The Clouds of Venus

Solar System Series, Book 5

By: Brandon Q. Morris, Ashton McLee

Narrated by: Steven Vox

Where life as we know it is impossible, the real adventure begins.

Venus is a hostile planet, covered by active volcanoes. Nevertheless, NASA launches an expedition to search for life there, because the dense clouds of Earth’s hot sister could offer good conditions for it. Their specially developed airship cruises in the clouds of Venus to serve as a research platform for its four astronauts.

When they discover dangerous activities on the glowing-hot surface, there can only be one explanation: A highly sophisticated life form must be at work.

©2021 Brandon Q. Morris (P)2022 Brandon Q. Morris

when sibilants rule the universe

more of a soap opera than hard science fiction, with narration that sounds like a den of snakes; a sibilant ends almost every phrase. I'll not buy another novel with Steven Vox as the reader. with a name like that, perhaps he is an AI ...

fun, but silence your phone dawg

story: good stuff. classic BQM - international scientific spaceship crew, shady corpos doing shady corpos things back on Earth, mysterious things happening on another planet, a future where AIs are highly developed and actually useful (and mercifully not trying to take over humanity, so if you're wary of current real world AI nonsense don't worry it's a breath of fresh air in that regard), space emergencies, interesting concepts, harrowing moments alternating with plenty of cool science and humor. it's a good time.

narrator: Steven Vox isn't the worst narrator of BQMs books (looking at you Rafael Colindres, couldn't even make it through the first 30 seconds of The Jupiter Catastrophe) but goddang how do you narrate an entire 9 hour book and not notice your iPhone dinging repeatedly?? phone should have been off and failing that, the interrupted segments should have been re-recorded. I'm 5.5 hours in and I think we're up to five or six notifications so far. will update review with a final count when I finish.

Can the narrator silence his phone please?

Usual decent story by Brandon. His prolificity is starting to make his books read like soap opera episodes, but I accept that as a consequence of getting ‘more Brandon’ … which I like.
However, there were several times when the narrator’s phone pinged during the recording, which shows that quality control went out of the window in the rush to get it out … which is at best sloppy and at worst unprofessional … not to mention annoying - as you stop the audio on your phone to check it for messages!?!