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Narrated by:
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Ariel Blake
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By:
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Helen Phillips
About this listen
A Most Anticipated Book for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot
A Best Book of the Summer for Esquire, Electric Lit, and Town & Country
A People Book of the Week
From “one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction” (The New York Times), this “tense dystopian thriller” (Time) and “tender portrait of love and care in an uncertain world” (Esquire) is an urgent and unflinching portrayal of a woman’s fight for her family’s security in a world shaped by global warming and rapid technological progress.
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive. But when her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives to save her family.
Written with “precision, insight, sensitivity, and compassion” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Hum is a “striking new work of dystopian fiction” (Vogue) that delves into the complexities of marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities.
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Story
When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty.
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Horrible.
- By Autumn Richter on 07-11-19
By: Helen Phillips
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The Living Medicine
- How a Lifesaving Cure Was Nearly Lost―and Why It Will Rescue Us When Antibiotics Fail
- By: Lina Zeldovich
- Narrated by: Melanie Carey
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
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Why are we still messing around with antibiotics when there’s a better solution.
- By Mary Austin on 02-22-25
By: Lina Zeldovich
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The Beautiful Bureaucrat
- A Novel
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred, pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echo eerily down the long halls.
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Helen Philips is Kafka strolling through Night Vale
- By vurnt22 on 04-29-16
By: Helen Phillips
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Practice
- A Novel
- By: Rosalind Brown
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosalind Brown's Practice shows us just one day. Annabel, sitting in her small student room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows a meticulous, solitary routine but finds it repeatedly thrown off course as the day progresses: by family and friends who demand her attention and time, by thoughts of her much older boyfriend and his impending visit, by wild sexual fantasies and stories of her own invented characters—and by darker crises, obliquely glimpsed but capable of derailing Annabel's carefully laid plans.
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Talented author; book won’t be for everyone
- By Emily on 01-31-25
By: Rosalind Brown
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Mania
- A Novel
- By: Lionel Shriver
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is ""the last great civil rights fight."" Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word (“stupid”) and encouraged to report parents who use it at home.
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Thoroughly enjoyed this
- By upgrayedd on 04-14-24
By: Lionel Shriver
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The Hounding
- A Novel
- By: Xenobe Purvis
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.
By: Xenobe Purvis
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The Need
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Alex Allwine
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty.
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Horrible.
- By Autumn Richter on 07-11-19
By: Helen Phillips
-
The Living Medicine
- How a Lifesaving Cure Was Nearly Lost―and Why It Will Rescue Us When Antibiotics Fail
- By: Lina Zeldovich
- Narrated by: Melanie Carey
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
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Why are we still messing around with antibiotics when there’s a better solution.
- By Mary Austin on 02-22-25
By: Lina Zeldovich
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The Beautiful Bureaucrat
- A Novel
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred, pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echo eerily down the long halls.
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Helen Philips is Kafka strolling through Night Vale
- By vurnt22 on 04-29-16
By: Helen Phillips
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Practice
- A Novel
- By: Rosalind Brown
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rosalind Brown's Practice shows us just one day. Annabel, sitting in her small student room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows a meticulous, solitary routine but finds it repeatedly thrown off course as the day progresses: by family and friends who demand her attention and time, by thoughts of her much older boyfriend and his impending visit, by wild sexual fantasies and stories of her own invented characters—and by darker crises, obliquely glimpsed but capable of derailing Annabel's carefully laid plans.
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Talented author; book won’t be for everyone
- By Emily on 01-31-25
By: Rosalind Brown
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Mania
- A Novel
- By: Lionel Shriver
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is ""the last great civil rights fight."" Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word (“stupid”) and encouraged to report parents who use it at home.
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Thoroughly enjoyed this
- By upgrayedd on 04-14-24
By: Lionel Shriver
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The Hounding
- A Novel
- By: Xenobe Purvis
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.
By: Xenobe Purvis
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Meet the Neighbors
- Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World
- By: Brandon Keim
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In this wide-ranging exploration of animals' inner lives, Keim takes us into courtrooms and wildlife hospitals, under backyard decks and into deserts, to meet anew the wild creatures who populate our communities and the philosophers, rogue pest controllers, ecologists, wildlife doctors, and others who are reimagining our relationships to them.
By: Brandon Keim
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Madwoman
- By: Chelsea Bieker
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun.
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Relevent
- By Medusa on 10-10-24
By: Chelsea Bieker
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Model Home
- A Novel
- By: Rivers Solomon
- Narrated by: Gabby Beans
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
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They eat every time
- By Anonymous User on 02-23-25
By: Rivers Solomon
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Annie Bot
- A Novel
- By: Sierra Greer
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard.
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Good, but not great
- By Katie Ramey on 03-25-24
By: Sierra Greer
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The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Brooks
- Narrated by: Katie Leung, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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There is only one way to travel across the Wastelands: on the Trans-Siberian Express, a train as famous for its luxury as for its danger. The train is never short of passengers, eager to catch sight of Wastelands creatures more miraculous and terrifying than anything they could imagine. But on the train's last journey, something went horribly wrong, though no one seems to remember what exactly happened. Not even Zhang Weiwei, who has spent her life onboard and thought she knew all of the train’s secrets.
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Narration cadence too clipped
- By ulan25 on 08-03-24
By: Sarah Brooks
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Pink Slime
- A Novel
- By: Fernanda Trías
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford—a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining relationships.
By: Fernanda Trías
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State of Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Laura van den Berg
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town.
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Fantastic, philosophical, reflects the times
- By Laurel Waterson on 11-01-24
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Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
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Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
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The Rich People Have Gone Away
- A Novel
- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
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descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
By: Regina Porter
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Beautyland
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she's different: she possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.
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Unforgettable
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-24
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Five-Star Stranger
- A Novel
- By: Kat Tang
- Narrated by: Julian Cihi
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past.
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Had good parts that kept me engaged.
- By C. Dad on 09-06-24
By: Kat Tang
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The Repeat Room
- A Novel
- By: Jesse Ball
- Narrated by: Erik Bloomquist
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
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A good prompt buried and fluff and shock value
- By Elaina on 03-24-25
By: Jesse Ball
What listeners say about Hum
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Aydelette
- 12-11-24
Humming Anxiety
Portrays a vision of the future which looks familiar until it doesn’t. Imagine that the future of ai includes empathetic ambivalence.
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- AngiePants
- 12-28-24
Intriguing look into a speculative future
While the premise of this story was interesting the execution felt a little uneven. At times the story plot lacked direction leaving me wondering where the narrative was going. Despite this it was an interesting look into humanity potential future.
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- Maria Finazzo Hernandez
- 11-24-24
Good story, scary reality
This book had me-a-thinking that this could very well be our future. Scary that technology and AI takes over our lives. The need to disconnect backfires in sad reality. Well written and I love the sense of unexpected possibilities that May and may not happen. I would love to see a series in this universe.
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- van
- 11-17-24
It’s like Black Mirror in Book format
It was performed well, though at times I found myself wondering if I would dislike the characters less if their voices were portrayed differently by the narrator.
I found the title character to make a shocking amount of stupid decisions for somebody who’s supposedly smart enough to code AI so well that she ends up putting herself out of a job. Often I thought to myself “this problem seems like it could be explained away enough with a bit of transparency toward the authorities” who are the unseen antagonists of the story.
Her children struck me as being spoiled brats, but perhaps that was the point. There are so many instances of them saying bratty things and behaving disrespectfully that evoke a non-response from their parents that I wondered what the point of writing them that way was. I could see why the author would do it if it eventually led the protagonist to snap, but it doesn’t.
The one thing that bothered me most about this story was the odd bit of telling commentary from the eponymous Hums which seems to suggest that they know their own role in turning the world into such a dystopian place. It’s never explained what spurns on those comments or how/why the Hums talk like that. I wish the author had gone somewhere with that.
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1 person found this helpful
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- pablogday
- 01-03-25
Nada muy interesante
Es una historia familia, desde el punto de vista de la madre. Quizás algunos se sienten identificados pero no fue mi caso. Es una situación muy común y no deja una gran enseñanza. Desde el punto de vista de la ciencia ficción no cuenta nada muy creativo tampoco.
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- Cathy Carr
- 02-25-25
HUM
Descriptive. Too close to our possible future. Future AI and the scary use of facial recognition and lack of autonomy.
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- Vicki P.
- 08-12-24
Disappointing
I was so looking forward to this book. I pre-ordered it and avidly awaited its arrival in my library.
As it turned out, the book was thoroughly disappointing. It was more a prolix short story than a novel.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Dani
- 09-19-24
Bleh
I kept wanting this to build into something great. It never did. It fell so short that at the end it was so unsatisfying and then felt like such a waste
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- NMwritergal
- 08-06-24
Why Literary "Speculative Fiction" Doesn't Work
I've come to some conclusions about those who write "literary speculative fiction."
1. Perish the thought that they write "science fiction."
2. If everybody under the sun can't wait for the book to come out, avoid it.
3. There must be annoying children in the novel, which, if you don't have any, convince you never to have any of your own.
4. It's an excuse to not follow the standards of most genres: world building, character development, having a plot...
5. It's a reason to be vague and ambiguous (though the only thing I liked about this book was the last hour and the totally ambiguous ending--sometimes it works, but I suspect it will frustrate most people.
6. It's about the idea, which may or may not be clear, not the execution. This book had too many ideas, some more successfully executed than others.
7. Most writers can't pull it off. This is a good example.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Steve B.
- 08-12-24
The worse of the worse
I don’t know what anyone was thinking when recording this novel, it is a work of junk fiction. It is worthwhile of trash.
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3 people found this helpful