Slow Bullets

By: Alastair Reynolds

Narrated by: Susan Duerden

A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur - and for humanity - peace is not to be.

On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship.

Passengers - combatants from both sides of the war - are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world that is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy but with much higher stakes than just her own life.

©2015 Alastair Reynolds (P)2015 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A fine example of the true science fictionist's art." (Michael Bishop, author of A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire)

Horrible Narriator

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I was not expecting such a short book. This was a novella, not a novel.

Would you be willing to try another one of Susan Duerden’s performances?

No. She reads like a robot that turns every sentence into a question by inflecting the end. I have listened to 72 audiobooks and this was the only one I have not finished due to unbearable narration.

Okay story, horrible narrator

As others have mentioned, the narrator was horrible and sounded like she could've been giving us preflight safety information. Her emphasis and intonation was completely disconnected from the mood of the content or the structure of the particular sentence she was reading, just the same placid delivery over and over again. I suspect her prior read-aloud experience consisted entirely of reading to babies too young to understand a word, but who only pick up on the way in which something is said. She did alter her inflection and voice slightly, however, when reading quotations.

As far as the story, it was interesting, but not very believable from either a human nature or computer aspect.


SPOILER ALERTS: I think the people would've had different priorities from a survival aspect and not universally accepted distraction tasks when there were so many other more pressing things to do. Also the systematic corruption of volatile memory would not have needed to entirely consume 100% of the long-term memory as there is necessarily less volatile memory in any system, if the long-term memory could have been of any practical use for the same purposes at all. He also didn't explain to my satisfaction, unless I missed it in the mundane delivery, why the last skip had taken hundred of years or been delayed hundreds of years. Maybe some effect of the implausibly enigmatic and indescribable aliens?

Great Story

Another great tale by Alistair Reynolds! Joins the library of his wonderful works! Enjoyed it!

Great novel but..

Is the woman read this a robot? because she sounds like one. she puts a wierd inflection on the end of every sentence

meh

Narration isn't as bad as some make it out to be, but certainly isn't great. I've enjoyed a lot of Reynolds's works, but this one feels weak. Characters are flat and uninteresting, setting is not well fleshed-out, and sci-fi concepts feel a little uninspired. Overall, I found it boring. However, I still very much respect this author. Check out House of Suns and Revelation Space if you haven't already!

Worst Narration I have listened through

This is the first review I have given on Audible because I needed to express how terrible the narration is.

As expected the story and writing are the usual excellence of Alastair Reynolds.

The narration is borderline un listenable. At times it genuinely sounds like an AI generated voice,

You would be better off feeding the text into Windows narrator and listening to it.

Poor story. Terrible narration

Almost unlistenable. How an a pro end every sentence as a question? Story promised and didn’t deliver

Good story, bad narration

Not Reynolds best work, but not bad. The hardest part of the story to endure was the poor performance of the narrator with a sing-song style that came across rather mechanically; every line with the same intonation and rhythm. She really was quite annoying.

If you can listen not to the narrator per se, but to the story, you'll have a better experience... but that's not easy.

Listening to the narrator is torture.

An interesting book. Shame I cannot enjoy it. The narrator bombs it so bad, impossible to follow.

Good story bad read

The story is really good, but it sound like siri is rnarrating it. Susan Duerden mistakes periods for exclamation points.