My Rating: ★★★½☆

Author: Jeremy Robinson

Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer

Publisher: Spring Brook Audio

Total Running Time: 11 hours 9 minutes

 

My Review

Story: Beneath is one of those stories that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go. It opens in the arctic when a meteorite is seen hurtling across the sky. After the meteorite was located and it was found to contain extraterrestrial microbial life I knew I was hooked. I remember listening to the description of what happened to the first man to come in contact with the microbes and thinking “Whoa, this is going to be cool.”

The book is fast paced and fun and made for great listening while relaxing on the beach.

One problem that I had while listening to this story was how eager everyone was to travel to one of Jupiter’s moons. Currently I think it would take at least 13 months for a spacecraft to reach Jupiter. So the entire team was willing to commit two years of their life in just the commute to and from Europa. It is not until after the team has committed to the trip that they learn that it will only take 3 months. I think that if I were either an oceanographer, biologist or geologist and I was approached with an offer to travel to one of Jupiter’s moons I probably would have told them to forget about it. (My wife would kill me!) I suppose there are probably those out there that would jump at the chance to go but when listening to this book it seemed unlikely that every member of Connelly’s team would be so eager to sign up. However, after finishing the book and learning more about the relationship between the team members I think it is much easier to understand why each person decided to go.

There were also times in the book when I felt like yelling “Don’t do that you idiot!” or “Would you just get the heck out of there already?”. Some of the characters just seemed to lack common sense. Especially Connelly and Peterson! They allow their pursuit of science to compromise both the safety of themselves and their entire crew. As frustrating as these things seemed at the time I find myself looking back on all of those situations and I realize that they did in fact add a great deal of excitement and suspense to the overall experience.

To summarize, Beneath was a really fun listen. It was refreshing to listen to a book with no expectations of what the crew would find. Once they hit Europa anything was possible and it was nice to be immersed in such an environment. I will definitely look for more Jeremy Robinson titles in the future.

Thoughts on the audio production: This was the first book that I have listened to that was narrated by Jeffrey Kafer. One of the things I noticed when listening to Jeffrey narrate was that he seemed to alter his voice in such a way that it conveyed distance between the main character in the section and the secondary characters. I might be crazy but it felt like I was able to figure out how far apart all the characters were by just closely listening to the narration. Maybe I’m crazy.. anyone else know what I’m talking about? Anyway, I felt like Mr. Kafer’s performance was exceptional and added a layer of depth to all of the characters.

Overall: Definitely a fun book. Worth picking up and taking to the beach. Lots of suspense, mystery, aliens, etc.

Buy your copy here: Beneath by Jeremy Robinson at Spring Brook Audio

Disclosure: I received this audiobook as a review copy from the publisher