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How long does it take to read The Quiet War?

Paul J. McAuley

The Quiet War by Paul J. McAuley takes about 8 hours 3 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 1 of The Quiet War

Previous: Making History Next: Gardens of the Sun

About 8 hours 3 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 2008. 439 pages, about 120,725 words.

17 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 13 hours 25 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 8 hours 3 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 5 hours 2 minutes

The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

"Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems." "On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition." "The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards. Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war ..." "From the prison cities of Earth to the scrupulously realised landscapes of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, The Quiet War is an exotic, fast-paced space opera that turns on a single question: who decides what it means to be human?"--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects: Space warfare, Space colonies, Fiction, Fiction, science fiction, space opera

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