The Artifact Audiobook By David Collins cover art

The Artifact

Virtual Voice Sample

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The Artifact

By: David Collins
Narrated by: Virtual Voice
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This title uses virtual voice narration

Virtual voice is computer-generated narration for audiobooks.

About this listen

Benjamin, Mark, and Chloe were all set to graduate college in a few weeks.

Ben had ordered a strange object from eBay to use as cover art for a book he was writing.

It looked really cool, like a slightly charred old military artifact from 70 years ago. It was possibly part of an engine. After cleaning it up (it was found in a cow field), he placed the strange device on his dorm room desk directly over the wireless charging port. That woke it up.

Unknown to him, the disabled starship hiding on the moon could now communicate with the missing part.

The ship needed two things:
1) The missing part.
2) A crew to pass itself off as a manned ship (AIs were not supposed to control ships autonomously).

Now, after finishing college, they need to find a way to get the ship to land somewhere safe, supply it, and return the missing component, the artifact.

They suspect the most challenging part will be getting into space. They soon find that the real problem is what awaits them when they reach the alien trading center.
Adventure Humorous Transportation Military

What listeners say about The Artifact

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good but easy mistake could improved upon

The written storyline was easy to follow and would have been great. There are a few problems that should be fixed to make it more enjoyable for the listener. The AI generated voice needs some upgrades with how to pronounce words, sentences, and emotional inflections. As other people have said the longer than necessary pauses take away from the enjoyment. There were several occurrence where a word or part of a sentence was garbled to unintelligible levels. I did wait to leave this review after finishing the second book just to give it a fair shot. Overall a story that is good but could be better. This being sure to narration issues as stated above. Even with all that still wondering if there will be more than the two books? I would still like to here the continuation of the story.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

FUN! Light Comedy

I really enjoyed this story, reminds me of"Have Space Suit Will Travel" The light hearted story makes a great bedtime story. The story ending is enough,not sure it needs a sequel.

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

less violence

a reasonable and believable account that had less war and violence while telling a very good story.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

artifact

well written, ai voice passable a few hiccups but you need to be fast to catch, I made me laugh and had plausible space required actions

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story, Narration was nearly perfect computer

This is a good story concept and fun throughout. The narration had some long pauses between paragraphs and chapters, maybe 1-2 seconds too long, not extreme going into minutes of silence. The male computer voice had a small amount of inflection for exclamations and questions (Neutral Caucasian American English would be best description). Narrator did have the issue with bow being pronounced like tow or like wow but that and a couple other words were rare.

Speech was clear and well enunciated without background distractions, which is better than some of the meat narrators of audiobooks I've suffered through.

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

wow! fun story not ruined by virtual voice!

I really enjoyed this story. I liked the modern references and actually...plausible premise. although there were a few times the v.v was inconsistent....and I am sure the story would be greatly enhanced with human readers... it is the first v.v. I have listened to the entire book. so, great job!

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

Solid book

Great story tilling KUDOS to the authors and their team!!
Looking forward to II. Some day we may progress to levels story, Elon get busy😙😙😇🤟

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

While the story is good the virtual voice reading was horrible

This was my 1st virtual voice book and based on this experience I will never get another
Sentences run on, can’t tell when different characters are speaking and when ever numbers and letters are in a string of words the audible just fades out
While I enjoyed the story, the audible ruined this book for me

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Deus ex Machina to death

Everything in the story that could have been interesting or emotional or challenging was walked through in such a matter of fact manner that everything in this story was boring as dusty cardboard.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A glimpse of the future of digital voices

The Story: There were a lot of details included but they did not accomplish the goal of immersion that I believe the author intended. The lack of descriptive language meant to illicit emotional connection made the story feel lifeless. It was as if the whole story was told from the perspective of the AI rather than the intended MC. All major plot points were abrupt and dry with no build up and no emotion.

The Narration: it was impossible to tell who was talking as the text does’t indicate speaking characters in most cases and the digital narrator doesn’t change voice profiles for any characters. This would be the big selling point of a digital narration to me. You can switch voices and add accents at will for every single character at no extra cost. Instead of playing to the strength, it was one of the worst parts of the book. There were glitches in the voice which made those words completely unintelligible, but that wasn’t as bad as the lack of change between characters, or the bland language of the story. I was disappointed the producer didn’t bother to have the glitches fixed before releasing it though.

I can see the possibilities for future voice narration, but it needs more work around context detection and emotional undertones. And change the voices for each character!

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