Steles of the Sky

Eternal Sky, Book 3

By: Elizabeth Bear

Narrated by: Celeste Ciulla

Re Temur, legitimate heir to his grandfather’s Khaganate, has finally raised his banner and declared himself at war with his usurping uncle. With his companions - the Wizard Samarkar, the Cho-tse Hrahima, and the silent monk Brother Hsiung - he must make his way to Dragon Lake to gather in his army of followers. But Temur’s enemies are not idle; the leader of the Nameless Assassins, who has shattered the peace of the Steppe, has struck at Temur’s uncle already. To the south, in the Rasan empire, plague rages. To the east, the great city of Asmaracanda has burned, and the Uthman Caliph is deposed. All the world seems to be on fire, and who knows if even the beloved son of the Eternal Sky can save it?

©2014 Elizabeth Bear (P)2014 Recorded Books

Good story, poor reading

Would you listen to Steles of the Sky again? Why?

No, because the performance wasn't great and I already know how the book ends. I've got lots of other books I can re-listen to.

What did you like best about this story?

I liked the scope. I liked the characters. They had the sort of purity of purpose and iconic qualities that you expect from epic fantasy, but were still rounded and well-built.

What didn’t you like about Celeste Ciulla’s performance?

She would inexplicably pause in the middle of sentences and phrases. It was as though she was reading just a few words at a time, speaking them, then going back for the next handful of words.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I think I chuckled at a couple points. I'm not prone to crying at books, so that's actually doing pretty good on my personal scale.

Any additional comments?

I used whispersync and swapped back and forth between reading and listening, sometimes several times a day. As a mono-lingual English speaker, most of the character names in this series were really unfamiliar. The audiobook helped a lot with getting it where I could picture the pronunciation in my head as I read. However, that also meant there were times when I had to go back to the book and figure out just who a character was because I would never have guessed a particular pronunciation.

That made for a really cool/interesting/different experience.

Confusing Narration

I read the first two books on my Kindle, because I won a ARC of Steles of the Sky from the author on Twitter back before it was released. I loved the first two books and read them over a weekend. When it came time for me to pick up the physical book, I was spoiled by the ability to read discretely at work. I put the book aside and finally decided to pick it up again as a audio book.

I should never have done this. In fact, I'm going to re-read the book because the narration ruined it for me. I had to turn the narration speed up to 1.5x because I was getting confused by the narrator's long pauses. She did an amazing job of pronouncing the extremely difficult names but it felt like she would spin out a few of those names, pause to catch her breath or congratulate herself for getting them right, and then continue on with the rest of the sentence.

I feel so bad that I didn't enjoy the narrator on this book. It's only the second time a narrator has completely ruined a book for me and I'm really disappointed it was on this book. I'd been looking forward to it so much.

Great Eastern Fantasy

Like all of Bear’s books, this was very well written. It stands out because instead of a fantasy middle-ages Europe/England as a backdrop, Bear chose a sort of fantasy Mongolia as the central setting for the story. The first book started a little slow, but the story soon pulled me in, and before I knew it I was through all three books.