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alobearI picked the audiobook of Vicarious by Rhett C Bruno because it's partly narrated by Wil Wheaton, who is one of my favourite narrators.
It's The Machine Stops meets The Truman Show meets Ascension - future Earth civilisation has all the people separated in "smart homes", interacting only via virtual reality, and completely obsessed with a reality TV show about people on a generation ship, who don't know it's fake.
So, that's a lot to wrap your head around, though the world building is strong.
Narration is split between first person with Asher, one of the directors of the show, and third person focusing on Mission, who lives on the ship. There's an interesting switch to this structure late on in the book for clever reasons that I appreciated, so the structure is good.
But I would say it takes a bit too long to come together - and Asher isn't a very sympathetic character for a long time. It's also pretty grim in places.
By the time there was less than an hour of the audio left, I assumed it must be the first in a series because I thought there was no way everything could get wrapped up in so little time. But it turns out it could - via a somewhat disappointing deus ex manoeuvre. What actually happened was quite cool, but I wished the main protagonists could have had a bit more agency in the climax.
Still, it had its moments, and it's always nice to have Wil Wheaton in my ears - the other narrator, Katherine McNamara, was good too.
So, not a great book, but interesting enough to keep me listening to the end, though I won't be seeking out any more by this author.
It's The Machine Stops meets The Truman Show meets Ascension - future Earth civilisation has all the people separated in "smart homes", interacting only via virtual reality, and completely obsessed with a reality TV show about people on a generation ship, who don't know it's fake.
So, that's a lot to wrap your head around, though the world building is strong.
Narration is split between first person with Asher, one of the directors of the show, and third person focusing on Mission, who lives on the ship. There's an interesting switch to this structure late on in the book for clever reasons that I appreciated, so the structure is good.
But I would say it takes a bit too long to come together - and Asher isn't a very sympathetic character for a long time. It's also pretty grim in places.
By the time there was less than an hour of the audio left, I assumed it must be the first in a series because I thought there was no way everything could get wrapped up in so little time. But it turns out it could - via a somewhat disappointing deus ex manoeuvre. What actually happened was quite cool, but I wished the main protagonists could have had a bit more agency in the climax.
Still, it had its moments, and it's always nice to have Wil Wheaton in my ears - the other narrator, Katherine McNamara, was good too.
So, not a great book, but interesting enough to keep me listening to the end, though I won't be seeking out any more by this author.
