Utopia

By: Lincoln Child

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 18 hrs

Publisher's summary

Fasten your seat belts - the white-knuckle thrills at Utopia, the world’s most fantastic theme park, escalate to nightmare proportions in this intricately imagined techno-thriller by New York Times best-selling author Lincoln Child.

Rising out of the stony canyons of Nevada, Utopia is a world on the cutting edge of technology. A theme park attracting 65,000 visitors each day, its dazzling array of robots and futuristic holograms make it a worldwide sensation. But ominous mishaps are beginning to disrupt the once flawless technology. A friendly robot goes haywire, causing panic, and a popular roller coaster malfunctions, nearly killing a teenage rider. Dr. Andrew Warne, the brilliant computer engineer who designed much of the park’s robotics, is summoned from the East Coast to get things back on track.

On the day Warne arrives, however, Utopia is caught in the grip of something far more sinister. A group of ruthless criminals has infiltrated the park’s computerized infrastructure, giving them complete access to all of Utopia’s attractions and systems. Their communication begins with a simple and dire warning: If their demands are met, none of the 65,000 people in the park that day will ever know they were there; if not, chaos will descend, and every man, woman, and child will become a target.

As one of the brains behind Utopia, Warne finds himself thrust into a role he never imagined - trying to save the lives of thousands of innocent people. And as the minutes tick away, Warne’s struggle to outsmart his opponents grows ever more urgent, for his only daughter is among the unsuspecting crowds in the park.

Lincoln Child evokes the technological wonders of Utopia with such skill and precision it is hard to believe the park exists only in the chapters of this extraordinary book. Like Jurassic Park, Utopia sweeps listeners into a make-believe world of riveting suspense, technology, and adventure.

Utopia - where technology dazzles - and then turns deadly!

©2002 Lincoln Child (P)2002 Books on Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Child proves he is capable of fireworks (literally) at the rousing conclusion." (Publishers Weekly)
"The blend of technological jargon and suspense results in a real thrill-a-minute read." (Booklist)

Nice. A very well written story.

I'm a fan of Preston and Child so I find myself reading all of their joint efforts as well as stand alone books. This book is very well written and Scott's performance is spot on. The topic is a bit lame, but Child manages to make it a darn good read. Everything seems well researched and I did not suspend my belief much.

Never Met an Emotional Computer Scientist Before

The plot was good but my experience with computer scientists did not match that of Andrew's. Andrew is so much more emotional and acted a bit irrational at times. However, once I got past that, I enjoyed getting to know the other characters.

I Like Not Knowing

The book is well written with excellent narration. For my tastes, it was too transparent. (Love that word. I comes from the modern corporate speak: to be patronizingly obvious.) I figured out the roles of the major players too early in the book to make it exciting. But, as I said, good writing with excellent reading. Entertaining.

Utopia (unabridged)

I really enjoyed this book. I like reading thrilling books but several lead to the supernatural, which I don't care much for. If you have liked amusement parks as a kid or if you are still a kid at heart you will love this thriller. Not only does it make you feel like you are really there it makes you wish there really was a park like this one until things go bad. At first I thought it was going to be like the old movie "West World" but it is even better. You have to get the unabridged version! I haven't heard the abridged version but it is well worth the hours to listen to the book. I wished it would never end. So take a seat, hold on, as you venture into a new world at "Utopia"!

15 hours too long.

I must be missing something as everone else seems to love this book except me! The writing is good, the descriptions are intricate. Maybe that's the problem. There isn't enough action or excitement to fill 20 hours. The characters - with the exception of Georgia and Theresa - are not very likeable and certainly unlovable.

There are much better thrillers out there.

Wonderful story!

I really enjoyed this book. I have been an avid reader since I was nine and many times I lose interest in a book because I have read that story in one form or another over and over again. This book gave me a story I have not read before. It is about, for lack of a better word, an amusement park but it is so much more than that! The park is run by a “meta net” designed by one man. When bad things start to happen in the park, Warren, the man who developed the net, is called in to take his metanet down. As the story develops it becomes clear that his creation, and thus Utopia, are being held hostage. The story doesn’t have much set up, it grabs your interest right away and keeps it. The story moves fast and has lots of action and some twists and turns. Utopia is a thoroughly good romp and will entertain from start to satisfying finish!

Utopia just didn't grab me

I was prepared to really enjoy this book, but none of the characters seemed worth worrying about. The story was a potentially great idea. However, it seemed to go on much too long with the author adding all the obstacles he could think of at all the "right" times although you always knew that somehow they would be overcome.
I felt Scott Brick did a great job of narrating initially but he went way over the top as the book neared the climax point. He overly dramatized accents and it appeared he must have been greatly entertaining himself.
Utopia just didn't satisfy me, and I found myself looking forward to it, at long last, ending. I would not care to revisit any of these characters again.
If you don't need to connect with characters and love techno-thrillers, by all means go for this book. Otherwise, I would recommend looking elsewhere for a satisfying thriller.

It never took off

I wanted to love this book but in the end it just didn't satisfy. I loved the amusement park itself, a high tech marvel outside of Vegas. You can tell the writer is a theme park fan. But the plot itself seemed forced, contrived, silly.
On a positive note, the narrator Scott Brick is superb!!! Check him out in Atlas Shrugged.

Utopia is a roller coaster?

I don't like roller coasters but I love Scott Brick and Lincoln Child so I decided to give it a try. It was way to easy to figure out the undercover bad guy! But I did enjoy the description and antics of the robots ~ This is fun entertainment.

Die Hard meets West World...

If you’ve listened to books by Lincoln Child before, how does this one compare?

If you enjoy Lincoln Child's solo novels, then you will enjoy this as well.

Child tends to write fast paced science and techno thrillers that are light on the science and tech. This is not a bad thing for quick summer reads when our goal is simple escapism. Utopia is nothing less, and nothing more.

The suspense and action is where the strength of this novel lies, in fact, it depends on it. The characters have zero development throughout the story as if they were merely props in one big action sequence. But hey, that's what we want in these kind of stories right?