Adrift on the Sea of Rains

Apollo Quartet, Book 1

By: Ian Sales

Narrated by: Jeffrey Schmidt

Length: 1 hr and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

When nuclear war breaks out and the nations of the Earth are destroyed, a group of US astronauts are marooned on the lunar surface. Using the "torsion field generator", a WWII Nazi Wunderwaffe previously known as the Bell, they hope to find an alternate Earth that did not suffer nuclear armageddon. But once they do discover one, how will they return home? They have a single Lunar Module, which can carry only four astronauts into lunar orbit.

©2012 Ian Sales (P)2017 Novel Audio Inc.

Fun Thought Experiment

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes, it was time well spent. An interesting concept. I wish the story was a bit longer and spent a bit more time getting to know more characters.

Would you be willing to try another book from Ian Sales? Why or why not?

I might

Could you see Adrift on the Sea of Rains being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

I could see it as a show. With some additional character development thrown in.

Any additional comments?

While the narration was good, It wasn't great. I think what was missing was a bit of the characters emotion. Potentially higher stress scenes came off rather dry.

Interesting Concept

The idea is interesting and the narration is great, but I wasn't satisfied with the execution of the concept. I felt no connection with the characters, but hopefully that changes with the other books. More details about the earth event, characters, & the evolutions would have been nice to hook me in more. The worst thing, which may be better in print format, was the seemingly endless list of acronyms. It was irritating where it felt like every other sentence had a new acronym. I'm not sure if I'll continue with the series, but for a short story it was a decent effort!

Solid hard sci-fi, but the characters are lacking

The story is good and the writing is great, There's a lot here that's quite interesting—alternate history, a mysterious Nazi gadget, alternative worlds. What's missing, however, are interesting characters. You don't get to know any characters as much as you'd like, even for a short novella like this. And as interesting as the rest of the elements are, I find it difficult to become invested in a story if I don't care about or even know much about any of the characters involved. Having said that, I did enjoy this enough that I'd probably listen to this again sometime. I haven't made up my mind about whether to continue on with the series yet, though.

Acronym soup / short story

I enjoyed this book to a point. It is very short, which is not bad in itself, but I think I would have enjoyed this more if I had understood it was the first in a series of short story's, instead I assumed it was the first book in one cohesive story.

I liked the 'hard sci-fi' aspect and wished there was more to the alternative history aspect of the story. I think I'd love a full novel of this with this being the first act of the story.

Acronym soup that was hard for me to keep up with. That issue may be alleviated by reading this in hard copy.

Note: I received a free copy of this audio book in exchange for an honest review.

Stick to visual choices for this one

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

This is a science-fiction/alternate-history/fantasy mash-up with a largish side of infodump.

The story is post-nuclear-armageddon told from the perspective of Colonel Vance Peterson, USAF (United States Air Force), who is a complete tool. The story revolves around Peterson and we switch between "now" and flashbacks that explain how things came to be. It's hard to say more without getting into spoiler territory.

I didn't like Peterson, you're not meant to, but I don't see how he could ever have possibly gotten into the positions he was put in based on his behaviour. Because of this, large chunks of the narrative just don't gel and the final twist continues that trend most admirably. This is part one of a four part series and I was ever so vaguely curious as to what might happen next, but when I read the synopsis of "The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself" it obviously was related in theme (the Apollo program) but there's not connection between the stories themselves.

I listened to the audio version of the book and I think that was a mistake. The infodump is the main problem with the audio version of this story. I understand that approximately a quarter of the text-based book is made up of glossary and timeline. The audio version attempts to work around this by including the expanded version of each acronym the first time it appears. Seems reasonable until you discover that every fifth word is an acronym. OK, that's an exaggeration, but not that much of one, the first paragraph alone chalks up USAF, PLSS and A7LB; OK, that last one's not an acronym, but it still gets an explanation. I was constantly jarred out of the story to process and memorise the expansion of the current acronym.

In conclusion: The story wasn't terrible, but I didn't love it. It was a little like an old Twilight Zone episode (most of which I feel the same way about, semi-plausible with a really annoying end). I would definitely NOT recommend the audio version of this if you want to read it, there's no problem with the narrator, it's just not something made for listening to - stick with eyeballs for this one.