The Awakening

The Hyperscape Project, Book 1

By: Donald Swan

Narrated by: Meral Mathews

Enemy activity had fallen into an eerie calm, but everyone felt the coming storm - a terrible storm, poised to unleash its fury upon the galaxy. It seemed as though the entire universe was holding its breath. Waiting. Whether waiting for the salvation of mankind or its demise was yet unclear.

About The Book:

Along with his newly found, rag-tag band of alien friends, Nick Bannon battles to keep his devastating technology out of the hands of the biomechanoid race known as the Mok'tu. Nick is flung to a distant world when his hyperspace experiment goes awry. Now his peaceful experiment could become the horrific weapon of the malicious alien race. Every species in the galaxy is in danger of total annihilation and it may take one man's greatest sacrifice to stop it.

©2012, 2013 C. Lebedz (P)2014 C. Lebedz

Welcome Back Farscape

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Yes! I would like to have been a more engaging plot and not just a series of quick and dirty disasters that are too quickly and too easily dispatched.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Something with more "meat". A previous reviewer compared this book to something better suited as a "young adult" read. I would agree with that assessment.

What about Meral Mathews’s performance did you like?

Meral Mathew's narration is the only reason I actually finished the book. If it were not a quality performance I would have given up halfway through.

Could you see The Awakening being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Strange that this question should come up as a review guide since as I was listening to The Awakening I got a distinct feeling that the author was writing with the intention the story might get picked up as a sort of Japanese anime series aimed at fans of that genre.

Non-SciFi SciFi

Where does The Awakening rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This book is good not great. There are many other authors better at world building, space opera, or hard scifi. What the book does have is decent characters and enough action and suspense to entertain.

Sometimes it's a bit too cliche (e.g. time travel paradoxes, nanites) and sometimes a bit too campy (e.g. we're trapped in a room thats shrinking, a princess is leading the rebels). The aliens seem borrowed from central casting (e.g. We need a frog, a lizard, and a sexy green chick, stat).

Overall I like the book with two complaints:
1. The main character seems a little contradictory: I invented a hyperspace drive, but I'm dumb about everything else except if my life's in danger.
2. There is a lot of silliness to the story. You see, all the aliens seem to like practical jokes, and they don't think of simple ways to defeat enemy shields, but the primitive human does.

Hopefully as the series evolves it will take itself a little more seriously so the reader can as well.

Farscape like Space Adventure.

Meet John Criton... err Nick Brannon who is stranded in a far away star system by a Wormhole... err, Hyperspace experiment.

In all seriousnes, the main story premise is pretty much the same as Farscape. It is still a very entertaining and enjoyable story with interesting characters and I will be waiting for the second book.

The Narration I found done extremely well. Kudos to Meral Mathews! I hope to listen to you in other Sci-Fi stories!

I'm looking foward to this Series having a more satisfying conclusion than the TV show, which was unjustly assassinated by Sci-Fi Channel.

Great Beginning!

HYPERSCAPE ia a great beginning to a series. I assume the rest of the series is in production and will be available soon.

Lots of action with lots of interaction between people and aliens. I look forward to the rest of the series. I must admit that only one book, which ends kind of abruptly is frustrating. But some things have been written very well.

While the aliens are technologically ahead of humans in many, if not all, ways -- the human has many ideas and some technology ahead of the aliens.This seems to me to be more realistic.

Great Story

Would you listen to The Awakening again? Why?

Yes I'd listen to it again. The story was very interesting. Great choice with the narrator.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Nick, of course

Which character – as performed by Meral Mathews – was your favorite?

Arya

Any additional comments?

Enjoyed audio book so well that I will listen to more. I tried a couple others overs years and the narrator's voice and story was so monotonous. This audio and plot held my interest and I didn't want to stop listening Looking forward to Donald Swan's next scifi. to it.

Teen looking for first sci-fi? Go for it!

Would you try another book from Donald Swan and/or Meral Mathews?

No. This book was such a run of the mill sci-fi story, written thousands of times before, and that's not what I'm looking for. The book had gotten some good reviews so I gave it a go, but I learned my lesson.

What do you think your next listen will be?

I'm having more and more trouble finding sci-fi that I'm willing to spend credits on. There's a lot of sci-fi I love, and probably a lot more I would love, but how to find it?

What three words best describe Meral Mathews’s voice?

Pretty much of a monotone, except when doing voices. A good job with different alien voices.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

For a young teen I think this would be a good read, particularly if using it to expand their reading horizons (on paper - ideally).

SF for 10 year old and under

There is no science, no world building, no real story. and the narration was bad