The Informationist

A Thriller

By: Taylor Stevens

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information - expensive information - working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she's never looked back.

Until now.

A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It’s not her usual line of work, but she can’t resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she’s tried for so long to forget.

Gripping, ingenious, and impeccably paced, The Informationist marks the arrival or a thrilling new talent.

©2011 Taylor Stevens (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Stevens’s blazingly brilliant debut introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander….Thriller fans will eagerly await the sequel to this high-octane page-turner.” ( Publishers Weekly)

Could not do it.

Sorry, but after an hour and half I would expect to be hooked. I wasn't, I just could not do it any more, that is listen to the story or story teller. I was totally bored with it all. I am sorry I wasted a credit on this one. Wish there was some way of returning it.

wannabe Lisbeth Salander

This book has me rolling my eyes and cringing a lot. Stevens has made a dumb imitation of lisbeth salander in his main character. The writing is often hokey and the characters are two dimensional. Save your credits and listen to the "Dragon Tattoo" trilogy again.

Awful

This book is absolutely awful. The story line is unbelievable. The plot situations are improbable. The character development is nonexistent and the dialogue is sophomoric. The reading is even worse than the book. I am surprised that anyone would publish it and disappointed that Audible offers it. It was a waste of my monthly selection.

Gender Bender. Couldn't even listen to it.

I started this book, but I didn't enjoy the story line. You have the gender bending operative and the gay connection. I really didn't enjoy that.

A Credit Wasted

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A different plot, and more talented author not given to melodrama.

Has The Informationist turned you off from other books in this genre?

Not at all.

What didn’t you like about Hillary Huber’s performance?

The narrator did the best she could given the material.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Informationist?

The entire novel.

Any additional comments?

The Informationist is poorly written with characters you can't believe and certainly can't identify with. I found myself wondering if the author came up with ideas of how to maneuver his plot while suffering from severe depression or some other debilitating disease that blocked his creative process.I rarely stop listening to a story as I'm always one to get my moneys worth, but this book insulted my intelligence.


Leslie

Lame

This is expository writing and that is it. No poetry whatsoever, just corny. The book was good only for putting me to sleep at night, knowing that in the morning I didn't miss anything particularly interesting.

Strong premise & character descend into melodrama

The book sets a great atmosphere and the protagonist is initially captivating. The narrator does a good job and the book despite it's flaws is entertaining until it becomes laughable in the end. A fitting description might be Terminator melts into Romancing the Stone.

The flaws:
The book repeatedly pulls it's punches. The lead is always "about" to get violent, but keeps warning people not to mess with her instead. The action takes a nose-dive while the protagonists wrestles with school-girlish issues of love. All but one of the potential villains have less than a page of character development in the entire book making them irrelevant to the reader. Despite the title, it is never demonstrated that the main character has any particular ability to obtain or analyze information. Her only ability in this regard seems to be that she grew up in Africa and knows the lingo. To add insult to injury the character to be rescued becomes an unimportant afterthought and the main character decides that embarrassment might be punishment enough for the people who tried to kill her and her friends.

The bottom line is that the author set out to create a Lisbeth Salander like character with no idea of what motivates such a character and little idea of what the genre expects. The extreme weakness of the protagonist at the end (i.e. indecisive, illogical, passive, and naive) would make Jack Bauer and Mitch Rapp hurl. And back to pulling punches, the author blends three different endings together instead of choosing a solid one. It's akin to "It's okay that I let my son's killer go free, because he died in a car accident a few weeks later."

Why is this the Audiobook Tournament?! Terrible!

I really wanted to like this book and I would say I enjoyed it for the first half of the book, but, it took a turn for the worst somewhere. The main character has too many skills and her flaws are her actually psychological problems. In other words, she is very hard to relate to, sympathize with, root for, insert whatever else that a reader feels for her main character. Don’t get me wrong, I like strong female characters as much as the next person, but I struggle with calling her strong female character. She is not strong but overpowered.

Vanessa Michael Monroe has the ability to extract information from what often seems like thin air. She uses her many skills and does whatever is necessary to learn what she needs to for her clients. Sounds cool so far, right?

Well, my issue is that Michael has too many abilities that enable her to obtain this info. She can fight with guns, knives, her hands, can kill, speak 20 something languages, obtain fake ID’s and passports in whatever country she’s in, ride a motorcycle from Dallas to Colorado Springs, disguise herself as a man, dodge the many bullets that are fired at her in this book, survive in the jungle for a couple of days with no shoes or food, get our of handcuffs by dislocating her thumb, survive almost drowning with a boat anchor tied around her feet, and I could go on. She’s also moody, mentally unstable, untrusting, manipulative, all while having multiple lovers. Personally, I’m not really sure what the guys really saw her.

Overall, this was all just too much for one character. It wasn’t believable and started to get funny after awhile. To describe Michael and develop her character, the author uses many chapters. In my opinion, many of those chapters could have been cut out and the book still would have been long. I wished the author would just pick a few things and be done with the character development. Your character doesn’t have to do and be everything. I will admit Michael did show weakness from time to time and I was grateful when she did. It showed she was human.

Another challenge I had with this book was the violence. I normally can stomach violence (I enjoyed Girl with a Dragon Tattoo) but this book made me a little queasy. I wished there was some warning before I bought the audiobook saying, “Warning: This book contains violence, sexuality, and sexually related violence.” I still don’t know if that would have warned me enough. It was too much for me and I kind of wish I could ‘unhear’ this book.

I won’t be reading or listening to another Vanessa Michael Monroe book. She’s not my type of heroine and Steven’s stories are just not for me.

Awful

In my opinion: Badly written and poorly expressed audibly, This novel is to be avoided. I have experience may well read and interesting books on audible.com but this is not one of those.

A thriller NOT

Really just kinda slow and uninteresting. Seemed to just be a lot of stuff that didnt contribute to the story.
had a hard time staying with it.