HAYDEN'S WORLD: VOLUME 1 (audiobook) by S.D. Falchetti

 









Book published in 2018.
Audiobook published in 2023 by S.D. Falchetti.
Read by Shamaan Casey.
Duration: 7 hours, 59 minutes.
Unabridged.

Hayden's World: Volume 1 is a collection of 5 short stories in a single "universe" centering around a corporation that is in the forefront in the exploration of our solar system. 

Roughly the first half of the book is about top executives of the company and their new drive system that will push a ship to nearly light speed. There are a lot of high-minded speeches about mankind and the need to keep pushing boundaries. When I say speeches, I mean literal speeches lifted from testimony to some sort of U.N. body. 

Speeches are not the best way to introduce a book, in my opinion. The first part is just slow. I nearly quit listening to the audiobook multiple times in the first hour or so. The first story has an exciting, game-changing twist at the end that is simply dropped.

The last two stories are great examples of hard science fiction involving a pirate and a little bit of romance in orbit around Uranus and Saturn. I liked the fact that rather than having true space warships, war is waged with tools and work equipment because space is a place for resource extraction, not a place for interstellar fleets to duke it out.

When you listen to an audiobook, sometimes you notice the overuse of a word or a phrase that you might not notice reading. In this case, the author really likes the word "scintillating" when combined with lasers. Turns out that there was a lot of laser shooting in one story and they all seemed to be "scintillating," not brilliant, shimmering, gleaming, dazzling or any other word that means shiny.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HAYDEN'S WORLD: VOLUME 1 by S.D. Falchetti.

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