Excellent until about half way through then tedium

Struggled to finish, note for the reader if you can't do accents don't even try

11 people found this helpful

Really good, then slightly annoying, then bad

This is three completely different books abutted.

The first is a really good disaster story full of tech and plot and pace.

The second meanders through dumb political shenanigans in space but there is still good stuff to keep you going.

The third is completely disconnected from what went before, hard to follow, and uninteresting.

Get it for a spare credit but when the narrator says, "5000 years later," do what the author should have and stop there.

13 people found this helpful

Mixed feelings

The scope and ambition of this novel are staggering, and I can't think of another author who could hope pull something like this off successfully. I'm not convinced Stephenson has, but there's still much for fans to like.

The good: Stephenson's usual elements are all present and correct: physics, engineering, code breaking and a smattering of martial arts. The plot moves along at a decent clip for the most part, and the large cast is handled pretty well.

The bad: The pacing is a little uneven, and the plot losses impetus in the final third. More fat could have been trimmed in some parts too. That large cast and expansive plot don't leave too much time for character development either (with a few notable exceptions).

I'm less torn about Peter Brooke's performance. He took on a mammoth task with this one, and I'm afraid he fell short for me. He does competently for the most part, but a few of the accents were like nails on a chalkboard. If I read this again it'll be the paper version.

18 people found this helpful

Half a book

This book has no ending. It changes direction wildly half way through and then fails to deliver a full story in the new setting.

5 people found this helpful

Soooooo... that's it?

Started strong, created, and then kinda just petered out. Ending was a bit droll. Some of the themes were questionable, and a few times hard line ideologies were unnecessarily pushed. While a few characters were interesting, most were pretty much predictable and one sided wooden personalities. For such a long book, a bit more character development, but he spent too much time stroking his own ego.

Worth a listen, but only if you ran out of things on your bucket-list.

9 people found this helpful

Massive yet rushed

This is one of those 'biggest story ever told' novels, end of the world is nigh and what you we going to do about it. Ends up thousands of years hence.... And yes, for such a huge listen, it feels rushed. I was sad when it ended even though the damned thing took weeks to get through.

3 people found this helpful

Two or three books in one.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

From the opening line this is a book full of emotion. For me the first two acts are the strongest and act three could have been the start of another book, but the whole is a sweeping epic that will just keep going.

3 people found this helpful

What A Disappointment

Would you try another book written by Neal Stephenson or narrated by Peter Brooke?

Having listened to this I'd be very dubious about listening to another Neal Stephenson book. If it wasn't for The Better Half being such a big fan I'd give up on him entirely as this is the second book of his that I've felt let down by. As for Peter Brooke? No, I found his voice to be too nasal and off-putting.

Has Seveneves put you off other books in this genre?

No, but it has considerably reduced my enthusiasm for the author...

Did Peter Brooke do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

Yes he did, to a certain extent, but I didn't like his voice so that put me off a lot.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

At first I was extremely intrigued and interested to see where he was taking the story but, the further on I got, the more disappointed I felt. I only finished it too see if it would pull itself back together at the end. It didn't.

Any additional comments?

After reading "The Diamond Age" and feeling that it was a great series of ideas that fell apart into an unintelligable mess near the end I was ready to give up on Neal Stephenson but The Better Half encouraged me to give him another try and I'm glad I did it on audiobook because there is no way I'd have persevered with this rubbish had I been reading it as a paper book. There's so many missed opportunites here. It's a book of three parts that all seem like they are rough sketches for three individual books in a series.
The first part could have been a treatise on the human condition and how it would cope with the end of the world. Instead we are introduced to a series of characters that, while having really interesting backgrounds, seem utterly devoid of emotion and we are left with something akin to a list of procedures and the human beings are just cyphers to hang the science on- a theme that continues throughout the book.
The second part could have been a truly fascinating take on a political thriller but, sadly, the main protagonists are removed from each other for most of the story, the whole thing dissolves into page after page after page (this is why I'm glad I listened to it rather than read it) of technical description of orbital mechanics and lectures on physics. It's fabulously well-researched but, by the gods is it dull, and I love this sort of geekery. Again, character and emotion is almost entirely absent. Oh, and one whole plotline is abandoned never to be heard from again (unless I missed something) in a very rushed finale.
Finally, the third part. Here we have some incredible ideas wrapped up in the thinnest of storylines but at least the robotic, emotionless nature of the characters is given some sort of reason for being so this time. A futurist vision of human society is explored in great mechanical detail but emotion is left far behind as the humans are just organic parts of the world-machine. All well and good but, just as we are given the chance to see the effect this has really had on the human race...the book just comes to an end and the entire third part comes across as a 200+ page epilogue.
I really wanted to like this. The initial premise is brilliant and the science is so well-researched but there's no life, character or human emotion here. The entire humn race is wiped out, ffs, and barely anybody bats an eyelid or sheds a tear, as they have jobs to be getting on with. There are some fabulous twists to the plot but they are all essentially wasted.
I have read that Mr. Stephenson spent nearly ten years working on this. Might I suggest that, next time, he might look to spending some of that time searching for a collaborator? Someone who can write real human beings and give a counterpoint to the hard science, perhaps.

6 people found this helpful

dog shit

Do your self a favor and turn it off after the seveneves part. The last 10 hours was awfull and i could not fisnish the last 40 min.
I want my 32hrs back

2 people found this helpful

Unstructured Knowledge from a Dubious Source

I don't believe the author knows what he is talking about half the time. It's like a child has spent too long trawling through Wikipedia and has decided to write a book. You would be better off reading an actual textbook with some proper literature on the side.

Disclaimer, I only got so far - perhaps the author pulls it out of the bag at the halfway point. So far I have read nothing but space trivia and awkward sex scenes.

1 person found this helpful