The narration of this audiobook is almost uniformly very bad — the sentences are read without sentience or presence, suggesting the voice actors were not following the meaning, and at times were misunderstanding their characters. Signs of this include exaggerated dynamism or lack thereof, misplaced intonation, and so on. The put-on South Asian accents are bad caricatures to the point of being offensive (excepting the lone South Asian reader), and most non-English words including those in other European languages are completely butchered, indicating a lack of production values.
The story itself is not well written, with long passages explaining technical details and policy ideas, without the compensating genius of a Melville. KSR seems to feel comfortable writing about life in India, e.g., despite telltale little signs that he hasn’t spent enough time there to have a real feeling for the place.
However, those are quibbles because what is important about this book is that it is not fatalistic about climate change and presents an alternative pathway for humanity. Visions of the possible that can sustain the living today into the future are an urgent necessity, and for that reason alone this book is worth reading.