Quarantine

By: Greg Egan

Narrated by: Adam Epstein

In 2034, the stars went out. An unknown agency surrounded the solar system with an impenetrable barrier, concealing the universe from humanity’s gaze.

In 2067, Nick Stavrianos is hired to investigate the disappearance of a mentally disabled woman, Laura Andrews, from the institution where she was being cared for. Aided by a skull full of neural modifications, he follows her trail to the Republic of New Hong Kong, where an organization known as the Ensemble has uncovered Laura’s extraordinary secret: An ability that could transform the world.

©2013 Greg Egan (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Good story

I am not usually interested in detective-style writing, but this was done well. As a sci-fi buff, I think it easy ranks as one of the better books I've read, with a plot that keeps moving, a style that is easy to follow & enjoy, as well as "futuristic" and scientific concepts that are interesting and mind-stretching. I've read the book before, but still reread it now since it had such interesting concepts.

The only detractor was that the narrator seemed to cut and splice his spoken segments at times with noticeably different vocal tones and inflections, but it wasent bad, just a little distracting. Not a big deal really.

Gets kinda dumb as the story goes on

The story starts out OK, and the premise is very gradually revealed. Unfortunately, I had to get about half-way through the book before I realized that the premise is kinda dumb. The more it was explained, the more I wanted to toss the book. Only got half-way through it.

The narrator is OK, but has a speech pattern that never varies. Again, by about half-way through the book it began to grate on me.

Nerdy fun physics - took awhile to start

He literally uses physics to give himself super powers…. Cant get more nerdy than that ;) but def had some pacing issues. Narrator didnt help it much

What more could I want from a Greg Egan Tale

Cool tech, deep science, and mind blowing revelations. loved it, right up there with his best.
Narrator is a bit deadpan. But works well with the sort of cyberpunk noir theme.

Leaves you wonderstuck thinking about the premise!

Some science fiction is just a story set with a twist, or a murder mystery in space, a romance but with cyborgs. Even hard science fiction, it's a lot of focus on a spaceship design or something and then people do stuff in the spaceship. Not for the Glorious Greg Egan! this author find a way to fundamentally shift reality, carefully backed by doing the math and thinking about the physics and the underlying axioms of the universe. his characters aren't a story with a twist, they exist in an altered reality where the fundamentals from the quantum foam up have been modified and carefully, carefully considered. Egan is one of the few authors where when you're done with the book you end up on Wikipedia learning more about the topic and a few weeks later you still can't get the premise out of your head, and suddenly you find yourself by chance talking to someone super technical or educated or whatever and you find that you came away from the Egan book with a full education and you can talk the talk with the best of them!