Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

An Unkindness of Ghosts

By: Rivers Solomon
Narrated by: Cherise Boothe
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £17.99

Buy Now for £17.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, whom they consider to be less than human.

When the autopsy of Matilda's sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother's suicide some quarter century before, Aster retraces her mother's footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she's willing to fight for it.

©2017 Rivers Solomon (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Tensorate Series cover art
Children of Time cover art
A Psalm for the Wild-Built cover art
Unseelie cover art
Deliver Me cover art
The Collectors' Society cover art
Plus One cover art
Timekeeper cover art
The Ways We End: Six Tales of Doom cover art
Grounded cover art
The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue cover art
Midnight Robber cover art
Parable of the Sower cover art
Kindred cover art
Witchmark cover art
Emergency Skin cover art

What listeners say about An Unkindness of Ghosts

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    143
  • 4 Stars
    92
  • 3 Stars
    47
  • 2 Stars
    10
  • 1 Stars
    7
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    191
  • 4 Stars
    56
  • 3 Stars
    16
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    3
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    116
  • 4 Stars
    86
  • 3 Stars
    48
  • 2 Stars
    8
  • 1 Stars
    8

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A very unusual story

It’s poetic and violent. The characters are complex and beautiful and real. Very unsettling but somehow you can’t stop reading. Very original and stays with you past the end.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Heart-stopping, beautiful, wonderful

This book blew me away. By the end of the first few chapters I was completely hooked and barely paused in my listen-through. I cried out multiple times when listening (in anger and sadness but also with joy), there were several minutes in which I practically stopped breathing without realising until the crisis had passed. Overall it's simply the best book I've ever read.

In an incredibly rich and vibrant world populated with an effortlessly real and diverse cast, the plot drives the book forward inexorably. I was totally lost in the world and driven along with Aster (the protagonist).

The review this got in NPR said "its only imperfection is that it ended" and I couldn't agree more.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful

This was not only a beautifully written work, but also exquisitely rendered by the voice actor. You would be foolish to not listen to this magnificent story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Disappointing

The headline says it all; this is a disappointing book. The scenario, of an Ark ship in decline, is something of a cliche to start with. The tone is relentlessly depressing, not at all helped by the range of accents employed by the narrator. The characters arouse no sympathy for their situation and they are, in any case, poorly realised. All in all, not recommended.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The world on a starship towards a promised land

Humans seem to have escaped earth and are on their way to some "promised land" on a spaceship where castes, prejudices, oppression and all sorts of horrible crimes are allowed and justified under the religious empire in charge. The brilliant main character, despite the pain and impossible difficulties of continuous persecution by the rulers, follows her disappeared mother's traces and discovers unexpected truths about their voyage. With the help of friends and allies she will bring about the massive change that her mother gave start to. Both the story and the characters are quite captivating and unforgettable, the ending is bittersweet and yet satisfying.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

I don’t know how to describe it

It was poetic yet informative and educational. It may be fictional but the story line was historical and futuristic day the same time. Going into astrophysics, chemistry medicine language and anthropology, I enjoyed that a story full of heart and soul managed to weave in education too! I definitely must check out more of Rivers books!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow! Magnificent.

I really enjoyed this. The plot was gripping and the narration complemented and added wonderfully to the story. The only very minor thing that disappointed me was the ending, I won't spoil it and I don't think it could have ended any other way - but really I just wanted more!

Recommended to anyone, not just sci-fi fans.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing

This book is a very heavy read but it's absolutely worth it. What a beautiful piece of literature. One of the best books I've listened to in a long long time and it is stunningly read too.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

READ & IF YOUR HEART CAN TAKE IT READ AGAIN

Fascinating, heartbreaking, poetic and poignant. This book will fundamentally change something in you if you allow it. Rivers Solomon is a force, I'm excited for what she does next. The narrator was superb in bringing the story to life, giving the complexities and nuances of ship life and its ecology a measured tone, never rushing the small and important details. Read this book, and then read it again.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Lost on the journey.

Hints of the trials and tribulations of past ancestors whose memories and experiences were encoded into the community's knowledge bank, where it is accessible by everyone, but lost in translation and decoding by the majority. It takes a special person; a divergent thinker, to decode the messages. Are we really that lost?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!