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

less violence

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I almost deleted. After a few chapters I almost deleted but soldiered on. I’m having fun listening at this point. Don’t give up.

Keep going

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The story actually has promise. it started quickly and moved pretty quickly as well through the story. I feel like the author left out a great amount of detail though. It goes from one part of the story to the next with very little detail as to how they got there. This book is also read by VIRTUAL VOICE. I would say do not bother with virtual voice. The technology is not ready to read a book.

Good start to a book

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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.

FUN! Light Comedy

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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

artifact

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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.

Great story, Narration was nearly perfect computer

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Voice was very badly read. Computerized speech was absolutely terrible and very difficult to follow. It also made no sense on many occasions.

Computerized vocal reading and telling the story is terrible.

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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.

Good but easy mistake could improved upon

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the author needs to learn the difference between a clip and a magazine. and he is beyond naive about governments.e

ai voice sux

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The robotic reader is not ready for prime time. The story moves quickly with a 20-something's understanding of how people and life works. In that frame, I enjoyed the imagination in the story telling. Did I mention, the robot voice is NOT ready for prime time.

robotic reader

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