Thank you so much to net galley and everyone involved for sending me a a copy of this audiobook. It was super unquie and enjoyable to listen to!

I love sci-fi adventures and Beyond Kuiper is great. Poor humans, no one wants to talk to us. But when an "accident" at CERN leave Bernard as the sole survivor, he tries to tell the world that aliens are behind it. He is laughed out of a job, then comes back with his own company. If you like Star Trek, you will love!

As a sci-fi fan, I had hopes for this one. The concept had me intrigued from the beginning, but ultimately, the convoluted storyline became more tedious than entertaining. I tried slowing down my listening speed from my normal pace and still found myself zoning out. I still think the concept has promise, but I wouldn’t recommend this book to friends.

I tried, I really did. I can't put my finger on it, but I could not engage with this book and had to abandon it about halfway through. This was hard, because I rarely fail to finish a book.

The narration was awkwardly dramatized, and didn't fit the writing style.

The story was difficult to follow, and I often had to check to ensure the audio chapters weren't getting jumbled up, like they did when NetGalley first started hosting audiobooks. (They were not.)

Science fiction is my favorite genre, so it was a huge disappointment that this book didn't work for me.

DNF. *sigh* This might be one of my biggest disappoints yet. I had seen Beyond Kuiper featured in a few email newsletters and had added it to my wishlist, so when it not only popped up here on NetGalley but I was also approved for access, I was beyond stoked!

What needs to be said painfully clear, is that this audiobook is DRAMATIZED. It's performed by a handful of voice-actors, contains a ton of background noise, and music. The description boasts the original score, which is cool in theory, but in reality it sounds like a garbley mess and is distracting. Do the producers of this not realize how people listen to audiobooks? I audio-read while cleaning, driving, watching my kids play. The last thing I want while driving is to hear garbled sirens in my book, or pitchy static that is supposed to be "engine noise" or something while I'm going for a walk with a book. My sweet spot for audio-reading is 2.25x speed, but this sounds like a mess over 1.5x.

The dramatization also makes it very silly. This is labeled as Adult Fiction, but up to the point I listened it reads like Young Adult. The environmental/"humans are so dumb and violent" themes are more than heavy handed. At this point in 2020, we've had so much fiction with these themes that have been well done, that I could not bear to waste my time with this one.

To be clear, I love sci-fi. I just finished The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and A Girl from Nowhere by James Maxwell that I adored. Beyond Kuiper sounds like my kind of book, but it's just too silly and the audio is a huge miss.

Thank you for the free audiobook in exchange for my honest review, NetGalley and Podium Audio.

I was really excited when I first heard of Beyond Kuiper and I am really glad that I got to listen to the audiobook version. From my understanding, the book has a collection of illustrations while the audiobook comes with a soundtrack, more on that later. As excited as I was, I wasn't sure i was going to like this, to be honest. I love science fiction stories but by no means do I like hard sci-fi. I've tried in the past to read books that have great reviews and high recommendations from friends but ultimately I get lost trying to keep up with overly complicated universes. This book has been getting a lot of online attention due to it's link with Heavy Metal magazine. Is it hype or is it legit epic. Due to the online attention I decided to give it a go and I am glad I did!

I found the story to be fairly straight forward. Nothing felt overly complicated. I think the authors did a great job pacing things out and leading into information at the right time. The character building was great and I found the characters to be likable and to have depth. After each chapter, there was a sub chapter with definitions performed by one of the main characters of the chapter. As someone who isn't into hard sci-fi, this was kinda helpful but not necessary as it would end up pausing the story for a bit. Nice idea, just not sure if helped as much as it was intended.

The story was great and I really enjoyed it. I was a bit disappointed when the story ended with about a quarter of the audiobook still left when I looked down on my phone. The last quarter or so of the audiobook is the soundtrack/score of this project. Great as an idea but I would have happily traded half or so of those track in return to getting more story. The reason I say this is because I felt the story was building up only to get cut off at the end. This is the first in a 10 part story so there is more to come but to me the story felt like it ended prematurely which prevented me from giving this book 5 stars.

Beyond Kuiper's sound design really brought the story to another level. I enjoyed the soundscapes and sound effects which made scenarios and environments come to life. I think the narration was solid but could have been better with a different voice talent, maybe somebody a bit more seasoned to inject a bit more life into the performance.

Overall, I loved it! I'm a fan! I have the wallpaper on my phone to prove it. I'm looking forward to the next audiobook and the entire saga. I highly recommend Beyond Kuiper, the audiobook is fantastic and I'm sure the book is as well.

I want to thank Matthew Medney, John Connelly, Kyle Perrin, Dylan Sprouse, George C. Romero, Podium Audio and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

It was hard to get in the story. I had a hard time while listening to it. At first, I really liked the background music, but later it became more of a nuisance. It feels like watching a anime or show. This book was unable to pique my interest. Had to DNF after reading 10 percent.

I really enjoyed the stories but sadly was underwhelmed by the narration as it left me disinterested

This was the first time I listened to an audiobook, and I have a lot of positive, but some negative feedbacks as well. I would like to start with the positives:

+ I don't know if it is standard for every audiobook, but I really liked that there were music and extra sounds that made the experience very immersive. I also appreciated that the soundtrack was available with the audiobook separately.
+ The narrator's voice was nice to listen to.
+ The dialogues were very seamless, felt natural.
+ I also liked how the footnotes were added, it made it easier to understand things.
+ By the end, when I knew what was going on, I really liked the plot.

As for the negatives, most of them concern the beginning:
- As I didn't have the text in front of me, some parts were hard to follow, especially the alien scenes. It made it difficult to follow along, and I had to rewind some parts when my attention drifted away.
- In the beginning, I felt very confused about what was going on. It might have been better to start with more exposition, to understand the characters better.
- As someone who doesn't read sci-fi often, I can say that this book is for the more hard-core fans, or at least that was how I felt. I'm sure someone who is more familiar with the genre wouldn't have been as confused as I was at parts, especially the beginning.
- The characters felt 2D at times, although it didn't bother me that much, as it wasn't a character-driven book.

Overall, I liked the experience, though I don't think I would listen to the book again.

3.5/5