Polostan Audiobook By Neal Stephenson cover art

Polostan

Bomb Light, Book 1

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Polostan

By: Neal Stephenson
Narrated by: January LaVoy
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About this listen

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Termination Shock and Cryptonomicon, the first installment in a monumental new series—an expansive historical epic of intrigue and international espionage, presaging the dawn of the Atomic Age.

The first installment in Neal Stephenson’s Bomb Light cycle, Polostan follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.

Set against the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, Polostan is an inventive, richly detailed, and deeply entertaining historical epic, and the start of a captivating new series from Neal Stephenson.

©2024 Neal Stephenson (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers
Historical Military War & Military World War II Espionage
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What listeners say about Polostan

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Entertaining from Start to Finish

The story left me hanging and wanting more. I love the heroine, and Neal Stephenson’s tale is chock full of scientific history and witty tale-telling of Russian, American, and European relations in the forties and fifties. I thoroughly enjoyed part one of Stephanson’s new trilogy.

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Finally, Neal gets back to delivering a good story

Neal Stephenson used to be my absolute favorite author. Bar none. I own literally every one of his books. Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde are some of my favorite books of all time. I own them in every format possible and have read and listened to them all multiple times.

That said, it's been a while since he's delivered a book worth reading. Fall was a disjointed mess that murdered some of my favorite characters in nonsensical ways. Termination Shock was a pile of woke garbage attached to a rambling story based on leftist wet dreams. Polostan was literally his last chance with me.

Fortunately, he made good.

Polostan is the first book in an extremely promising series where Neal is doing what he does best - inserting fascinating hard science into historical fiction with interesting characters.

The book, and story, doesn't quite reach the great level, but it is very good. Not quite getting over that "great" line is due to the story focusing heavily on Dawn/Aurora (who is fascinating) while the supporting cast, mostly interesting so far, all having very brief bits. They are generally cleverly written and compelling, but the circumstances of the time and place in history leads to short, and abruptly ended, stints spent with them. I'm assuming far more time will be spent on other characters as the story develops and moves out of such a perilous locale.

January LaVoy is a competent and skilled narrator and works extremely well for the main character. She has good vocal range and timing while delivering the appropriate emotion and accent to all of the voices. She does fall a bit short with masculine voices, but this is common even for the most skilled female narrators and isn't a failing.

Some of the negative criticism I've seen could have been taken verbatim from the initial reviews for the Baroque Cycle, and are, in my opinion, just as invalid now as they were then. This is the first book in a large story and the standard single-novel tropes just aren't going to apply. The story will develop across multiple books and expecting a clear-cut beginning, middle, and end is not rational. This IS the beginning.

Overall, it is a very promising start to another fascinating story from Stephenson. I'm looking forward to the next installment!

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New hero!

 The construction of the main character Dawn Rae in the light of the history she grew up in and the forces that shape her nature, abilities, suffering and viewpoint, show a consistency that Stevenson has always created in the characters he puts forward

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loving the characters and plot

kept me wondering what was gonna happen, I'm left wanting more. I relate to dawn a bit and Im curious how her story will play out. the writing detailing the how America once was especially during the century of progress left me daydreaming what it must of been like, to see all those modern technologies that we now find common,seeing it all for the first time. I wonder if dawn will continue to be a communist or if she'll have a change of heart. I wonder what will happen when she sees the fall of Soviet Union, if she even survived to see it fall. she reminds me of the elder women in my family the ones who went through similar things while in their youth, women who survived trials and tribulations as youths and had to make decisions that affected them and their descendents til this day.

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Depends on sequel

Ok. Not the best but depends on sequel which lowers overall rating . Would be nice to have more in a single

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Rich storytelling: Kept me listening to see what comes next. I want more already!

Stephenson, as always, does a great job of making character development integral tothe plot, and of vividly describing the scenes and action.

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Political Intrigue, Science and Polo in the Cold War

This is a great start to a series, can’t wait for the next installment. Dawn/Aurora is a fascinating character and the political machinations set amongst the scientific discoveries and culture of the 1930s makes for Neal Stephenson at his best. (I’m just waiting for Enoch Root, a Waterhouse or a Shaftoe to make an appearance)

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10/10 on rich character, cracking plot and action, and profound scientific and political history!

What a character is Aurora!!! Stephenson has grown and leveled up; hard for me to say, since I love his entire body of work so much. But he excellently treats this history of the USSR (and underground history from the US Great Depression.)

(You can read a novelization of the same period and an American woman and her offspring, like Aurora an American communist (but Aurora is learning the hard way) in Sana Krasnikov’s _Patriots_, also set in both Magnetogorsk and back in the USA, so coincidentally similar to the events and settings of Polostan!)

Aurora strikes me as an improved, deeper treatment of the heroine America Shaftoe from Cryptonomicon.)

I love this whole novel.

I believe Dick is Richard Feynman, which means he is 15 years old when Aurora meets him.

Fantastic capture of Physics and realistic, accurate capture of the scientific process and zeitgeist in the 1930s, leading up to the invention of the atomic bomb. I suspect that’s where this series is going. I’m all in!

One tragic flaw in this audiobook: unforgivable mispronunciations of the Russian names, throughout. Like nails on chalkboard.

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The ending

Did not see it coming and it was delightful. Thank you Neal! You’ve been my favorite author since you first started writing. Cryptonomicon is my top and both read and listened to it multiple time’s. I managed hedge funds, am a software developer, and a crypto investor so it was prophetic for me. But this one is special for a different reason. On Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale on a motorcycle quest across the country, where the Hohokam would hike to the top on their vision quests, I received a clear message of my life purpose. “An Usher for the Divine Feminine.” Took 20 more years to begin to understand. So I really appreciate seeing a man take the chance to dive into feminine consciousness and create a female hero in a patriarchal world. Brandon Sanderson is wonderful at it too so if anyone loved this book for similar reasons you should check out Skyward or Yumi or Tress or one of my favorites, Mistborn. Love you dude and thanks for providing some of the best grist for my imagination mill.

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Not what I was thinking…

Very good book and well written, but not like any of his other books! And I have listened to all of them a few times

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2 people found this helpful