James Smythe

A fascinating story of how the world would react if a mysterious voice was heard by everyone at the same time around the world from no immediately identifiable source.

Whilst a very slow book and by no means a thriller in style - something that will cause this not to appeal to everyone, the different viewpoints of people from various societies, backgrounds and beliefs are what make this such a fascinating read. Expertly handled by Smythe, I was engrossed in how he portrayed the different reactions and how hard hitting the impact was in the few words that the "voice" spoke.

Is it God saying goodbye? Is it aliens? Is it a mass hallucination? Government conspiracy perhaps? Well, that would be telling, but if you like thought provoking sci fi which focuses on how the unknown affect people and society, then this is one of the best conceptually. It may not be for everyone, but 10 years after reading it, the impact has stayed with me and that is mark of something pretty special.… (mere)

A fascinating story of how the world would react if a mysterious voice was heard by everyone at the same time around the world from no immediately identifiable source.

Whilst a very slow book and by no means a thriller in style - something that will cause this not to appeal to everyone, the different viewpoints of people from various societies, backgrounds and beliefs are what make this such a fascinating read. Expertly handled by Smythe, I was engrossed in how he portrayed the different reactions and how hard hitting the impact was in the few words that the "voice" spoke.

Is it God saying goodbye? Is it aliens? Is it a mass hallucination? Government conspiracy perhaps? Well, that would be telling, but if you like thought provoking sci fi which focuses on how the unknown affect people and society, then this is one of the best conceptually. It may not be for everyone, but 10 years after reading it, the impact has stayed with me and that is mark of something pretty special.… (mere)

Liked this a lot more on the second time reading it, maybe bacause the unlikeable characters didn't bother me as much this time around. These books might also just benefit from being read multiple times.
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Original review:
Three stars for a book that had the most misleading synopsis on the back cover I've read in a while. I get that you don't want to give away too much in a book like this, but creating completely false expectations for the reader shouldn't be the end result either.

I do think that Smythe is a good author, but when you are good at creating annoying characters, the book overall reads really whiny. I would have gotten more out of this had I felt more sympathy toward a single character in the story. Now I just kept going in the vague hope that the ending would be better than the ending of The Explorer (spoiler: it isn't.)

Still, I do hope Smythe keeps going with the series, if only just to find out if there's an actual end game to all this… (mere)