Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard

By: Lawrence M. Schoen

Narrated by: J. G. Hertzler

The Sixth Sense meets Planet of the Apes in a moving science fiction novel set so far in the future, humanity is gone and forgotten in Lawrence M. Schoen's Barsk: The Elephant's Graveyard

A historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds.

In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity's genius-animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend. The most coveted of these drugs is koph, which allows a small number of users to interact with the recently deceased and learn their secrets. To break the Fant's control of koph, an offworld shadow group attempts to force the Fant to surrender their knowledge.

Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to question his deceased best friend, who years ago mysteriously committed suicide. In so doing, Jorl unearths a secret the powers that be would prefer to keep buried forever. Meanwhile, his dead friend's son, a physically challenged young Fant named Pizlo, is driven by disturbing visions to take his first unsteady steps toward an uncertain future.

©2015 Lawrence M. Schoen (P)2015 Macmillan Audio

Strange but Wonderful

I liked it. It's certainly not your run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi story, but within the context of the universe it's in, it works quite well.

delightfully surprising

Struggle to start, dynamic finish. Happiness and longing for more, a lot of plot twists!

Space Elephants!

A story about precognitive space elephants narrated by General Martok? Yes please.

The story is quite good, but the narrator, J. G. Hertzler is perfect. Listening to him read this story is like settling in by the fireplace in your library into your most comfortable chair on a cold winters night, with no plans except to spend a few hours just reading a good book. Except you don't have to have any of those things and can in fact be sitting on the bus commuting to work.

Hertzler has great range of you only know him from Deep Space 9. And the story itself is very interesting and different.

Highly recommended.

A fresh new breath of a story!

Where does Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

For me, what sets a book above others is that it's a new baseline in the story. Something I haven't read about before. Wizards and magic, that's not new, but can be great. Barsk on the other hand was something new from the start on for me. And what makes a book really great for me is if it can paint pictures in my mind. That I can see the characters and the surroundings playing like a movie in my head. And of course, the story needs to be catching and exciting.

Barsk is just this. All of it. I love the characters, and hate a couple too. There is something new and fresh about the story and concept that drew me in from the start. With great care Schoen spins a tale that kept me driving slower and longer than I needed too (listening to the audiobook). With the plot twisting and turning ways that I didn't expect I had to force myself to put it on pause and out of the car more than once.

That the narrator, J.G. Hertzler has a voice that is plesant to listen to was of course also a pluss.

I was skeptical but grew to love it.

This story is about Elephants, but quite different Elephants than you may think of. Actually the story is not "about" elephants at all but are rather a conceit of fiction. The story is really about being true to your ideals no matter what the consequences. It is a wonderful, rich story. I didn't want it to end! Fortunately it didn't. The second book in the series "The Moons of Barsk" is even better and available from Audible.