Seeds of Earth

Humanity's Fire, Book 1

By: Michael Cobley

Narrated by: David Thorpe

Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

First contact: the dream that became a nightmare when the first alien life encountered swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the invading forces, Earth's last, desperate roll of the die was to send out three colony ships--seeds of Earth--to different parts of the galaxy.

Earth may perish but the human race would live on, somewhere. 150 years later, the human colony on the planet Darien has established a new world for humanity and forged a peaceful relationship with the planet's indigenous race, the gentle, scholarly Uvovo. But there are secrets buried on Darien. Life is about to change for the last children of Earth, as surprises spring from below and above. How will the Darien colonists react when all they have worked for is overturned at a stroke? And what choices will the Uvovo make when their true nature is revealed and the skies grow dark with enemies?

©2010 Michael Cobley (P)2011 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

"Proper galaxy-spanning Space Opera ... a worthy addition to the genre." (Iain M. Banks)

"A complex, finely detailed thriller-cum-space opera." (The Guardian)

This is a typical slow starter space opera.

Once you get all the character intro out of the way, the story begins to finally take shape and get a little interesting.

The narrator does multiple voices and a decent job of remembering which characters sound like what without much bleedover. Some of the chosen "accents" could be interpreted as "juvenile and offensive" if taken out of the context of the performance.

If you like space opera style writing such as C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series or Anne McCaffery's The Tower and The Hive series, you will probably like this series to some extent as well.

A fun ride

Without doubt space opera in the grandest tradition of the genre. Michael Cobley has created layered, textual imagery that is vastly entertaining and I am eagery awaiting the next installment which audible will hopefully make available soon. The only reason I gave it four stars is because the reader used some very annoying accents and voices that detracted from the story, including one that sounded so much like Alec Guinness in Star Wars I kept waiting for him to tell one of the other characters to "Feel the Force". In addition, some of the Scot's brogue he used was so thick I had to rewind it to make out what was said. Minor annoyances aside though, it was a huge fun and well worth the credit

Irresistible Story!

I loved this story when I read it about a decade ago, and loved listening to it for what felt like the first time again! The voices of most characters are very distinct, which is impressive considering how many there are. A few of the voices felt odd at first, but they were usually characters that made only brief appearances, and certainly matched the descriptions of the voices that the author used.

Just plain BAD

Fragmented, juvenile, unbearable, and just plain BAD. The performance was childish, I could not finish listening in any way.

Worst EVER!

What would have made Seeds of Earth better?

Try to listen to the sample before you waste your credit here. This is one of the worst written books I have come across in years. There are just so many characters and he jumps from one to the other before you gain any emotional attachment to the character.

What was most disappointing about Michael Cobley’s story?

He jumped so much from one scene to the next that I found myself thinking about other things and not even caring what I missed.

Did David Thorpe do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

The only amazing thing about this book is how the narrator manages to work with so many different voices. Even that gets bad because some of the accents are so intense that you just can not understand what is being said. Many of the characters in this book have a very strong Irish or Scottish accent that makes it nearly impossible for the rest of us to follow.

A fun ride ??????????

A fun ride...NOT ! The only thing entertaining about this book is the ability of the reader to use the various accents to perfection...which is why I give it the single star. Based on the previous review I stuck to this book waiting for an entertaining story that never developed. I'll be avoiding the sequel like the plague.

This narrator was painful to listen to.

I made it about a minute into the second chapter before I had to shut it off. Once he attempted to imitate an alien voice, it was over.

I can't say anything about the author or the story because I didn't get that far...