Galaxias

By: Stephen Baxter

Narrated by: Remmie Milner

What would happen to the world if the sun went out?

New epic sci-fi from Stephen Baxter, the award-winning author whose credits include co-authorship of the Long Earth series with Terry Pratchett.

By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has managed to overcome a series of catastrophic events and maintain some sense of stability. Space exploration has begun again. Science has led the way.

But then one day, the sun goes out. Solar panels are useless, and the world begins to freeze.

Earth begins to fall out of its orbit.

The end is nigh.

Someone has sent us a sign.

©2021 Stephen Baxter (P)2021 Gollancz

Not a bad idea for a story.

The story's premise is a good one although it seemed to me that more time was spent on touchy feely interactions than any substantial scientific story. Also, it was difficult to tell which character was talking at any given time since one of the characters name sounded to like the pronoun 'she' and the narrator had no variance in the voices. I would probably get a refund except that the idea behind the book was a good one.

Great narration, better writing than most.

Interesting and well-written. Gets a little hand-wavy about dark energy, and treats each major nation like a monoculture, but overall highly enjoyable.

Voice acting has a single major flaw

I would love to at least give the narrator five stars, but her awful US Southern accent is frankly unforgivable. Some British voice actors seem to care enough to learn how to deliver consistent and believable US regional accents. But this is not one of them. ls that character from Texas, South Carolina, West Virginia, NOLA? Sussex? (Why not? It is southern, after all.)

The story itself offers insufficient meat to hang on its bones. Too many meetings, not enough oomph. I kept expecting something to happen, but it just ended with no real denouement. Meh

Good but with a lacklustre finish

It was good, and I enjoyed most of it, but I felt the ending was a little flat like there had been this big buildup and then blah and being a bit of a Sinophile having lived and worked in China for over 25 years. I felt that there was a glaring mistake as to how the Chinese characters were written. And it was one that you keep getting reminded about every time they mentioned Wu Yan and that’s that in Chinese culture, A Wife doesn’t take her husband‘s name while the children do. A Chinese character isn’t going to share the same family name with the mother unless there’s some extraordinary circumstance, but that wasn’t mentioned in the book unless I missed it. Otherwise it was pretty well thought out suspenseful in its own way and enjoyable just until the last bit

This is what I've been waiting for?

This is a disappointment. I've enjoyed Stephen Baxter in the past. The time Odyssey stuff with Arthur C Clarke's were impressive and I was kind of hoping for lightning to strike twice. This story religious logs and drags on. I kept waiting for the climax and it just feels like it never comes. Also the choice of narrator was ill-advised. I'm sure she's fine and some other context but here she is just so banal and uninteresting. Monotone. She's like the female Wil Wheaton. I feel like she was hired for her identity and not her actual skill. And it's painful what a disappointment wasted a credit on this after waiting months in anticipation.