Good story, bad narration

I found the story very engaging and enjoyed it a lot, however I never could quite get immersed in it, mostly because of the narrator's constant mispronunciation of the Japanese names (which make up about half of the characters), as well as fairly poor attempts at various accents.

8 people found this helpful

Pattern Recognition-Snow Crash Remix. So good!

Feels like diving headfirst into a mash-up of early Neal Stephenson (think Snow Crash) and William Gibson (think Neuromancer or Pattern Recognition). Good fast clean cyberpunk fun with just enough twistiness and interesting reality to get your brain going.

4 people found this helpful

Not enough excitement

Lots of great character development. Lots of great context setting. Very good narration. Just not enough happening.

6 people found this helpful

At heart, this novel is a political thriller

Infomocracy by Malka Ann Older is a science fiction and political thriller set in the future where an entity, called Information, controls all information and search engines. In this world, government has transitioned from nations to micro-democracies, with many different kinds of governance, corporate and otherwise, over small population Centenals. The story follows a few different characters with intersecting paths during a turbulent election period. Ken works for a campaign, trying to elect his employer and government in different Centenals and gain a majority standing. Mishima is an operative for Information, trying to see trends in the data and keep the spread of information as clean of corruption as possible. As the election season progresses, these two characters’ paths intersect many times as potential corruption slowly comes to light, creating a storm for the information and political world.

At heart, this novel is a political thriller, but it’s filled with technological advances that fit a science fiction story. While the storyline may seem confusing or dense at first, ultimately, I found it incredibly thought-provoking. The characters could have been more complex. In addition to the two main characters, the story is also told from the perspective to 3-4 additional characters. But the real focus of the story is in the world building, the dynamic progression of the election season, and how the different players interact with the changing political landscape. The details in the world building are fantastic and the characters’ brief sojourns in different Centenals bring each into clear and fascinating focus. and the supporting characters, residing in different Centenals and around the world, further fill up the story with rich detail and complexity. The Information entity and how it is incorporated into the daily lives of the people was especially fascinating and reminiscent of reality. The story-line is fast-paced, action-packed, and highly unique. I have never read a novel like this one and I really enjoyed it.

The narration by Christine Marshall was fantastic.  Her fast pacing voicing was perhaps a little challenging to decipher on occasion, but the pace of the story calls for fast speech. Ultimately, she did a great job. The production quality was good as well. I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys fast paced political thrillers and science fiction.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

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12 people found this helpful

non stop thriller

older takes you on a wild unforgettable ride! best book of the summer! str8 up!

2 people found this helpful

The politic system of the future?

Election drama in an alternate political system. The author likes long complicated sentences and the narrator skims through the book quickly and not always with the intonation spot on. That was a bad combo. I had to really concentrate all the time.

1 person found this helpful

Too much is never explored or explained.

It's ironic that this is titled "Infomocracy", since one of the themes in the book is too much information quickly becomes no information, but at the same time the book immediately throws so many concepts and characters at you it's hard to follow or even find the plot. The main theme and action eventually become clear, but there are so many themes that are alluded to and never explored, so many ideas that are brought up and never explained, that the actual story gets lost and it feels more like an "over-your-head" lecture with some cardboard characters thrown in now and then.

I believe the narrator tried to add some excitement by reading at an uncomfortably fast pace. Instead of creating excitement she is on to the next idea before the first one has had time to "land." I might have enjoyed the book more if it was read at a slightly slower pace. I can just barely recommend this book, but only in print.

1 person found this helpful

Disappointing!

This book started out great but the complete lack of world building hurt it. You never get an understanding of why the the form of government used here is used. Micro-democracies are in place all over the world were each group of 100k (centennials) people vote on their government. They vote on political parties that’ll run the individual centennials. These political parties are trying to get a supermajority & that’s where the political intrigue comes in. The above is a great premise for a political thriller & after you add all the cyberpunk/near-future tech the ingredients are all there. Sadly it doesn’t come together. Why did the world end up with this form of government? How did you get countries to give up sovereignty? How did these political parties become a quasi religion with voting a sacrament? These are important questions that need to be answered so you get a feel for the world but no answers were provided. The only thing this book concentrates on is the vote process. You travel all over the world but because you never see normal life it felt small. The characters were all one dimensional & none are remotely sympathetic. One of the leads is an unstable abusive ninja who has no issues attacking someone with little evidence of wrongdoing. Another lead has a teen-in-love mentality that was very weird. While the bones of a good book are here there’s just too much missing to give it a positive evaluation. Ultimately I did not care, or understand, the world or any of the characters. Not sure I trust the authors write to continue on with the trilogy.

Disjointed

Hopscotches around the world and among the characters. Great points about voter manipulation and misinformation.

Can't understand the speaker often.

Bad mixing or production? or just bad casting? Her voice is often shrill when high, and hard to understand even with good headphones. Not sure I'll try to finish it. (after messing with an equalizer) And she can't even pronounce Japanese correctly (over and over).