The Flight of the Aphrodite

By: S J Morden

Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick

Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

A thrilling stand-alone science-fiction space adventure from Philip K. Dick award-winning author S.J. Morden

Strange radio signals are coming from Jupiter's largest moons.

A natural phenomenon, or something else?

Commander Mariucci and his hand-picked research team know they will have to muster all of their expertise, creativity and teamwork to survive the very harshest of conditions in orbit around the king of planets. But when they intercept a peculiar radio transmission, they have to investigate. Nothing should work in these impossible conditions, so what is sending the signal...and why?

With a degrading ship and crew at breaking point, there's every chance they will tear themselves apart before they ever find the answer to the ultimate question - are we alone in the universe?

And more importantly - what do we do if we aren't?

©2022 S J Morden (P)2022 Orion Publishing Group

I absolutely hated one of the characters, and that was good!

I didn't expect a Gallow Glass follow up, I just saw another book by Morden and got it.

The story grabbed me and I got invested with the characters and their ever evolving madness. Some made me smile, others made me cry. One of them... made my blood boil.

And I loved that! even though that's something I didn't experience with the previous books from Morden. So far they were always great stories with interesting missions. But this time the characters and their psychological breakdown interested me more than the mission.

Excellent story and narration

I pre-ordered The Flight of the Aphrodite by S J Morden based on how much I enjoyed his Frank Kitteridge series (which I highly recommend also.) The premise of the book is that the Aphrodite is in orbit around Jupiter to study the four moons discovered by Galileo. Small things begin to go wrong. The crew, tense already from the problems cropping up, are stunned by a radio signal seeming to emanate from one of the largest moons of Jupiter.

I listened to this over the span of three days. I would have been finished quicker but sleep interfered. The story is wonderful. I cannot speak to scientific accuracy as I do not speak science. The mystery/thriller/suspense is very well done. I seconded guessed every character's motivation at least once, some even twice. The ending when it came left me breathless.

The story is improved by Elliot Fitzpatrick's narration. The crew is composed of members of the European Space Union. The accents for the crew members are well done. I could tell which character was speaking based on the accent. Fitzpatrick's voice never overshadowed the words the author had written. Just excellent.

Narration matters

This may be a great book - I don't know. Narration matters and the narration of this book negatively impacted the story. I found myself drifting off, unable to concentrate on the story because the narrator talked in such a smooth, soothing voice. Since this was a science fiction story, with a crew in trouble in orbit around the moons of Jupiter, one would assume it was not a soothing experience.

Good story but…

Rather slow at times, too much filler. The narrator was a bit of a yawn, not much animation and his try at accents was poor. Still, I kind of liked this book and things got better in the second half. I’ve liked his other books.

What happened

Loved this authors other books but this one..... I couldn't finish. 3 times I stopped and gave it another try. Just very frustrating characters.

One Person's thought

A struggle to finish. This is my second by this author. There won't be another.