Super Extra Grande

By: Yoss, David Frye - translator

Narrated by: Thom Rivera

With the playfulness and ingenuity of Douglas Adams, the Cuban science-fiction master Yoss delivers a space opera of intergalactic proportions with Super Extra Grande, the winner of the 20th annual UPC Science Fiction Award in 2011.

In a distant future in which Latin Americans have pioneered faster-than-light space travel, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo has a job with large and unusual responsibilities: He’s a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous alien animals. Mountain-sized amoebas, multisex species with bizarre reproductive processes, razor-nailed, carnivorous humanoid hunters: Dr. Sangan has seen it all. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the galaxy’s seven intelligent species, he must embark on a daring mission through the insides of a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors - who also happen to be his competing love interests.

Funny, witty, raunchy, and irrepressibly vivacious, Super Extra Grande is a rare specimen in the richly parodic tradition of Cuban science fiction, and could only have been written by a Cuban heavy-metal rock star with a biology degree: the inimitable Yoss.

©2012, 2016 José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Translation copyright 2016 David Frye (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

Not much of a story, very slow-voiced performer

The performer for this audiobook has such a low voice and slow delivery that, for the very first time ever, I had to speed him up in order to listen to it. The voice fit’s the character, who is a very large man. But still… Also, the story is pretty thin.

Quick bite sized Cuban sci-fi

Fresh off reading A Planet for Rent, it’s safe to say I really like Yoss. This was silly and short but still fun. Some folks overthink sci-fi sometimes. Not everything has to been heavy, deep, and full of hard science. I enjoyed this and definitely wanna give kudos to the narrator!

Complete waste of time.

A quarter of the book was spent on his fetishes, with scientific jargon shoehorned in. The plot was 90% exposition and the climax was a flop. Humor fell flat.