Neptunes Brood (audiobook review)

Title: Neptune's Brood
Author: Charles Stross
Narrator: Emily Gray
Pub. Date: September 17 2013
Publisher: Recorded Books
Length: 12hrs and 3 minutes

Audiobook Info:

The year is AD 7000. The human species is extinct—for the fourth time—due to its fragile nature.

Krina Alizond-114 is metahuman, descended from the robots that once served humanity. She’s on a journey to the water-world of Shin-Tethys to find her sister Ana. But her trip is interrupted when pirates capture her ship. Their leader, the enigmatic Count Rudi, suspects that there’s more to Krina’s search than meets the eye.

He’s correct: Krina and Ana each possess half of the fabled Atlantis Carnet, a lost financial instrument of unbelievable value—capable of bringing down entire civilizations. Krina doesn’t know that Count Rudi suspects her motives, so she accepts his offer to get her to Shin-Tethys in exchange for an introduction to Ana.

And what neither of them suspects is that a ruthless body-double assassin has stalked Krina across the galaxy, ready to take the Carnet once it is whole—and leave no witnesses alive to tell the tale…

Author Info:
Charles Stross, 47, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella, Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages.
Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst).













My review:
I wanted to try out this audiobook because even though it was not my go to genre, I do like some sci fi and the plot of the audiobook sounded interesting, but alas I was sorely disappointed. While the audiobook really was well written and developed, I felt there were a few things wrong with it:

• The "jargon" that is used in the story is very inventive, but very confusing and hard to understand for a new reader of this authors works (like me).
• The plot seems to go very slow and drags
• It seems like a sequel when it is actually a stand alone book. This kind of relates to my frist point when listening to this book it feels like you already supposed to know what is going on in this invented world and understand its structure and how things work there etc which for someone like me this wasnt the case. I found myself so very confused with the structure or premise of this world. Yes, I did some research and this made up world is not new for this author as it is in another book of his but for someone like me who hasnt read any of his other books it was very frustrating.
• The premise about the value of cash and what has happened to it is interesting but I dont like how there is alot of focus on it through the book. I think there are alot of other better plot points he could have focused on in the story.  

Narration:
The narration was ok. Grays voice was nice to listen to in tone and she was very animated. The only qualm I have here is a very important one: All the characters voices seemed to sound the same to me. I mean there was some variation but every voice I heard the narrator voice, nothing different or unique and I found it rather frustrating.

My final verdict:
I would recommend this audiobook for fans of this author, but otherwise I would not recommend this audiobook to the average person because I dont think they would understand or enjoy this book.

I would like to thank librarything and Recorded Books for letting me listen to and review this audiobook.