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Leo

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Compassionate. Great writing. Excellent reading

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

Reviewed: 05-26-25

Why should you listen to this book?

If you think you are neurodivergent and want to hear other experiences, Robin has a great story for you. It's not just that it's beautifully written with references to real scientific research, it's that he reads it and so is able to digress a couple of times to bring listeners something extra. And there's an interview at the end of the book, giving an opportunity for more reflection.

But this isn't just a great book for neurodivergent people. It's a great book for people who have neurodivergent family members or colleagues. Listen to Robin and understand how your friends, colleagues, and family might be experiencing the world.

This is his best book to date. Well worth 9 hours of your time.

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Learned a lot. Enjoyed doing it

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

Reviewed: 09-01-24

Well structured. Well researched. Well written. None of this was covered in the medieval history curriculum at school! Excellent narration.

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Narrator ruins book

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
1 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 06-30-18

This is an interesting book. No-one goes to Asimov for delicate, layered storytelling but this story contains some interesting and often (for the time) remarkably liberal concepts. Two key issues raised are gender identity and the stultifying impact of slave labour on a society.

The central concept, the continuing need to question choices already made, was central to Iain M Banks' work. So considering this was the fifth book in a series that began publication in 1941, it was innovative and forward thinking.

So, it was a real shame that the publishers chose a toneless robot to read the story. His tone sucks all life out of the conversations that Asimov used to move the story along. There is no variation to distinguish between characters. There is certainly no passion.

If you want to listen to someone read an Ikea instruction sheet, Larry McKeever is the man for the job. He was a terrible choice for a novel with multiple characters who demonstrated passion in their arguments for and against the thematic issues discussed in the story.

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Wonderful!

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

Reviewed: 10-07-17

I am normally a bit reticent about autobiographies but thoughtI’d give this a go as it has had such wonderful reviews. They are all deserved. This is a lovely book and beautifully read with extracts from live shows cut in.

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Entertainment survived the reading

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

Reviewed: 11-14-11

Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained tell a fantastic story involving dozens of characters and take place over several years in a volume of space several hundred light years in diameter. Peter F Hamilton spins an enthralling yarn that manages to combine high speed rail with an inter-stellar civilisation, an alien invasion, a police investigation and complex politics.

Unfortunately, the reading doesn't do justice to the text. John Lee is good but it was always going to be a very hard job to have one man read all those characters with all those accents for a story that runs over 80 hours between the two books. Accents aren't always consistent across characters and there's one Welsh character who seemed to have grown up in the sub-continent at first, before moving northwest to Cardiff. It's also jarring to have the narration portions of the text read in an English accent with occassional American pronunciations.

Frankly, this is a story that deserved a theatrical reading by a cast rather than just one man. Nonetheless, the story is strong enough to survive the variable narration quality and still be entertaining.

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