All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The epic and highly anticipated conclusion to the listener-favorite series that had countless Audible listeners (and employees) hooked from the very first Bob – featuring, as always, a flawless performance from the inimitable Ray Porter.
All These Worlds
Being a sentient spaceship really should be more fun. But after spreading out through space for almost a century, Bob and his clones just can’t stay out of trouble.
They’ve created enough colonies so humanity shouldn’t go extinct. But political squabbles have a bad habit of dying hard, and the Brazilian probes are still trying to take out the competition. And the Bobs have picked a fight with an older, more powerful species with a large appetite and a short temper.
Still stinging from getting their collective butts kicked in their first encounter with the Others, the Bobs now face the prospect of a decisive final battle to defend Earth and its colonies. But the Bobs are less disciplined than a herd of cats, and some of the younger copies are more concerned with their own local problems than defeating the Others.
Yet salvation may come from an unlikely source. A couple of eighth-generation Bobs have found something out in deep space. All it will take to save the Earth and perhaps all of humanity is for them to get it to Sol – unless the Others arrive first.
More Bobs, Bigger Problems, Higher Stakes
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💜💚💙
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📔📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 😋😉😎😮😍
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Solo Narration
Characters and Plot Summary
All These Worlds continues the Bobiverse story with the number of Bobs multiplying and their responsibilities becoming much more complicated. Bob, Howard, Riker, Bill, Marcus, Mario, Claude, Daedalus, Icarus, Will, Mack, Herschel, and the other clones are scattered across different systems, dealing with everything from colonization and political disputes to the increasingly terrifying threat of the Others.
One storyline I particularly enjoyed was Bob’s continued relationship with the Deltans on Eden. Bob has spent years living among them in an android body, and his friendship with Archimedes becomes especially meaningful. The conflict between Camelot and Caerleon, including Archimedes’ kidnapping, shows how complicated Bob’s attempts to help the Deltans have become. What really got to me was Archimedes’ eventual death, which we knew would come eventually. The Bob’s have all the time in the universe, while the people they care about do not, and watching Bob finally accept that he has to leave Eden was surprisingly emotional.
Howard’s relationship with Bridget also takes an important turn. After Bridget dies, Howard fights to honor her wishes to be replicated, even while her children oppose the decision. I liked this storyline because it wasn’t simply about technology. It dealt with whether a replicated person is actually the same person and whether loved ones have the right to decide what happens after someone dies.
Meanwhile, the Bobs continue establishing colonies on worlds including Vulcan, Romulus, Poseidon, Camelot, Valhalla, Takamagahara, and Asgard. They are essentially trying to rebuild humanity while dealing with governments that sometimes seem more interested in power than protecting their people. And then there is Medeiros, who returns with his Brazilian probes and makes it clear that he is not finished causing trouble. Of course, the biggest problem is still the Others. After the Bobs’ previous encounters with them, they know they are facing an enemy vastly more powerful than themselves. When they do talk about defending themselves against the others, they argue about it more than getting things done. Eventually, the Others come for Sol, leading to the enormous battle that the Bobs have been fearing.
Highlights and Limitations
The biggest strength for me was the way the book made the Bobiverse feel increasingly like an actual civilization rather than simply a collection of spaceships exploring the galaxy. Seeing the Bobs deal with different human colonies, governments, relationships, and competing interests gave the story a much larger scope.
I also appreciated the smaller personal moments. Howard’s relationship with Bridget and Bob’s friendship with Archimedes gave the story emotional weight that could easily have been lost beneath all the technology and space battles. Archimedes’ death especially stayed with me because Bob genuinely cared about him, yet there was nothing he could do to make his friend immortal.
My biggest frustration was how casually the Bobs seemed to treat the threat from the Others early in the book. They had already been completely outmatched by them, and the Others had explicitly identified the Bobs as a threat. I kept thinking, “Why aren’t you guys preparing more aggressively for this?” I assumed they were secretly building up weapons and defenses behind the scenes, but I wanted much more emphasis on that preparation.
That frustration made the eventual battle feel even more intense. When the Others finally reach Sol, the Bobs are forced into a desperate series of attacks and I won’t tell you how that goes but to say not as expected, which is par for the course with a lot of the battles in this series. The Bobs always have a good plan but as with real life, things happen and they have to improvise or die. We have seen some of the Bobs die throughout the series and we can only hope that they have completed their backups before they do, even though restoration from a backup technically creates a new Bob not the exact same one that was lost.
Narration
Ray Porter is once again fantastic. At this point, his narration is one of the biggest reasons I have been continuing to binge this series back-to-back. He handles the enormous cast of Bobs without making them sound like interchangeable voices, and his delivery works especially well with the dry humor and technical conversations.
I also love doing the read-and-listen combination, so I had both the Kindle edition and audiobook going at the same time. Porter’s narration makes it very easy to sink back into the story, even when there are a lot of names, planets, technologies, and different Bob perspectives to keep track of.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed All These Worlds, although I did have that lingering frustration about the Bobs not seeming quite alarmed enough about the Others early on. Still, the payoff was worth it.
What I liked most was that the book isn’t only about defeating an alien enemy. It is about the Bobs trying to preserve humanity while slowly realizing that they are no longer human in quite the same way. Bob watching Archimedes grow old and die, Howard fighting for Bridget’s right to continue existing, and the various Bobs dealing with humanity’s political and social problems all reinforce that idea.
Then the final battle brings everything together with the Others finally reaching Sol and the Bobs throwing everything they have into defending humanity.
I am definitely continuing with the series. The combination of science fiction, humor, evolving Bob personalities, colonization, political complications, and Ray Porter’s narration has made this an incredibly easy series for me to binge.
Blog|Goodreads|Facebook|Instagram|Pinterest|BookBub
View all my reviews
