The Atopia Chronicles (Atopia, 1)

I, like many others, picked up a copy of this book based on the recommendation of Hugh Howey, the author of the Wool saga. As a side note, the Wool series is the tightest, freshest entry into the science fiction genre in many years. I sincerely believe we will look back and discuss the impact of Wool like the impact of Dune. So, when an author of this stature recommends a book to me, I am willing to give it a shot.

I feel like Mr. Mather is trying to be a jack of all trades, and in the process has spread his narrative rather thin. The premise of Atopia is that around 2050-2075 or so, the population of earth is 10 billion, and multiple wars for resources have devastated the planet, and wealthy groups of private citizens have built floating enclaves in the middle of the ocean. As another reviewer pointed out, it's a bit like Bioshock. Within a few chapters, the author has started spinning his elaborate story of distributed consciousness and "metaverses" created by nanobots inside of people which allow them to somehow make use of the concept of neuroplasticity and "fragmentation of consciousness" to essentially create alternate realities.

I try to read at least 30 science fiction books a year, and I can say that this book takes a fresh and unique premise, but kind of never gets off the ground. The story is some mixture of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Neuromancer by William Gibson, and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Firstly, as a physician, the medical jargon and discussions are a bunch of nonsense. The premise is so convoluted that I think I would have greatly benefited from at least 2-3 introductory chapters of exposition. Instead, each chapter is told from a different perspective, with about 8 rotating narratives. The characters have no identity to follow because they are all spread across the multiverse with distributed consciousness. This book is honestly just about impossible to follow. The last book I read was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which has a similar idea of distributed consciousness, but it is much easier to follow because she actually takes time to explain what is going on and allows you to follow one narrator for more than 5-10 minutes at a time.

The characters are so loosely distributed into the digital world (and many of them are just abandoned after 1-2 chapters) that they hardly resonate as discrete entities. The technology is very interesting, but the story relies so heavily on the technology as to be a detriment to the plot as a whole. Relatively speaking, this is the hardest plot to follow of any book I've ever read, mainly because each chapter is told from the perspective of a new character. I was constantly trying to look back and re-read things, but eventually I got tired of doing that and just tried to make it through to the end.

Anyway, this book may be worth a shot, and I'm happy I saw the unique premise through to the end, but I will certainly not be continuing this series.

I would love to give this novel a good review because it has such a wonderful premise and the writing does seem inventive, but unfortunately I bought the CD version and tried several times to listen to it but could not get passed the atrocious narrator. My god, she was awful. Narrating with a hectoring Brooklyn accent. The furthest I got in my many attempts was ten minutes. Sorry for the bad review of what looks like a terrific book, but geez, that voice is the stuff of nightmares.

Unfortunately, I purchased all 3 of these books. The first one, I had to struggle and force myself to finish it, as I already had the other two books. I'm in the middle of the 2nd book and am still forcing myself to read. I normally read 8 to 10 books a week. It took me a week to finish the 1st book. Very disappointed.

Now that I have finished this book, I can safely say that I enjoyed it, and the last quarter or so had me desperately turning pages to find out what happened next. I do not know how accurate the science within it is, but it was fascinating, and seemed to hold some thoughtful possibilities as to the future of our society and fascination with technology.

The book is definitely not without its flaws though, and those nearly kept me from finishing it. The first half of the book is told in several vignettes, and some appealed to me and some didn't. The second half of the book is told from the points of view of various characters, alternating from chapter to chapter. The transition from the first half to the second half, combined with the then constantly shifting first person narration, made getting through various points in this book a struggle for me. I'd find myself forgetting which character was narrating a chapter, or where things happened chronologically, as some scenes played out multiple times from the points of view of various characters.

I think one of the reasons I powered through and decided to keep going was that the book really had some good ideas. The concept was good and the subplots were good, but the method of executing them was somewhat haphazard.

It was a difficult read, but by the time I reached the end of the first book I found myself wanting to read the second. Despite my difficulties with this one, I think I'm willing to give the next a shot.

The book is a disjointed series of snapshots with no plot. I got halfway through and gave up. There are a few interesting ideas but the total lack of an actual beginning, middle, end is annoying. Perhaps if you live your life through a series of tweets on a smartphone this may make sense. If you're used to reading books, it does not. At first I thought it might be a book of short stories rather than a novel. It just recounts the same scenes from different characters points of view and there's no flow, no character development. It is not a pleasant read.

Loved the premise but I've trudged about two-thirds through this book and at no point did it grab me and pull me in. I only got this far because I foolishly bought the whole trilogy at once. I can't remember the last time I couldn't finish a book. The story is all over the place and there is no connection to any of the characters. You don't love or hate any of them, they are just there. Next!

The Atopia Chronicles is a novel in six parts about an advanced technology society living on an island, called Atopia, in the Pacific. The virtual reality comes in the form of nano technology that resides in your body, so you can carry it around with you. It can filter out unwanted visuals and people, and you can virtually 'go' anywhere and do anything.

One of the major themes in this book is the implications of life altering technology. If there's one thing that mankind does to a fault, it's take great technological advances and use them in the worst possible way. Here is book that explores all the ways in which this technology could be used and abused. The end result is that it basically destroys everyone's lives. I also thought the author did a good job of exploring how the world would be affected and not just the people at the center of the narrative.

This book asks some pretty deep questions like: Will this kind of technology really solve all the world's problems? What would happen if the technology fell into the wrong person's hands? What happens when you can give people everything they could ever want? What really makes people happy?

The thing I didn't like about this book were the characters. For me, there was a lot of explanation about the technology and not enough character development. Also, I read half of this before we left for vacation last month and found it really hard to remember who the characters were when I finally picked it back up last week. It was only a couple of weeks but apparently the characters weren't strong enough to stay in my brain for that relatively short amount of time. So, firstly, I don't know enough about these characters to really care about them. Secondly, I felt like the characters were selfish and self absorbed and they kind of deserved the bad things that were happening to them...

But...I liked this book enough to finish it, so I'd probably give it a B- overall.

Seemed like an interesting premise, but for me it was a ponderous, confusing, boring story with bland characters. It has been years since I quit reading a book partway through, but I finally ground to a halt 2/3 of the way through this one. Big waste of time. I'm puzzled that it got so many good reviews...I have enjoyed all other books with similar ratings on Amazon.

Seemed like an interesting premise, but for me it was a ponderous, confusing, boring story with bland characters. It has been years since I quit reading a book partway through, but I finally ground to a halt 2/3 of the way through this one. Big waste of time. I'm puzzled that it got so many good reviews...I have enjoyed all other books with similar ratings on Amazon.

This book is set in a future where climate change, resource wars and overpopulation have driven a small band of Silicon Valley-type entrepreneurs to create a sovereign city-state on an artificial island where they pursue a combination of virtual reality and artificial intelligence as a means to solve the world's problems.

That's a fine premise for a sci-fi novel but it's really the only thing here. The story consists of six characters' accounts of the same time period. But I found the characters to be bland and self-absorbed, and the lack of overlap among the six sub-stories made for a choppy read that did not build into anything greater than the sum of its parts. It ultimately felt like six morality tales about the dangers of sensory overload and/or using technology as a form of escapism. Would not recommend.