Extremophile
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Extremophile
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Grace Calder
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By:
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Ian Green
About this listen
Charlie and Parker are punks by night, biohackers by day, living in the stuttering decay of near-future climate-collapse London.
They pay for the beer they don't steal with money from their sketchy astronomy site Zodiac Code, while Charlie's bio-bespoke augments equip the criminals, punks, and eco-warriors of London. They have to deal with disgruntled clients, scene kids who don’t dig their band, and a city that's run by corporates and criminals. Their world is split into three factions: Green – who are still trying to save the world; Blue – who try to profit while they can, and Black – who see no hope left.
When a group of extremist Green activists hire them for a series of jobs ranging from robbery to murder, Charlie – who struggles to feel anything except Black – wants to walk away. But Parker still believes they can make a difference, and urges her to accept.
As they enter an escalating biological arms race against faceless corporations, amoral biohackers, and criminal cyberpunks, Charlie will have to choose what she believes in. Is there still hope, and does she have a right to grab it?©2024 Ian Green (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
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Critic reviews
'A radical, explosive story full of wild hope and venomous rage. Its near future apocalypse is not just prescient and subversive, but full of life, love and thrill in a way that makes it only breaths away from the world we are now. Its voice is challenging, unrelenting, and veering between heartbreak and humour. I feel like this book was written for me, specifically, but I know it’s for us. All of us. With its queer community, found family, the dilemmas of resistance and the agony of survival, Extremophile was a song to my soul and a punch in the gut. Read it.' (Hannah Kaner)
'Absolute dirty-nailed cutting-edge biopunk. A world you can taste like a film of grime on the tongue. Phenomenally imaginative.' (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
'A thrilling ride, full of invention and excitement' (Josie Long)
'Vivid, visceral and utterly compelling, Extremophile blasts new life into the cyberpunk genre. A heady mash-up of biology, punk, art, activism, hackers, murky morality and ultimately, hope, it had me hooked from the first page to the last.' (Stark Holborn)
'Extremophile is a pure shot of literary adrenaline - achingly smart, gritty, funny and a hell of a lot of fun. Green’s background in genetic research elevates his portrait of a biohacking-addicted near-future London into a compelling and deeply plausible experience. Viscerally dark but full of hope, with characters who stay with you long after the last page, it’s an explosive joyride through our wildest impulses and darkest fears. Cyberpunk brought thrillingly up to date - absolutely brilliant.' (Molly Flatt)
Beautiful violence, beautifully told
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Irritating and one tone internal dialogue style of writing that I assume is intended to portray the zeitgeist of the new and rapidly disintegrating world. It grates after not very long and must be virtually impossible to read in hard text.
Characters are universally, one dimensionally, good or narcissistically evil or older people who do not quite get how f***ing cool the protagonists are.
The uber cool violence is…slightly dull and feels derivative.
The central conceit of a preternaturally gifted bio-hacker, programmer and punk bass player and her love story becomes preternaturally boring and repetitive as she makes poor decisions, plays tight punk gigs and creates hippy/dippy BioWare for astral new age global citizens and oh yes might save the world with a weed.
It’s just never quite a cool as it clearly thinks it ought to be. What’s more it smacks of slightly older YA fiction and is trying way too hard to be down with the kids.
It’s perfectly fine if you like this kind of thing and the performance deserves a medal for being able to verbalise the intensely choppy prose style.
Choppy Cyber Punk
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The narration was easy on the ears, and distinguished between characters without being OTT.
Heavy but good
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superb characters, science outstanding, geographically perfect
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They pay for the beer they don't steal with the money from ZODIAC CODE, a DNA astrology site, and Charlie makes bio-bespoke augments for criminals, punks, and eco-warriors. They have to deal with disgruntled clients, scene kids who don't dig their band, and navigating a city owned wholly by the violence of corporate interest and criminality.
Their world is split into three GREEN – still trying to save the world; BLUE – trying to profit while they can, and BLACK – who see no hope left.
When a group of extremist GREEN activists hire them for a series of jobs ranging from robbery to murder, Charlie knows they should walk away. But Parker wants to make a difference, and for Charlie maybe these are the jobs that will make them feel anything other than BLACK.
Facing off against faceless corporations, amoral biohackers, and criminally insane cyberpunks in an escalating biological arms race, Charlie will have to choose what she believes in. Is there still hope, and does she have a right to grab it?
My comments:
I found this book very difficult to get into, the main issue I had was with the shear amount of bad langwidge, I have no issue with their being swearing in a book if it's relevant however this was pretty constant and it felt like every few words which made me feel a lot of it was their for decoration rather than for a good reason. I was quite surprised with the amount of language given that the description made it seem like this book was for a teenage audience. I also found I did not like or care for any of the characters and if I were not reading this for a book club I would not have attempted to finish it. The audible narrator did a pretty good job which was why this got a 2 star and not a 1 which was what I was tempted to give it at first. As I have stated in previous reviews I really don't like giving books bad ratings however this one I really could not get into.
Could not get into this.
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