Dust Audiobook By Ari Marmell cover art

Dust

The Obelisks Series, Book 1

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Dust

By: Ari Marmell
Narrated by: Cindy Kay
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For Flight Engineer Cynthia Han and her fellow astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 81 has proved as mundane as space travel ever gets.

Yes, this would be Cynthia’s final NASA mission, for reasons she has so far kept from the rest of the crew; and yes, the latest billionaire “space tourist” has managed to irritate everyone on board. Still, none of them could have asked for a smoother experience.

Until the morning they wake up to silence. All communication with Earth, gone. From half a dozen different agencies with multiple installations and redundancies across the globe, there is simply… nothing.

And through the viewports of the ISS, only the thick veil of churning, lightning-veined dust to suggest the Earth remains at all.

Now, without ground control, without the proper telemetries or calculations or even reliable visuals, Cynthia and the rest of Expedition 81 must make their way home. For most, it will be the most fraught and the most frightening task of their lives.

But it will be nothing compared to the world that now awaits them beyond the dust.

©2022 Ari Marmell (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing Fiction First Contact Horror Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Scary
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It held my interest to the end. I just wish it didn’t turn into the zombie apocalypse at the end, not that I have seen or read any of those.

Pretty good

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Outstanding Sci-Fi Horror! Dark and original with excellent narration. I burned through this one in a couple of listens.

Diamond in the Rough

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A sci fi horror should be read with a sense horror. This narrator souplike she’s reading a
Children’s book. It’s not “little house on the prairie”. Astronauts on the ISS return to earth after losing all contact to find the planet’s population decimated, no reasonable explanation. So many other narrators would have handled this better.

Interesting story, horrible narrator.

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The story was interesting at the beginning but became repetitive about half way through. The absolutely terrible female narrator made every supporting character sound like a cowboy on qua

Not the Best

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This was SO AWFUL. The idiocy of the main character was an insult to competent female leaders and commanders everywhere. She lost IQ points during the first chapter and continued to leak them
through chapter ten whereupon I couldn’t take it anymore. Her inner dialogue drove me absolutely nuts with irritation.
The narrator did not help matters with her whiny, whispery voice which reminiscent of some mindless adolescent trying to gossip quietly while high on coke at 0300, and not a NASA commander.
The general idea of the story was attention getting but alas, it turned out to be a serious disappointment.

By chapter ten, even I had a headache

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I wish I’d read the comments before investing my credit, but my eagerness for a Halloween thriller overruled my usual caution. The tropes of all the typical modern female power fantasy are present by end of the first half. Strong female lead who’s brilliant at everything she does? Check. Evil racist white guy villain? Check
Obviously this novel was not written for me, a straight white man who loves science fiction and horror novels. This is written for teenage girls who kinda like sciencey stuff. It’s a shame because it almost captured my interest but when the main character, who’d been in space for half a year, over powers another character, who’d been in space for only a couple weeks, I’d had enough.(I can only turn my brain off so much)
This says nothing of the narrator who, even at 1.2x, reads in a monotonous drawl that it’s hard to stay focused. And, who miss reads consistently. An example would be when two characters greet each other, “How are?” “Well how are you?” not “Well, how are you?”

Strong female character power fantasy

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