Future apocalypse on a distant planet

The story has the main character Reyes (who lives in one of the more scientific civilized areas of the world) and Thanata (who comes from a less civilized, more rangery type) traipsing around their area meeting various people's and visiting various locations trying to put together the mystery of why The Green is destroying the planet when it was supposed to fix everything and create a utopia. You see, The Green is a massive rogue nanaite swarm that terraformed the planet, but it went out of control and is threatening the extinction of everything there.

The book has a lot of creative and interesting ideas and they work pretty well. The story develops well over time as more and more information comes out. The two main characters have a decent amount of development. The book has action, travel, bits of humor, some weird and horrible moments. It has almost everything I could ask for, but something feels off. It's not the most exciting book I've read, but it definitely wasn't anything close to boring. I enjoyed it, I will read the next one.

36 people found this helpful

Excellent Character and World Building

When I saw this, I couldn’t remember if I’d read another book by Peak or not. I went back and saw that I read and reviewed Signal when it came out, and enjoyed it. I’m glad I can go back into his work and listen some more with Eden Descending.

One of the things that jumps off the page is Peak’s ability to build really interesting characters and throw them into interesting worlds. Eden Descending started off throwing the reader right into it. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I had to figure it out as I went. I think that confusion really added to the story though because even though the characters involved had some idea of what was going on – one of the points of the story was to figure out just how little they actually knew.

I love that this was a colonization/space invasion type story – but it was so much more. Peak was able to write a story that really dove into a lot of topics covering a range of things that were both sci-fi in nature and not. I won’t go too deep into them because I don’t want to shade your reading of the story with my opinions, but it was interesting to see lots of topics being covered without pointing them out directly.

The story itself flew off the pages. Once I got over being confused in the first chapter or two and we went back out into the world – the story really picks up. Peak did a great job building in different pieces of trust (earned little by little) along with throwing scenes at the characters where they had to trust and interact and improvise. It really helped them jump off of the page and helped them feel more real.

I hadn’t heard anything from James Fouhey before I started Eden Descending, but I really enjoyed his performance. I thought it really added to the story and really helped bring the story to life. I’ll be on the lookout for more titles from him in the future.

Overall, I enjoyed Eden Descending, I thought that Peak wrote not only a book that peaked my attention, but also made me want to know what happened. The last time I was as confused as I was but also needed to know what was going to happen next was Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s first Hell Divers book. The world building and character creation really stuck out that I need to find out what happens in the series.

27 people found this helpful

Good, not great

The story was quite interesting, and the world building was good. The problem is it needs another pass by a good editor. Awkward phrasing, incorrect words, and florid prose are all through this book, making it a trying listen at times. To be clear, I’m not talking about the characters who spoke broken English, I’m talking about the text of the story itself.

There’s also a terrible tendency for the characters to not notice or figure out the most obvious “mysteries”. The only reason a good bit of the action happens the way it does is because the characters either act stupid, or make decisions no thinking person ever would.

All that said, again the story is fairly interesting, and I may still check out more of the series.

1 person found this helpful

Could Have Been Good, But....

The premise was interesting. The story itself was interesting. But the narrator just ruined it. It sounded like he was reading the phone book. I couldn't get past the first couple hours.

1 person found this helpful

An engaging audiobook

This is my first book fr Tony Peak and the first to book narrated by James Fouhey. Regarding the book, it was well written and packed with plenty of action. It was very good.

Three mastectomy was equally as good. I could distinguish all characters from the others with no problem, and he ma see e for an engaging experience.

A good tale

Loved the adventure with many turns and changes to direction. Love is all you need.

Great new series

I enjoyed this novel from the beginning to the very end. Btw the ending was extra great.

The story has so much potential and different plots to follow, that’s what I gave 5 stars for.
Can’t wait to read the next one.

Also….I love all types of stories, just sometimes it’s a pleasure to listen in PG.

Narrator was perfect, changing accents for different races of people was genius.
It gave him more range for male & female voices.

Glad I stuck with it

I'll admit, I put this book aside after about an hour to listen to something else. Usually, when I do that I don't return to them despite intending to, but I did come back to this one. It was a bit rough at first, but after a bit, it got much better and I was glad I didn't leave it aside. The story and performance of the narrator were both good, and I hope that future books continue to build out Phoa and the different factions.

Just not engaging

I’m not sure why I bothered listening to this whole book. I constantly felt like abandoning it and moving on to something better - it just did not grab me from beginning to end. The ideas underlying the story were good, but the characters and execution were not engaging.

Gotta get the next one!

I don’t usually go for futuristic sci-fi-but this book, I just couldn’t put down! Excellent character development, reading spot on.