Great Sky River cover art

Great Sky River

Galactic Center, Book 3

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Great Sky River

By: Gregory Benford
Narrated by: Arthur Morey, John Rubinstein, Tom Schiff, Vikas Adam, Gabrielle de Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child, Toby, of the Bishop Trib,e are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling “mechs”. Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity – neither organic nor cybernetic or living matter – reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen. But can the fallen descendent of starfarers understand this being in time - and seize his only chance to save his family and mankind from final annihilation?

©1987 Abbenford Associates (P)2012 Audible, Inc. First Contact Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Exploration Space Opera
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Good book, light spoilers so keep that in mind. I wish Benford gave the chandelier humans more credit when it came to a bunch of robots showing up and terraforming the planet, maybe I've been reading too much war hammer but I was shocked when the humies didn't murder the mechs on sight, or any time during the many years it takes to terraform a planet; especially when it started spoiling their crop yields.

I also wish there was a better description of mech combat/the weapons used but this isn't a deal breaker and I found myself mostly satisfied on that front regardless.

All in all this is a solid read and would have been mindblowing back in the day when it released, even now it stands up to today's modern sci-fi. As a genre I wish hard sci-fi was more popular but I can understand why people go for the Star Wars style space opera stuff.

Nice addition to the series (I skipped 1 and 2 because f all that.) I'm excited to get onto Tides of Light which I read a while ago but want to brush up on because I remember it was heavy, and then find out where these lunatics end up after all that.

Decent

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Slow start but getting really good in time. Enjoyed it. Getting next part for sure.

Slow start but getting really good in time.

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