Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

By: Steven Erikson

Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard

A provocative, beautiful and visionary novel of first contact by New York Times bestselling author Steven Erikson.

Imagine a First Contact without contact, and an alien arrival where no aliens show up. Imagine the sudden appearance of exclusion zones all over the planet, into which no humans are allowed. Imagine an end to all violence, from the schoolyard bully to nations at war. Imagine an end to borders, an end to all crime. Imagine a world where hate has no outlet and the only harm one can do is to oneself. Imagine a world transformed, but with no guidance and no hint of what’s coming next. What would you do? How would you feel? What questions can you ask - what questions dare you ask - when the only possible answers come from the all-too-human face in your mirror?

On the day of First Contact, it won’t be about them. It will be about us.

©2018 Steven Erikson (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

the dialogue across the characters is masterful

an amazing piece of work, an incredible job of capturing society through the characters. Really amazing Mr. Erikson, I hope it helps open our eyes!

completely new look at first contact

while the voice performance left me wanting more the story itself and the writing is fantastic. Erickson provides thought provoking dialogue, philosophical viewpoints, and timely humor.

Tedious polemic

I LOVE Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series, so I was particularly disappointed to find he’d fallen into the Boomer trap of disguising his trite pop-philosophical dogma as a novel. This book is boring and preachy. Go read the Malazan books instead — they are sheer genius.

a good rough draft...

but it needs a lot of refining. and the narrator mispronouncing names and words got to be distracting.

Unfinishable

I've listened to many Steve Erikson books, Malazan book of the fallen being one of my favorite series.
I couldn't finish this one. Not sure what was worse, the narrator or the lack of an actual story.

Nothing but preaching

I tried hard to get through this. There was no story just utopian preaching.

The lectures jumped from topic to topic with no logical progression. Just pronouncements of how the author thinks the universe should be.

Worst Narration Ever

The narrator ruined this book. The sample does not do justice to how bad the narration will get. Narrator is fine when reading in her normal voice but when reading dialog does cartoonish voices, you get a little of that in the sample but trust me it gets MUCH worse. I will not listen to another book narrated by Laurence Bouvard. Unfortunately, I bought this book on sale and cannot return it. I will be ignoring Audible Sales from now on. Other bad reviews mentioned politics, I wish they had warned me about the narration!

A really bad caricature of modern politics.

A rubber stamp of left wing ideals with no self reflection. No real opposition argument.