Endeavour cover art

Endeavour

Sleeping Gods, Book 1

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Endeavour

By: Ralph Kern
Narrated by: Michael Kramer
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About this listen

Since we first looked at the stars, there have been no signs of alien life - no one who has tried to speak to us, a mystery that a long-dead scientist called the Fermi paradox. "Where are they?"

In 2118 the first daring mission to another star, Tau Ceti - 12 light-years away - is launched. Tom Hites and Harry Cosgrove command the starship Endeavour on an epic journey to solve the Fermi paradox. From the first nearly disastrous steps on a distant world, their quest takes them further than they ever imagined. Out amid the mysterious, long-abandoned worlds and ancient relics, they discover some strange, some wonderful, and some deadly. The question they seek to answer becomes: "Where are they now?"

©2015 Ralph Kern (P)2015 Tantor Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Space Fiction Space Exploration Fiction Hard Science Fiction Space

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All stars
Most relevant  
A good overall story, well presented. The attempts at English accents and dialects in places were poor and quite distracting.

Good original story. Accents poor!

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Some nice ideas and I welcome the lack of love story/pointless antagonism between characters. But unfortunately there is no depth, this reads like a screen play, very little description, no back story, no colour. There is a follow on book but I'm not engaged enough to want to read it. The narrator is good on other books but he is quite monotone and can't do British regional accents so was not a good choice for a slow book with British characters.

Pedestrian plot

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As I said, good story but the performance, oh dear. Give it a go but prepare yourself for the double murder of a Yorkshire and Scottish accent (not a spoiler by the way).
Book 2 is an improvement (different person) but that said, the bar was set very low

Good story, however.....

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

in the top ten

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes

Any additional comments?

fast moving,exciting,intriguing,a little disappointed with the ending,maybe left room for a sequel?

excellent

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Futuristic S. F., moving forward from from 2078 into the mid 2200s. After the invention of The Gate, enabling the people from earth to access and populate other planets more easily, the original pioneer spacemen again headed for the Stars in search of other sentient, intelligent races. The book started well and was interesting enough, but seemed a little disjointed and in need of more character development. Narration by Michael Kramer has a sing song rhythm, because of a strange upturn to his voice midway through his sentences and, although chapters individually voiced, some accents were very odd, especially both Scottish and Yorkshire attempts: it became hard to listen to his performance at times.
An interesting concept which held my attention.
The first in a short series: I'll probably read book two, but not yet

"There's always more, always higher."

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this book is something to wonder at, its depth and detail is high enough to populate your mind with enough image to see where you are but low enough to keep the story flowing and moving at an exciting pace.

if you like science fiction then this book will fully satiate your desire for an adventure, true to science fiction, true to a better future for humanity.

not a struggle to finish, enjoyable and with a narrative and narrator both excellently chosen to compliment each other, you will continue to listen being kept interested.

try it and enjoy it.....the author needs to write a sequal or something else within this universe he's created.

A Sci Fi Epic, such a worthy read.

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So overall I liked this book. I thought the narrator was fine too. I love near time space opera and will buy the 2nd book now.

A few things threw me

1. There didn't always seem to be a strategy for the plot. It felt like it jumped around a bit in ways I struggle to keep up with. I had to rewind a fair few times to get back in sync

2. An overfocus on the whole misogyny thing towards the end. Build me a strong female character and I'll get right behind her. Break the story to explain why the 1500's had misogynistic views and how bad they are and you broke my immersion. When you described combat enhanced women I was expecting and hoping the female character would take the situation in hand. Instead the male. Character sacrifices himself to save her and we get a chunk of dialogue about how men and women are the same.

That's picky I know but it ruined the immersion for me in a jarring way. I came here for sci-fi. Have her put them in their place rather than go back to the damsel I. Distress trope and then tell us it's bad.

3. By the end I got that there were multiple cultures to avoid a spoiler. But I can't work out what I missed between 1world and lots of worlds. Again feels like a plot jump that's dropped my immersion.

Rated 4 stars, I went out of my way to say why I dropped a star but if you are thinking about this story I say its well worth a purchase!

Enjoyable listen with some?? 's

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Only managed a few chapters of this book. It might have been good, but you wouldn’t have known it from the narration, which was as flat as a plank of wood with no feeling whatsoever.

The book deserved better.

Yawn!

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If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

I can imagine it would work a lot better as a book, without the awful performance.

How could the performance have been better?

Kern's regular reading voice appears fine, but unfortunately his grasp of British accents is laughably poor. Literally - I laughed out loud at his hopeless attempt at Scottish. Unfortunately, since one of the main characters is from Yorkshire, the excruciating mess of rotating mangled accents became too much to bear. I'm not being precious about it - I'd not care if the accents were simply wrong - but these are so all over the place I couldn't concentrate.

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

The book is likely fine. It seemed an interesting prospect. I shall find out if it ever has a Kindle release.

Destroyed by performance

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