Ben Bova Mercury by Mercury 9781429910613, 1429910615 instant download after payment.

The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is an airless, heat-scorched world where temperatures rise to four times higher than the boiling point of water. But this vision of hell is also a planet with unlimited solar power - worth a fortune to the space tycoon Saito Yamagata if he can find a way to harness it. He has hired the enigmatic Dante Alexios to establish a research station on the surface of the planet and find a way to turn that solar energy into portable power satellites. But Yamagata is secretly also preparing the way to a very different dream: he wants to travel to the stars themselves. And Alexios has his own obsession, a plot to lure an old enemy to this hellhole of a world and take his revenge for one of the worst disasters in human history.

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After 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.
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Bova'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 Green
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