On the Steel Breeze

Poseidon's Children, Book 2

By: Alastair Reynolds

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh

The award-winning author of Blue Remembered Earth continues his saga as the next generation of the Akinya family crosses interstellar space seeking humanity' s future...

Chiku Akinya, great granddaughter of the legendary space explorer Eunice and heir to the family empire, is just one among millions on a long one way journey towards a planet they hope to call their new home. For Chiku, the journey is a personal one, undertaken to ensure that the Akinya family achieves its destiny among the stars.

The passengers travel in huge self-contained artificial worlds - holoships - putting their faith in a physics they barely understand. Chiku' s ship is called Zanzibar - and over time, she will discover it contains an awesome secret - one which will lead her to question almost every certainty about her voyage, and its ultimate destiny.

©2013 Alastair Reynolds (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Another solid book from Alastair Reynolds

The book itself is pretty good, but it's honestly rather hard to tell with the incredibly annoying accents the narrator does

A very complex narrative

The storyline is not disappointing but I did have some trouble with the narrator's heavy accent at times. attribute this to my superannuated ears.

Such a slow storyline + bad narration = fail

The storyline vaguely continues, and like everything else by Reynolds has a 15-hour build up until you hit something interesting that makes you decide to finish the book.
The narrator...wow. The first book had a narrator that was so exceptionally difficult to understand that I created a "black list" of narrators just to prevent ever accidentally getting something by him again. I was especially looking forward to this and the 3rd book being by a different narrator....obviously a result of reader complaints I assumed.
Boy was I mistaken. This narrator was even more difficult to understand. The main character sounds like yodeling Yoda with a cold trying to mimic Scooby Doo. It drove me nuts. And the accents trying to give african characters some realism just alienated readers because we cant understand it. I dont know how many hundreds of words & sentences that were lost to me, and going back 30 seconds never helps because they are completely and entirely incomprehensible.

Impatient For The Third Book

Humor, joy and wonder, this is high end sci fi. Alastair Reynolds read by Adjoa Andoh is just about perfect.

You unfortunately probably want the print version

I think I'm pretty open minded, but sadly the audio performance on this story leaves a lot to be desired. It's a wonky combination of a story-bookish tone and missed nuances. The individual sentences are acted, instead of the scene or character as a whole.

I realized a few hours into this book that the narration was making me think less of Alistair Reynolds' storytelling ability. But when I imagined the scenes as acted by someone like John Lee, I realized the story could have felt so much more rich.

Instead of suspense, I felt apathy. Instead of urgency, I felt impatient. Instead of voice acting bringing personalities to life, I was repeatedly taken aback at how overly strong the accents were, including her use of unwritten, amazingly repetitive slurping inhales for the aquatics. The majority of dialog between characters intended for development instead feels flimsy because of the storybookishness tone. Everybody that isn't Russian or Southern-redneck uses the same African intonation, including the Japanese-named character (which got no special accent and is apparently African.)

I felt that the African style worked better in the first book. Despite my best efforts to enjoy the audiobook, I was constantly distracted by the audio medium. I frankly intend to repeat my experience of this story in print, in hopes that I can think more highly of the original text.

Great story, disappointing performance

I love Reynolds and his writing, and this trilogy is exceptional.
Unfortunately, I feel that the narrator lets this vision down.
The accents are incredibly distracting.
At best, they are a caricature. More than likely, you'll just find them offensive.

Accents are a distraction

Loved the story but the exaggerated accents really start to grate on the ears.

Excellent second novel in series

What made the experience of listening to On the Steel Breeze the most enjoyable?

I liked the way the narrative shifted between the two cloned protagonists. The world of this series — a future in which Africa and China became the superpowers — is refreshing.

What about Adjoa Andoh’s performance did you like?

Adjoa Andoh has a lovely voice, and her voicing of the main character(s) was impeccable.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

It was satisfying to catch up with some of the characters from the first novel in the series.

Any additional comments?

The director did Ms. Andoh a disservice when s/he had her voice practically every character with a different national accent. The effect of multicultural diversity could have been achieved less jarringly, particularly with the male characters. This is not a reason not to listen to her marvellous reading of this highly interesting novel, however.One final suggestion: when different actors read novels within the same series, it might be less confusing if the recurring characters are not voiced in a radically different way.

This book could use a "breeze" of fresh air.

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I would change the premise. The triplicated main character and the nonsensical re-emergence of and old acquaintance...oh so very contrived. The pace was languid and the switching of perspective was jarring. The motivations of the characters especially in their interactions with each other were silly and unbelievable even in the whimsical world Reynolds has crafted. All in all, this is a very disappointing installment in this series. It fails to live up to the level of the Revelation Space series.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Starplex by Robert Sawyer

Would you be willing to try another one of Adjoa Andoh’s performances?

Oh dear god no. Her thick, overdone accents were almost literally painful to listen to, from the simpleton Asian accent to the literally unintelligible MurPerson accent.

Was On the Steel Breeze worth the listening time?

Honestly no, I would not spend 23 hours listening to this given what I know of its resolution.

Any additional comments?

This was a very weak installment and feels like a filler novel. That said, I am a completionist, so I finished it, but I am having serious doubts about the third installment.

As good as Blue Remembered Earth.

A fascinating view of humanity in the future. The saga of the Akinya clan continues.