whole meta-gaming theme, and it is true to the real world. But this character was both weak ‘on the page’ and within the world of the story. I’m not sure if I just missed the point, because I feel the author intended Thompson to be perceived in this way.

Despite this flaw, I can’t bring myself to dock a star. The overall story and other characters much more than make up for it.

Like the previous book, Dogs of War, there were 3 narrators. One was 5 star+. One was good and the other…not so good. Would have preferred a single narrator.

Bears notice

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Good story, interesting ideas. Unfortunately, the performance is let down by the poor choice to use two different voice actors depending on which character narrates each chapter, however, as each actor ends up voicing most of the characters they each have two different voices depending on the current actor. There also appears to have been no agreement between actors about how stylised text (e.g. digital messages) are read; one actor reads them in a normal voice and the other like text-to-speech, which is very jarring as the actor changes each chapter.

Good story, muddled performance

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Great follow up I hadn't expected. Decent Mars Romp with fun characters and well read. Blized through this one.

Adrian is a good dog.

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This story does rely somewhat on a previous Tchaikovsky novel 'Dogs of War'

Apart from Adrian's signature inclusion and amazing descriptions of animal minds and their perspectives.

He also adds a near-future political landscape, with elements of current the real world, but dialed up to eleven.

This is combined into an almost haunting, incredible, 'black mirror'-esc story with depth and suspense.

My only hang up is some minor mistakes in the editing/mixing of the audio.

Thought provoking scifi at it's best

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The best commentary on politicians (some of them in any case) I have ever read.

Awesome story

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I really liked the story but the way the narrator changed depending on who the chapter was from the perspective of meant that the same characters had different people performing them each time which was a little jarring at first. This might just be me but I always think that if you're going to have multiple readers for an audiobook, you might as well just do it like an audio play with them playing the same people the whole way through.

Great story, slightly sketchy narration.

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As many other reviewers have noted, the choice of using different narrators backfired badly as they failed to agree on consistent narration styles. This is very jarring as it creates inconsistencies not only in how certain communications are handled (e.g., everything over the headwear), but also because different narrators have given different styles and personalities to the same characters. Laurence Bouvard faux street accent is particularly painful, and bordering on the offensive. Honey is voiced particularly inconsistently, which is disappointing as her voice is a very important plot point in the previous book. It is such a shame, because the book is otherwise excellent.

A great book spoiled by inconsistent narration

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