FALLING FREE (Vorkosigan Saga #4) (audiobook) by Lois McMaster Bujold





Audiobook published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio.. 

Originally published in book form in 1988.
Read by Grover Gardner.
Duration: 8 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Falling Free is entry #4 in a long series of published books and short stories.

Leo Graf is an engineer. Actually, he's more than an engineer. He's a space engineer - he builds habitats, space stations, space ships and more. And - he's really good at it.

He has been brought by his company to a space station in orbit around an out of the way space colony to teach outer space welding. But, his students are not what he expects.

He finds the station has nearly 1,000 genetically modified residents that are named quaddies. They are designed to work in no gravity environments - they have no legs. Instead of legs there is a second set of arms. They can grip onto something and still have two or three hands to work with - especially welding together new space stations and expansions to current space stations. 

Graf finds out that the quaddies are not considered to be people. Instead, they are company property. They are an experiment and when experiments run their course, they can be trashed. 

So, when Graf finds out that the quaddie experiment has been made outdated by a new technology he has to decide if he lets the company destroy 1,000 genetically modified people or if he intervenes...

What I thought:

I really appreciated the old school sci-fi feel to the book. It just felt like a book from the 1950s or 1960s. 

The premise of the book was compelling, but as the book went along, more and more obstacles had to be surmounted that seemed to be put in place just to make the book longer rather than spur on character growth. There was a long part of the book that reminded me of the scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie The Infinity War where Thor builds his battle axe to fight Thanos. Actually, looking at the publication dates, the scene with Thor is reminiscent of the scene from the book... except that the scene with Thor did not drag on, was not boring (it had very funny parts) and it moved the plot forward with character growth. The scene from the book just drug things out for about an hour. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. Not a bad book, not a great book. It can be found on Amazon.com here:   FALLING FREE (audiobook) by Lois McMaster Bujold.

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