Wandering Story - Great Narration

I enjoyed it. Simon Vance did a great job with it, but the plot was still as convoluted as ever. Richard Morgan does like his tales!

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1 person found this helpful

it's only a matter of time

clearly the book has many flaws but is very entertaining. The book isn't up there with Altered Carbon but is good value.

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Very complicated!

This is a very complicated story and you need your wits about you when listening. I lost the thread more than once but it's worth persevering.

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Great story.

love this book 3rd time listening to it. Great writer, hopefully more come from him same genre as this and thin air, market forces

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Almost like a altered carbon prequel

A high quality performance of of a great story, gripping and thought provoking, well worth it

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7 people found this helpful

Dark and prescient.

One of the most interesting inventions of this book is "Jesusland". The nickname for a country which emerges from a future United States which has divided itself. Jesusland is a theocratic state made up from the "red states", a place where the institutions are racist, and religious indoctrination is enforced.

When the book came out, some critics cited this idea as extreme and unrealistic.
But reading the book today, in the light of Trump, detention centres for children and everything that has happened, it seems all too plausible.

This book does what great science fiction should do. Uses a plausible what-if scenario as a lens to examine the world today.
It's also a pretty thrilling detective yarn.

Was not thrilled by the narration, which had the (anti) hero, Marsalis sound like a London cab driver, and some of the South Americans sound like they were auditioning for the role of Count Dracula.

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2 people found this helpful

interesting but uneven

interesting themes tackled in this book, however the narrative's uneven as it seems to take long asides where the author discusses themes of masculinity, femanism and human nature in general, with varying degrees of success.

one reviewer didn't like the graphic way in which sex was described in the book, but honestly, there's not that much and it's not a reason to avoid the book or mark it down.

I'd have liked the themes to have been woven more subtly onto the narrative rather than wading through what is essentially exposition for the first half of the book before the story really starts.

I've enjoyed Richard Morgan's other books more, but I'd recommend this to folk who've enjoyed his other work. just don't expect something on the level with Altered Carbon and it's sequels.

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2 people found this helpful

Fantastic

I read the book over 10 years ago, just so so good. I highly recommend it.

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Tricky but good

This was an excellent book to listen to. Made me look for a sequel (no such luck).

The only thing to say is that the plot and the narrative was at times tricky to follow if you did not pay it full attention (driving and listening etc.).

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5 people found this helpful

Sub-Neitzchian teenage drivel

Having been astonished by how poor the two sequels to altered carbon were, I decided to give this one a chance. After all, it won the Arthur C Clarke award. If anything from Mr Morgan were to impress surely this had to be it.

I'm afraid not. Marginally better than the Carbon books due to its third person narrative style, but still displaying all of the same dismal traits. I assume Mr Morgan is a grown ass man, but these books feel like they were written by a horny teenage boy who wanted to impress upon any female reader that he would be a mind blowing yet sensitive lover. They flirt with the occasional inspired idea, but for the main part are turgid and tediously plotted, with any attempt at emotional engagement layed on with a towel. The abiding protagonist of Morgan's writing is a cybernetic men's rights ubermensch. One can only assume he read the Wikipedia entry on Neitzche in high school and has been filtering his sense of aggrieved entitlement through that lens ever since.

I imagine that Morgan sits alone in his house, watching a solid diet of 80's action movies, with occasional breaks for porn, and then spaffs another one of these onto the page. If you are the kind of guy who thinks Jordan Pieterson is the smartest man on earth and watches top gear like it's a religious office, you will love the work of Richard K Morgan. If that's not you, well, the Altered Carbon Netflix series did a reasonably entertaining job of rescuing his best idea, in spite of the dismal source material.

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4 people found this helpful