House of Styx

By: Derek Künsken

Narrated by: Justine Eyre

Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home.

In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind's hold on the planet is fragile, and they spend most of their days simply surviving.

But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn't exist.

And the House of Styx wants to harness it.

©2020 Derek Künsken (P)2020 Penguin Audio and Rebellion Publishing 2020

Imaginative Sci-Fi!

Overall, I enjoyed the story. There were a few lulls in the book, but the story is interesting. I am hoping that in the next installment, we get to explore the most interesting aspect, which I will not spoil in this review. It was talked about, but not yet thoroughly explored. There are multiple LGBTQ characters in the story, which is fine, but not statistically realistic given the population size.
I didn't really like the narrator. Her voice make it sound like she's reading the novel in distress. It puts a general damper on the whole story and makes the characters seem a little more depressing than I thinks was intended.

A fantastic book

I liked the entire book, but Pascal's and Marde's perspectives were especially interesting. Another excellent example of world building from Kunsken and a lively narration by Eyre

tinny performance, book feels padded

Just me or did it sound like the audio fidelity was low? did the narrator have exactly the right higher pitched voice that doesn't record well somehow? it was annoying how loud I had to turn the car radio up sometimes to clearly hear what was going on.
As to the book: it could have been 100 pages shorter if you cut out the surprising amount of teen same sex/trans romance. I don't read straight romance novels either. halfway through it decided to stop being an angst-filled romance novel at which point it got much better. Except it then ends before the really interesting parts! looks like two more books to read. not as continuously fun as the quantum magician stories, but very entertaining and fascinating world building again.

Amazing story full of Triumph and Turmoil

Künsken does an amazing job of building characters with incredible depth and breath in a beautiful science fiction universe. This is a story about family and personal discovery. The far future setting adds to the story with out distracting from it. I have recommended it to numerous people and will certainly read it again.

Unsure if it's just me

I should have loved this, an inclusive hard sci-fi novel, with fascinating world-building, a diverse cast and a deep mystery at it's core. But I spent the first third obsessing at the narrator's distracting vocal tics, and the rest being irritated at the slow plot and lack of enjoyment in the story. Towards the end I forgot the fact the narrator sounded like she was trying to squeeze out a poop at the end of every sentence, and that her french was indecipherable. I started to respect her depth of feeling and commitment to the characters. But the story dragged, and nobody had a good time. Ever. The interesting plot points, the hook I was there for, just never had centre stage. Instead, I got the feeling the author had lost track of what readers want. Long descriptions of every journey through the clouds, never jumping to interesting action, plodding narrator by narrator advancing the plot step by step with no style surprises.

SPOILER:

And then... The death of one of the more positive and interesting characters right before the end... It was such a downer. I don't understand why the author thought it would be a good thing to do. I would have stopped listening there except there was only 15 minutes left. I already had the sense the author didn't know why we were reading on and this just lost my investment completely.

So, maybe it was just me, but I found this dreary and boring. While the plot and action and character development could have gripped me deeply, it felt like the camera was always pointing at the wrong place...

Usually enjoy his work. This one was vv boring.

About 10-15% of this book is interesting. The rest just seems to drag on and on about various people's problems to the point where I stopped caring about them. You know when you have that friend who complains so much you stop being sympathetic? This felt like that.

Good premise, just could have been shorter by half.

What a great book

This is one of those novels that are so immersive that you feel like you are part of the world. And so we’ll written that you miss the characters when the novel ends. And the narrator was just superb. I hope that this is the beginning of a trilogy

phenomenal

I thought, eh, this is okay for the first half of the book. A week later I'd listened to it twice and was looking at 3D maps of Venus, enraptured by this world in the clouds of sulphuric acid. well done. just damn, truly transporting and so well researched and constructed.

is not nearly as good as quantum magician series.

the writing isn't bad and is in same universe as Q.M. series but it just doesn't have same drive or interesting story.

also if "trans" characters or that type of thing is a hot button issue for you this book will be hard to swallow.

Good ideas, but anticlimactic. Off-putting narration

I really liked the quantum evolution books. Great characters and clever stories. So I was eager to give this one a try.

This book had some interesting ideas, and the descriptions of Venus and how humans could live there were fascinating.

The description of the feelings of one character experiencing a gender crisis were interesting too. While some people will be turned off by this important part of the book, it was thought provoking for me, since I have never felt any uncertainty and can not imagine how someone could feel this way about themselves. I still don’t really understand it, but reading about how people like this might feel made me more empathetic.

However, I felt the book was ultimately anticlimactic. There will most certainly be a sequel, as the book ends kind of in the middle of the greater story.

I found the narrator’s voice really off-putting. Her vocal fry was really irritating to me, and her monotonic delivery killed a lot of the excitement of the book for me. I almost stopped listening - but had to see how it ended. If there is a sequel I’ll read it rather than listen.