The Folded Sky

By: Elizabeth Bear

Narrated by: Sarah Slimani

Dr. Sunya Song embarks on an interstellar journey across the Milky Way to connect with the artificial intelligence known as Baomind, a moon-sized entity that holds the key to humanity’s survival amidst cosmic challenges and unforeseen threats in Hugo Award–winning author Elizabeth Bear’s next epic science fiction novel.

Information doesn’t want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace.

Sunya Song’s job is to stop that from happening.

She’s an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files.

But now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her—along with her teenage children and alien wife—halfway across the galaxy to preserve the data and aid in the retrieval of the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called Baomind. As vast as a stellar system, the Baomind orbits a dying red giant, and the star’s time has nearly ended.

The isolated research station and its small fleet of ships come under attack by fanatic Freeport pirates who believe that artificial intelligence is an abomination that must be destroyed, putting the lives of Sunya and her family at risk.

Tens of thousands of lightyears from home, isolated from all help, Sunya is the only one who can save them all.

Critic reviews

"Slimani’s vibrant narration complements this character-driven sci-fi mystery...A perfect pairing of performance and writing makes listening a treat.

Another Sci-Fi Book where I was stressed for Cats

I really enjoyed the exploration of emotions and complex relationships. The whole concept of a device that helps with emotional regulation helps with the depth of exploration. The author explores a lot of the internal conflict of emotions and thinking through the why of them.

I love the cats and how they are part of the stories. Honestly while I loved them I was also incredibly stressed something bad would happen to them.

There was a lot more physics in this book and harder for me to follow but I enjoyed it.

Great concepts, but not her best story

I love Elizabeth Bear. This story wasn’t her best. I really didn’t like the main character and I just felt that the story worked to hard to be a cliff hanger at the end of each chapter to the point of feeling annoying. I ended up speed reading the story to the end just to finish it.

Not the best of Bear

The ingredients of this tale are good, but delivered underbaked. The pace is jerky and the transitions are often confusing. Much of the inner dialogue was repetitive, losing emotional flavor with every repeat.

just could not get into it

the author throws out so many concepts at once that even chapter 1 is difficult to follow and almost no character development. I listen to lots of books. this one is just not doing it for me.

The kind of reminder we need when things look bleak

This story has beautiful moment after beautiful moment of people from different communities helping each other that are treated as so routine and expected that they don't bear remarking upon. We need that so much in our fiction, so we can build it into our reality. I need it in my fiction: the reminder that people can and do sacrifice for each other routinely. That we can protect each other, even if we don't think of ourselves as warriors.