Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

I’ve listened to the first five broadcasts of Scott Sigler’s podcast novel Earthcore and I’ve been trying to decide when to write a review of it. On the one hand it feel’s wrong to review something at such an early point, but on the other, I don’t want to review it after the podcast is all finished. Well it think by this point I’ve got a good feel for what Earthcore is like and what I can expect from the remaining episodes, so let me offer a short review.

Earthcore is an audiobook released via podcasting in weekly episodes of varying length. It is not a weekly audio drama. I draw the distinction because Earthcore isn’t paced the way a weekly drama would be. It was written as a book and so the pacing in podcast release can be uneven.

Earthcore is read by its author Scott Sigler who does a solid job of narrating. While I don’t feel he hits the levels that trained actors can, he is at worst workmanlike and frequently better than that. My only real criticism is that I’m not that keen on his accents for some of the characters. But if that’s the worst criticism I can point at the audio production of a free audio book, we’re on solid ground.

Now onto the book itself. Earthcore has a real “two fisted tales” vibe to it. This isn’t an intellectual tale, its definitely action oriented. The characters are broadly drawn but not to the extent they lack depth. In fact Sigler does a good job of giving you a reason to take interest in even the more unpleasant characters in Earthcore.

If you’re looking for hard SF, then this isn’t going to be the podcast for you. In truth the science fiction element has (up till this point at least) stayed very firmly in the background. I’m reminded a tv movie actually in the way things are developing. We have mysterious deaths, a mysterious knife and mysterious creatures. That’s it so far. However, there is a feeling of impending disaster building over the whole storyline and enough questions being raised that I’m very curious to find out how things develop.

Perhaps the most telling fact is that I’m 5 episodes in and plan on listening to episode 6 tomorrow.