Reason to Fear

The Earthburst Saga, Book 5

By: Craig A. Falconer

Narrated by: Scott Aiello

An alien signal.

Of all the things I expected to uncover while trying to make sense of the Anomaly, this didn't even enter my mind. But now, the signal has changed my understanding of everything.

The Anomaly that's suffocating Earth isn't natural, and decoding this message could be our one shot at saving the planet. The trouble is, we don't even know where to start.

What will it take to decipher the alien signal and unlock the secrets of the Anomaly? And how should we reply when we decode their message?

A lot of people don't think we should trust the aliens who are reaching out to us. I can't pretend I don't understand why.

But with no other way of putting things right, we have to at least figure out what they're saying.

The clock is ticking until the Anomaly consumes us. The fate of humanity lies in my hands all over again.

And this time, the choices I make will echo through the cosmos...

©2023 Craig A. Falconer (P)2023 Recorded Books

Faulconer and Scott make a great team

It's not in depth like Andy Weir, or Neil, Stephenson… But it's great adventure, and would make great TV in my opinion. 

Change in thinking

Without a change of direction fear overcomes and deals us its final blow. Great experience of thoughts overcoming an end.
Craig has put together another look into the few who fight to help us all. Was a great journey of well written events.

A bit contrived

Some spoilers here!!!
It’s never made clear what and how much civilization is left. Seems to be “as needed”. But, isn’t Williams still the President? Did the US not have any military on the surface that answers to him to take care of the issue only Driver and Ray could handle on Earth? Really? How was Neocite stable enough to go in the Bullet, but not a dedicated launch vehicle? This just makes no sense. Sloppy comms management started the entire issue Earth side, easily prevented. And, why wouldn’t Ray’s family be taken into protective custody as soon as the craziness on Earth started? Clearly all of Earth did not revolt. Kind of silly, contrived reasons used to advance the plot holding Ray and Driver in the spotlight. Most of his books are much better at “realistic” plot development.

the "science" is getting ever more distant from the storytelling

the narrator does an excellent job of character division and storytelling. My only gripe is I hear all my favorite Jon Ryan voices without their personalities. BUT, that is a credit to the narrator, in that he can create new personalities with his voice range just by changing personality traits with a given "voice." I wouldn't compare him to R.C. Bray YET, but he's well on his way to that caliber of sci-fi narrator skill.

my problem with this series, and the reason for my rating, is that it has very unbelievable "science" for a *science* fiction series, and this book is just taking that pre-existing condition of this author's storytelling to an extreme. the author has zero ability to present technology and scientific discoveries in a *scientifically* descriptive way. the main protagonist of the series is an incredible physicist who created a refinement method for a compound that greatly enriches the "biozol" fuel they use to power rockets. it is presented as something seemingly with as much energy density as a nuclear reaction, but it is clearly just a chemical reaction, and most importantly we know nothing AT ALL about it from a technical perspective, more than 4 books into the series.

this is just the most blaring example, but there are nearly endless other such examples of magic handwaiving when it comes to scientific or technical descriptions of the near-future advancements of the world created in this narrative.

I love the character building of this author, but if I had known how utterly absent scientific description was from the narrative, among a series of extremely capable scientists, I would have passed on this series, because it is borderline fantasy instead of sci-fi, since the science is pretty much magic, considering how little detail is given on the method behind the science and technology.

i don't expect every sci-fi book or series to be hard sci-fi, but it should at least include SOME effort at scientific explanations beyond layman's terms discussions.