The Original

The narrator is fantastic. I really enjoyed her subtle variations on voice, and she didn\’t do any really extreme or distracting changes. Also, there was background music to create feeling in the scenes, and that was really cool. The story itself was engaging, but the ending felt very sloppy. I actually am not sure whose voice I am hearing at the end of the story, or what the real conclusion was. If I found out that was on purpose, to create some kind of tension and let me introspect on who I want it to be or something dumb like that, I would drop a star 😉 Finally…. I don\’t know what to call this…the netflix effect? When I am enjoying media, and in a moment the story decides to take a break from plot and believability to bring in something that is totally irrelevant to the story. Like Saturday morning cartoons of old, creators of content use alluring media to draw me into nagging my parents for sugar cereal or toys because the cartoon is just so cool. Well, in this case, I am not a child anymore, and what you are selling has no appeal. **minor spoiler alert** Here, the Protagonist takes a break from being hunted and shot at, and has a …moment of silence, to feel guilty for assuming Her enemy\’s gender. Whaat? The Protag can do all sorts of violence without feeling bad about it (Crushed trachea…eh, they will get over it…), but assume someone\’s gender!? Ghastly! What a sin! it grates. Also, using a plural pronoun to refer to one person is confusing and highly distracting from the story. My overall rating displays how irritating this is, and I would not re-hear or recommend this book.

This audiobook had awesome tones to it, tons of atmosphere with music and other sounds. I was deeply saddened to hear so much strong foul language in this audio, with Sanderson\’s name slapped on it. I often recommend Sanderson books to younger audiences. Other than that it had tons of Snapshot vibes also done by Brandon Sanderson. Keeps you on your toes.

(MAJOR SPOILER IN THIS REVIEW) The Original starts out with a great punch, and keeps a nice, tight narrative through the first two acts, and largely into the third. You can catch the feel of both authors here and there, but they gel nicely and it doesn\’t distract from the story. The narrator is good, easy to listen to, and speaks clearly. What ruined it for me was this; (HERE\’S THE SPOILER TURN BACK!) …it has an ambiguous ending, which I found VERY unsatisfying. I get the angle they were going for, I do. A whole \’really makes you think,\’ vibe. But I felt super cheated as a reader, especially after the third act garnered a surprising amount of emotional investment from me. Sooooo…. yeah. Very disappointing. Or maybe I\’m missing something obvious, that makes it Actually Good. I sort of hope so. I hope other people like it. I wish I had, too.

Unfortunately this novella doesn\’t work for me structurally, and the authors personal political views are distracting. THE GOOD The narrator was very good. THE BAD The Story: The story seems to want to be a high concept SciFi, a thriller, and a mystery rolled in into one. Unfortunately, in my opinion it fails at all three. The SciFi elements are rather unoriginal and seem to have been lifted wholesale from several episodes of Black Mirror. I could forgive them if they’d used these borrowed ideas in new and original ways, but sadly, the SciFi concepts were never explored deeply or in ways not already covered by the Black Mirror episodes I mentioned. The thriller aspect never really gets off the ground either. The main character has 4 days to live, yet I never felt a real building of tension. Without real tension you cannot have a thriller. Mystery? Sadly, the plot fizzles at the end and the big reveal leaves the reader with more questions and no answers. Since it’s necessary to actually solve a mystery for it to be a mystery, I feel the story failed in this way as well. So what was this story actually about? Authors Agenda: Where to begin? This novella appears to be distilled from current American politics, and it seems to show the authors personal biases. As far as I can tell the story was meant to show the \”communist hellscape\” that some imagine we\’d experience under \”Big Government\”. There are dueling recurrent privacy paranoia themes that don\’t seem to understand they are in opposition to each other: the authors appear to rail against the privacy laws that hinder police investigations i.e. the need for warrants and the requirement to respect data privacy, at the same time they are espousing the existential danger of the government having too much access and control over our personal information. Cognitive dissonance? There is also a nod to \”fake news\” with technology used to \”skin\” over reality, allowing people to only see what they want to see. This seems to be a reference to how many only listen to news sources that confirm their personal biases. And it’s alluded that the news is controlled (of course) by the Big Government. There is also a \”universal living income\” mentioned, more communism paranoia, and society has turned into a world of loafers who consider peeling oranges a real career path because of those these handouts. Another reference to how horrible it would be with Big Government. At one point they make a quick reference to global warming, implying that we\’ve lost land mass due to the rise of the ocean. This single talking point from the opposing political viewpoint seems to be a half-hearted attempt to avoid having this story criticized as having a conservative agenda. THE UGLY I’m surprised that Brandon Sanderson was willing to put his name on this novella. To be perfectly honest, this is poorly written on many levels, and the blatant political agenda is off-putting. I would not recommend this story to anyone, even diehard Sanderson fans.

I was quite disappointed for two reasons. First was the language. I realize that for some this is not a big issue, but I listen to books with my wife and grandchildren, and I have trusted that with Sanderson\’s name I could be safe doing this. However be warned there is a constant amount of strong to very strong profanity and vulgarity, way to much for us. I will now have to check out and be cautious, of future books by Sanderson as we can longer trust his name to be associated with appropriate material. Secondly is how dark the story is, no hope, no redemption, no moral compass, etc. just a dark, dystopian future. On a positive note Julia Whelan as always does an excellent narration. I rarely review books but in this case it is way below what we have come to expect.

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