In his sequel to The Atopia Chronicles, Matthew Mather gets apocalyptic.
The artificial island state of Atopia is rapidly securing a place at the centre of the US-led Alliance, and pushing for war against its corporate and ideological enemies. Those enemies believe that there is something more than merely human in this malice, that an ancient enemy is reaching out from prehistory to snuff out civilisation. Caught in the middle, Bob and his friends struggle to restore order to a world seemingly gone mad.
The Dystopia Chronicles is a relatively decent techno-apocalyptic thriller, but I was disappointed that Mather abandoned the multiple narrative structure which was one of the main strengths of The Atopia Chronicles. Given the conspiracy-driven nature of the plot (the specific technological aspects are far less important than in the first book) the presence of an omniscient narrator is much less effective than a collective of unreliable voices would have been, not least because the book's final twist was so perfectly placed to provide a meta-fictional justification for that model.
As with the first, I listened to this book in audiobook form, thanks to Kindle Unlimited. The performance was good, but I missed the multi-voice recording of Atopia.
Not a bad book then, but ultimately not as good as I had hoped.
The artificial island state of Atopia is rapidly securing a place at the centre of the US-led Alliance, and pushing for war against its corporate and ideological enemies. Those enemies believe that there is something more than merely human in this malice, that an ancient enemy is reaching out from prehistory to snuff out civilisation. Caught in the middle, Bob and his friends struggle to restore order to a world seemingly gone mad.
The Dystopia Chronicles is a relatively decent techno-apocalyptic thriller, but I was disappointed that Mather abandoned the multiple narrative structure which was one of the main strengths of The Atopia Chronicles. Given the conspiracy-driven nature of the plot (the specific technological aspects are far less important than in the first book) the presence of an omniscient narrator is much less effective than a collective of unreliable voices would have been, not least because the book's final twist was so perfectly placed to provide a meta-fictional justification for that model.
As with the first, I listened to this book in audiobook form, thanks to Kindle Unlimited. The performance was good, but I missed the multi-voice recording of Atopia.
Not a bad book then, but ultimately not as good as I had hoped.
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