Dust

The Obelisks Series, Book 1

By: Ari Marmell

Narrated by: Cindy Kay

For Flight Engineer Cynthia Han and her fellow astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 81 has proved as mundane as space travel ever gets.

Yes, this would be Cynthia’s final NASA mission, for reasons she has so far kept from the rest of the crew; and yes, the latest billionaire “space tourist” has managed to irritate everyone on board. Still, none of them could have asked for a smoother experience.

Until the morning they wake up to silence. All communication with Earth, gone. From half a dozen different agencies with multiple installations and redundancies across the globe, there is simply… nothing.

And through the viewports of the ISS, only the thick veil of churning, lightning-veined dust to suggest the Earth remains at all.

Now, without ground control, without the proper telemetries or calculations or even reliable visuals, Cynthia and the rest of Expedition 81 must make their way home. For most, it will be the most fraught and the most frightening task of their lives.

But it will be nothing compared to the world that now awaits them beyond the dust.

©2022 Ari Marmell (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

Pretty good

It held my interest to the end. I just wish it didn’t turn into the zombie apocalypse at the end, not that I have seen or read any of those.

Diamond in the Rough

Outstanding Sci-Fi Horror! Dark and original with excellent narration. I burned through this one in a couple of listens.

Interesting story, horrible narrator.

A sci fi horror should be read with a sense horror. This narrator souplike she’s reading a
Children’s book. It’s not “little house on the prairie”. Astronauts on the ISS return to earth after losing all contact to find the planet’s population decimated, no reasonable explanation. So many other narrators would have handled this better.

Not the Best

The story was interesting at the beginning but became repetitive about half way through. The absolutely terrible female narrator made every supporting character sound like a cowboy on qua

By chapter ten, even I had a headache

This was SO AWFUL. The idiocy of the main character was an insult to competent female leaders and commanders everywhere. She lost IQ points during the first chapter and continued to leak them
through chapter ten whereupon I couldn’t take it anymore. Her inner dialogue drove me absolutely nuts with irritation.
The narrator did not help matters with her whiny, whispery voice which reminiscent of some mindless adolescent trying to gossip quietly while high on coke at 0300, and not a NASA commander.
The general idea of the story was attention getting but alas, it turned out to be a serious disappointment.