Mercury

The planet closest to our Sun, Mercury is a rocky, barren, heat-scorched world. But there are those who hope to find wealth in its desolation. Saito Yamagata thinks Mercury's position makes it an ideal place to generate power to propel starships into deep space. Astrobiologist Victor Molina thinks the water at Mercury's poles may harbor evidence of life. Bishop Elliot Danvers has been sent by the Earth-based "New Morality" to keep close tabs on Molina. But all three of these men are blissfully unaware of their shared history, and of how it connects to the collapse of Mance Bracknell's geosynchronous space elevator a generation ago. Now they're about to find out, because Mance is determined to have his revenge… **From Publishers WeeklyAfter secretly infiltrating a scientific mission on Mercury, a disgraced yet brilliant scientist exacts his revenge on those who framed him in this flawed, yet accessible and fun, hard SF novel, the latest in Bova's Grand Tour series (and the best since 2001's Jupiter). 2005 Audie Award winner Rudnicki is in top form again, handling primary narrative duties with panache-his deep, resonant voice and deliberate cadence grip listeners' attention like a vise. Rudnicki's remarkable ability to subtly modulate his voice allows him to enact male and female characters with equal proficiency, and to shift seamlessly between the various accented dialects of the multinational cast of characters. In supporting roles, Johnson is outstanding, with his skill at dramatizing dialogue being particularly noteworthy; Quirk offers competent, if at times overly-emotive, narration. The characters are the weak point of the audiobook-at times they are megalomaniacal and over-the-top-but the science fictional concepts presented here-skyhooks, solar power satellites, and the near-future exploration and colonizing of our solar system-along with Rudnicki and cast's top-notch performance, are enough to make an otherwise minor novel by the six-time Hugo Award winner into an audiobook well-worth listening to.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistBova's impressive series on human exploration of the Solar System (Venus, 2000; Jupiter, 2001; Saturn, 2003) turns to the planet nearest the Sun. Saito Yamagata wants to build power satellites around Mercury, engineer Dante Alexios has designs for them in hand, and biologist Victor Molina wants to explore Mercury's polar caps, where there may be water, for possible signs of life. Theocrat Bishop Danvers is looking over their shoulders, and visionary Mance Bracknell wants to avenge the sabotage of his power satellites years ago by in turn sabotaging the Mercury project. Their motivations bring the characters to life, and readers may also savor the complex and plausible hardware, and the lethal environment in which humans need it to have any chance of survival. Briskly paced into the bargain, this superior entry in one of the classic hard-sf sagas going is pretty much a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved