Plowing the Dark
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Narrated by:
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Morgan Hallett
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Michael Braun
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By:
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Richard Powers
About this listen
In a digital laboratory on the shores of Puget Sound, a band of virtual reality researchers race to complete the Cavern, an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a vast Byzantine cathedral. In a war-torn Mediterranean city, an American is held hostage, chained to a radiator in another empty white room. What can possibly join two such remote places? Only the shared imagination, a room that these people unwittingly build in common, where they are all about to meet, where the dual frames of this inventive novel to coalesce.
Adie Klarpol, a skilled but disillusioned artist, comes back to life, revived by the thrill of working with the Cavern's cutting-edge technology. Against the collapse of Cold War empires and the fall of the Berlin Wall, she retreats dangerously into the cyber-realities she has been hired to create. As her ex-husband lies dying and the outbreak of computerized war fills her with a sense of guilty complicity, Adie is thrown deeper into building a place of beauty and unknown power, were she might fend off the incursions of the real world gone wrong.
On the other side of the globe, Taimur Martin, an English teacher retreating from a failed love affair, is picked up off the streets in Beirut by Islamic fundamentalists and held in solitary captivity. Without distraction or hope of release, he must keep himself whole by the force of his memory alone. Each infinite, empty day moves him closer to insanity, and only the surprising arrival of sanctuary sustains him for the shattering conclusion.
Plowing the Dark is fiction that explores the imagination's power to both destroy and save.
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Story
Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.
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Narrator sounds like Tony Danza
- By Sean on 03-05-16
By: Cory Doctorow, and others
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To Be Taught, If Fortunate
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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At the turn of the 22nd century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life. A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system 15 light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds.
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"Gay & Lesbian"?!? This is solid Sci-Fi
- By Jennifer on 09-16-19
By: Becky Chambers
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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77 Shadow Street
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Enter the world of the Pendleton: The original owner became a recluse - and was rumored to be more than half mad - after his wife and two children were kidnapped in 1896 and never found. The second owner suffered a worse tragedy in 1935, when his house manager murdered him, his family, and the entire live-in staff.... Craftsmen and laborers working on renovations disappear or go mad.... For years, the Pendleton is a happy place, until a bad turn comes again.... Voices in unknown languages are heard in deserted rooms....
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hit or miss
- By donna on 12-31-11
By: Dean Koontz
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The Flicker Men
- A Novel
- By: Ted Kosmatka
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A quantum physicist shocks the world with a startling experiment, igniting a struggle between science and theology, free will and fate, and antagonizing forces not known to exist. Eric Argus is a washout. His prodigious early work clouded his reputation and strained his sanity. But an old friend gives him another chance, an opportunity to step back into the light.
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Started out good but fell flat
- By Ed A on 08-04-15
By: Ted Kosmatka
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Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
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Robot Uprisings
- By: Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams - editor
- Narrated by: Emily Beresford, Tamara Marston, A.T. Chandler, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans beware. As the robotic revolution continues to creep into our lives, it brings with it an impending sense of doom. What horrifying scenarios might unfold if our technology were to go awry? From self-aware robotic toys to intelligent machines violently malfunctioning, this anthology brings to life the half-formed questions and fears we all have about the increasing presence of robots in our lives.
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Has some bright spots
- By ChrisM. on 10-22-15
By: Daniel H. Wilson, and others
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Scale
- A Novel
- By: Keith Buckley
- Narrated by: Keith Buckley
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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As a hopeless and struggling indie rock musician, Ray Goldman's best chance of discovering any beauty and purpose in his dysfunctional life will come only when he ceases to struggle against life itself. Scale chronicles Ray Goldman’s journey downward through the adversarial trials that sometimes prove necessary in facilitating an eventual ascent into truth and happiness. The odd chapters of the novel find Ray, now a 31-year-old guitar player, seeking fulfillment in the wake of a life-altering tragedy.
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Poor Presentation
- By mmacedonia on 04-16-19
By: Keith Buckley
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Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
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- Narrated by: John Skelley
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers' brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold.
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Don't Waste Your Time.
- By Trevor Morris on 08-01-24
By: Richard Powers
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The Gold Bug Variations
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Rachel Botchan, Andrew Garman
- Length: 32 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Stuart Ressler, an up-and-coming molecular biologist, finds his career sidetracked by the turmoil of the '60s, and a young couple of the 1980s tries to discover why the biologist abandoned his scientific pursuits.
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Great Expectations, Bigger Disappointments
- By tom on 03-23-19
By: Richard Powers
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Galatea 2.2
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.
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Complex verbiage with a very self-centered focus
- By Trevor C. on 07-28-21
By: Richard Powers
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The Time of Our Singing
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 33 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and - against all odds and better judgment - they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. But their three children must survive America's brutal here and now.
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Undigested Erudition
- By Dr. Blue Jacaranda on 11-11-20
By: Richard Powers
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The Echo Maker
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, returns to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a coma, Mark believes that this woman is really an impostor who looks just like his sister. Shattered, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, who eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being.
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Too much time for a boring story
- By HannahMK on 08-06-20
By: Richard Powers
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Operation Wandering Soul
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award. Tired and overworked, surgical resident Richard Kraft finds his protective shell shattered when, along with his physiotherapist, he begins to view the children's ward of the hospital. Determined to give hope where there is none, the adults spin a desperate anthology of stories that promise restoration and escape.
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Poor performance
- By Amazon Customer on 03-16-24
By: Richard Powers
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Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: John Skelley
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers' brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold.
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Don't Waste Your Time.
- By Trevor Morris on 08-01-24
By: Richard Powers
-
The Gold Bug Variations
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Rachel Botchan, Andrew Garman
- Length: 32 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stuart Ressler, an up-and-coming molecular biologist, finds his career sidetracked by the turmoil of the '60s, and a young couple of the 1980s tries to discover why the biologist abandoned his scientific pursuits.
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Great Expectations, Bigger Disappointments
- By tom on 03-23-19
By: Richard Powers
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Galatea 2.2
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.
-
-
Complex verbiage with a very self-centered focus
- By Trevor C. on 07-28-21
By: Richard Powers
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The Time of Our Singing
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 33 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and - against all odds and better judgment - they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. But their three children must survive America's brutal here and now.
-
-
Undigested Erudition
- By Dr. Blue Jacaranda on 11-11-20
By: Richard Powers
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The Echo Maker
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, returns to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a coma, Mark believes that this woman is really an impostor who looks just like his sister. Shattered, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, who eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being.
-
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Too much time for a boring story
- By HannahMK on 08-06-20
By: Richard Powers
-
Operation Wandering Soul
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award. Tired and overworked, surgical resident Richard Kraft finds his protective shell shattered when, along with his physiotherapist, he begins to view the children's ward of the hospital. Determined to give hope where there is none, the adults spin a desperate anthology of stories that promise restoration and escape.
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Poor performance
- By Amazon Customer on 03-16-24
By: Richard Powers
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Generosity
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence.
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All About Fiction
- By James on 11-30-10
By: Richard Powers
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Orfeo
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present. Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab - the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns - has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els - the "Bioterrorist Bach" - pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey.
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The Lost Chord
- By Mel on 02-04-14
By: Richard Powers
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Gain
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 17 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Gain braids together two stories on very different scales. In one, Laura Body, divorced mother of two and a real estate agent in the small town of Lacewood, Illinois, plunges into a new existence when she learns she has ovarian cancer. In the other, Clare & Company, a soap manufacturer begun by three brothers in 19th-century Boston, grows over the course of a century and a half into an international consumer products conglomerate based in Laura's hometown.
By: Richard Powers
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Prisoner's Dilemma
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn, Lori Gardner, Morgan Hallett, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quiz master, black humorist, and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and with his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobbstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world, and everything that's in it. A dazzling novel of compassion and imagination, Prisoner's Dilemma is a story of the power of invalid experience.
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DEEP AS THE FOREST
- By Rosa Belle on 11-11-19
By: Richard Powers
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Bewilderment
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
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Not Usually a Richard Powers Fan
- By Billy on 09-28-21
By: Richard Powers
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The Overstory
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light.
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eye opening
- By Michael Stansberry on 05-23-18
By: Richard Powers
What listeners say about Plowing the Dark
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Matthew
- 05-14-20
Not quite sure how to take this one...
OK, folks, I know this offering comes with a large and vocal following of fans, and I can see why. This is a very dense, almost verbose, and complex story. Indeed, there is very little "story" here, so much as an example of thoughtful wordsmithing. I can't say I found the stories ( semi spoiler alert..there are 2 parallel stories in play here ) actually "went" anywhere, but damn, they are well written. Hallett and Braun's performances are workmanlike, in particular Braun does a solid job on his characters.
Overall, I really wanted to take more out of this one than I did, but it may work better for you. I recommend it for fans of complex ideas and writing, but not for listeners looking for a tidy story arc.
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