Parasite cover art

Parasite

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Parasite

By: Mira Grant
Narrated by: Christine Lakin
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease. We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams.

Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them. But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives... and will do anything to get them.

©2013 Seanan McGuire (P)2013 Hachette Audio Science Fiction Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Parasite cover art
Rolling in the Deep cover art
Rise cover art
A Cure for Madness cover art
The Undead: Part 1 cover art
Dead of Night cover art
Beijing Red cover art
Wanted cover art
Unhappenings cover art
The Delphi Effect cover art
The Cursed Manuscripts: Books 1-6 cover art
In the After cover art
Stranger Things: Runaway Max cover art
Indexing cover art
The Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs: The Complete Trilogy cover art
Syncing Forward cover art

Critic reviews

"A creepy spine-tingler of a medical thriller" (Charles Stross)
All stars
Most relevant
A previous reviewer is right, the British accent is bizarre but it’s not a bit part of the narration so you can get past it. An interesting concept - not on to listen to while eating your lunch! Enjoyable to listen to in the background, gets silly occasionally but otherwise entertaining enough that I will download book 2

Entertaining enough

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Tapeworms taking over human bodies - good job I enjoy a good story and can suspend disbelief. The science is obviously a little far fetched, but the fact we have can support parasites and gene/dna manipulation/splicing this can turn into a fairly horrific scenario.
Which this book fails at (but i would assume will come to the fore front in book 2).

This is basically a single POV story. The 'sleepwalkers' are mentioned throughout the book, and i enjoyed the fact that they were in the background and we concentrated on a single character through this book. This book focuses on providing a foundation for the series, which means it is a little slow in some areas and there are a lot of 'science explaining'.
Apart from tapeworms taking over the body - there is little new. This is not a major issue however, as the author presents us with a good POV character. The bad 'guys' are a little too thin, but hopefully that will be explained in the next book.

Overall i enjoyed the book, but it fell a little flat in a couple of areas. Hopefully the second book will pick up the pace as all the ground work has now been placed.

The audio version was well performed. A high quality production.

A Promising start to an Infection

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Enjoyable science fiction . But the British accent was dreadful and I ended up speeding through those bits . It spoilt the story telling .

Clever story well done

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What made the experience of listening to Parasite the most enjoyable?

The Narator. She was great and managed to make every voice separate. She really braught the atmosphere of the story to life.

What did you like best about this story?

The way the author mixed Monster story with conspiricy thriller. She's also put a lot of research into the story which makes it feel more realistic.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I liked Sal's sence of humour. She made me laugh.

Any additional comments?

I can't wait for the next one to come on Audible!

More Mira Grant!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I loved this premis - so clever and original. Enjoyed the science fiction aspect very much and have moved on to the second book.
The characterisation is a bit... tropeish? A bit 2d. I think the narration of it doesn't help . 0 value added. It's not BAD, it's just a let down for such a fantastic plot idea.
Crossing my fingers for the next book that the characters flesh out a bit.

Enjoyable - but shallow characters

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews