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  • Revelation Space

  • By: Alastair Reynolds
  • Narrated by: John Lee
  • Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (262 ratings)

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Revelation Space cover art

Revelation Space

By: Alastair Reynolds
Narrated by: John Lee
Free with 30-day trial

$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

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Publisher's Summary

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself.

With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason. And if that reason is uncovered, the universe - and reality itself - could be irrevocably altered.

©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2008 Tantor

Critic Reviews

"One of the best books of the year." ( Science Fiction Chronicle)
"Ferociously intelligent and imbued with a chilling logic - it may really be like this Out There." (Stephen Baxter, co-author of The Light of Other Days)

What listeners say about Revelation Space

Average Customer Ratings
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Shame the narration is so off-putting

The narrator's voice has potential but needs a lot of work. His incessant sing-song, rising-then-falling style quickly became very, very annoying. He reads as if the whole story is one, long paragraph, with few clear pauses, making it hard to follow. There was something else, too: it took a while for the penny to drop, and then... he sounds like Troy McClure from The Simpsons! For me, it was incredibly distracting me and it detracted so much from the story that I just couldn't plough on past the first chapter. I might just read this one.

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4 people found this helpful

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

A well told and complex narrative

Reynolds starts the story with several seemingly unrelated narratives that he gradually weaves together, generating interest, along with a lot of questions. Although he doesn't answer all of them in this book it would appear he has answers for them, which gives a confidence to the story typical of his other works.

The narration is the only let down, with Lee starting every sentence with an accent and ending every sentence by trailing off as if running out of breath. This makes the book difficult to listen to, especially in noisier environments like a car.

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3 people found this helpful

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

WOW!

It starts off deceptively slow and disjointed, but enjoyable all the same. As the hours go by listening to it, you began to wonder how all of it fits together as story. It seems like there are multiple separate books being told at once, but as you realise that nothing can travel faster than light in this book's universe, it begin to realise that there is just one story being told on a scale that is hard to imagine. No words are wasted, all are slowly add to whole that crystallizes brutality fast like a rollercoaster.

As for the narrator, if I didn't know better I'd say there were at least a half dozen of them. By the time you're familiar with the main characters, hearing he said this, they said that, etc is mildly distracting because you can simply hear who said what.

Could not recommend more, but be prepared to have your mind turned on as it more than simple journey.

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2 people found this helpful

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

Great story, terrible narration

I listen to audio books on the bus to and from work, meaning the listening environment is a little noisy. Coupled with this narrators odd shifting tones and volumes throughout a sentence, it was impossible to get through this. I ended up picking up my hardcopy of Revelation Space instead to get my fix.

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2 people found this helpful

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

Excellent worldbuilding but is an info dump

The world building in this universe is PHENOMENAL. Very creative, logical, and a tonne of effort (years?) has been put into it. It’s given me a whole new perspective that sci-fis set in a far distant future can still be incredibly interesting and insightful.

The story was also interesting. But I can’t bring myself to finish the book. For me, and I loved Robin Hobb’s work and got through a fair few of George R. R. Martin’s books, I found the story too slow. Not because the story wasn’t interesting, but because I was overwhelmed with the world building that padded it out and felt like I was getting an info dump all the time and it was ruining the action. Too many other details were in there—which is a pro and a con depending on ones audience. The details brought this universe to life wonderfully and in such an alien, for me hard-to-imagine-way that felt distinctly foreign and truly wonderful. Maybe it was the narrator, who wasn’t particularity good. I would like to try buying a physical copy of these books as I tend to enjoy slower books and understand them better when I can physically read and re-read confusing worldbuilding sections until I understand them.

I think this book’s world building is absolutely incredible and want to try read it again in future, but for now it’s just too much for me as it’s too slow and not gripping enough. I still have 3 hours left to go :(

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1 person found this helpful

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

Well read, great story, for hectic to follow in the end.

This is great monster scale hard space opera. No warp drives and worm holes to zoom around with only near light speed transport and all that entails. Reynolds does an awesome job of keeping a massive plot wowed together across huge scale. The end is satisfying although the plot is really straining at the bounds of complexity and g some of the decisions characters make seem a bit implausible. But that’s a minor quibble.

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

Unable to finish this book

I've been listening to this book for 6 hours and am still unable to distinguish any consistent story line. I find the characters and their motivations difficult to understand.

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

Struggle with this narrator

As the narrators voice is the same for all characters I struggled early on to understand who was talking. Then he developed accents which made it even more confusing. Pretty good story but not really my favourite genre

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

Great entry to a collossal series

This Is a great story and certainly ventures well around interesting and startling concepts, although I found this book a little drab dark and emotive, it was a very good book. Looking back on it this is how the series works, if you were interested in fireworks snazzy empires with FTL like star trek or even Farscape/ mid 90's to 2000's /2010's science fiction which you might have already watched and re-watched like me, You might be disappointed.
Must read if you like these type of books or are a fan of the Nightflyers book and series alien horror genre etc.
Would rate 5 stars but got to read this for free so think about that before you buy.

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

The most engaging, complex and unique mystery

Firstly, this book is fundamentally about a mystery, one that is phenomenally well designed. The payoff is also masterfully crafted. I listened to this at work and in moments where things fell into place for me I would have physical reactions, it just worked so well on me.

Secondly, I read another review of this book towards the end of my listening which said that the author loves writing about assholes, which I can confirm, there are no heroes in this book, not truly. Somehow, in spite of this, you can't help but revel in their victories and despair at their defeats.

Finally, I would describe myself as an enjoyer of a medium-high hardness of sci-fi, this book being notable harder than my Goldilocks zone, but it crafts a delightfully fascinating world which is very well thought out.

it's an amazing read/listen and the narrator's delivery is perfect in every moment bar one where a character is in pain and it lapses but that is 5 seconds out of 23 hours, I give congratulations to him

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