The Traveler

I started reading a chapter in the bookstore and was immediately engrossed. But before buying I checked Audible and found that it was a choice.
I'm 3/4 through this story. Normally I only listen to the books when driving. This one I'm listening to as I work on the computer and do many normal tasks.

Just can't put it down.
The story has many elements.

1.Thought provoking. The premise of big brother monitoring us and taking away our freedoms. It is close enough to reality that one can "suspend belief" as she/he listens.
2. The Narrator is perfect for the book instead of trying to change the voice to emulate a woman or different characters. For the most part he keeps his same pace and voice with some minor inflections. I liked this it was more like reading the book than listening to a play.
3.A great take on spirituality and mysticism. Nothing new just extracts from major religions.
5.Finally there is lots of action and a intricate plot.

I haven't written a review this positive since I listened to the story of Pi. This is a book I feel like saying to every friend I meet, have you read the traveler. Awsome you have to pick it up.

I won't disparage anyone who enjoyed this book, but despite wanting to like it so much, I could barely bring myself to listen to it. Scott Brick is one of my favorite readers, but even he couldn't save this book. The overall plot has some interesting ideas, but the characters are copy and pasted cliches from every hollywood movie you've ever seen. The writing is tedious and flat. I thought if I had to listen to the phrase "vast machine" one more time I was going to throw up.

I am more than half way thru with no sign of any "Traveling". Just heavy-handed violence and cynicism. However, I am going to be "traveling" on to another audiobook. This one is just too paranoid and cynical. I'm sorry that I wasted a credit on this. Oh, and the reader is disappointing as well. Please don't waste a credit, just wait for the movie to show up on the USA Network.

If I was having to fly to New Zealand, I'd take this book - it would entertain me on the long flight and inevitable delays. It is undemanding, entertaining and full of holes. A confection that attempts to merge '1984' with Lara Croft, with a bit of 'pulp fiction' violence thrown in. The basic premise - that mass surveillance can be used for control and subverted for evil - isn't new, and the protagonists who support or oppose this view in the novel are just presented and the listener is asked to believe. There's nothing about how or why this near-future dystopia came into being and only the sketchiest exploration of motives. The characters are pretty conventional, with the stereotyped 'baddy', the love interest sub-plot, and the guy who sees the error of his ways and sacrifices himself for the just cause (etc etc - you get the idea). The premise that massive computer systems linked between the USA and London can track individuals is fine, but people escape this simply by travelling to 'the third world' - lightweight even for today, let alone the future.

I enjoyed the narration, a well timed, skillful read, with a light US accent, the narrator taking a run at cockney and various other accents without falling over too much. The book itself is pacily written, so it is a bit of a page-turner and I was keen to listen to the next chapter, only to groan sometimes at the sheer predictability of the characters and plotting. The best parts in my view are episodes when the characters adventure into different realms - here some truly imaginative stuff takes place, entertaining and fresh.

So - overall - in my view a good holiday 'read'. Be prepared to be entertained, but not challenged, suspend your disbelief and go for a gallop along paths that often sound pretty familiar; above all don't actually think about the story else it will unravel. If you get really bored you can play 'guess what Maya (=Lara) is going to do next'. Then read or listen to "1984".

I have to be honest, I only got this book because it was read by Scott Brick.
I knew I would enjoy it. I never knew how much it would make me stop and think.
This book was very different from his usual reads. More than just a mystery or fantasy, this book has a spiritual element. As I listened, I was reminded of Orwell's "1984", and it caused me to wonder just how close to "Big Brother" we have gotten. John Twelve Hawks,through the characters he created in this book, asks a lot of questions. The answers perhaps are a little too scary for us to hear.

This was an awful book from start to finish. I was never interested in the plot or any of the characters.
It felt like nothing was ever going to happen and unfortunately for me (and any other reader or listener) nothing ever does.

Poorly written, uninteresting linear plot and hollow characters - no one wonder John Twelve Hawks wants his true identity to remain a secret.

Give this one a miss!

The theme of this book -- and BEWARE that this is just the first volume of a trilogy -- is that all we do is subject to monitoring by corporations and the government. Unfortunately, by the time one reaches the end of this novel, one has been beaten to death with that concept. And then beaten some more.

The novel became increasingly more preachy and uninteresting as it wore on. I only kept listening to see how it would end . . . only to find out that this was the first novel of a trilogy. I, for one, have no intention of listening to the next two parts.

If you are interested in the theme, get a copy of Orwell's "1984." If you already have read 1984, you would be better off reading it again instead of spending time on "The Traveler."

This terrific story, was similar in story line to the Matrix but with a much more believable base.
The author created characters you cared about and the pace was perfect. Plenty of action, not just for the sake of action but to further the story always. Scott Brick shined as usual as narrator and brought everything to life with his unerring style.
Looking forward to the next installment. The scenes in the book are perfect for a movie, I hope one comes of it.

Normally I hail Scott Brick as an incredible audio book performer, but he read this book as if he just needed a paycheck. (Try "The Company" to hear him do his best work.) Perhaps Brick didn't try his best because this book is not particularly a good one.
This is a book to listen to in the car on the way to someplace interesting. In other words, it's junk food for the brain. The author posits some interesting ideas, but the characters are two dimensional, and the plot itself is rather predictable. If you only get one credit a month, don't waste it on "The Traveler".
I listened to this book after finishing "Acacia" by David Anthony Durham, a riveting 29 hour novel with an excellent narrator and vivid characters, so perhaps that colors my opinion. If you only get one credit a month, then THAT book is certainly worth it! Or, if you have two credits, try "The Company: A Novel of the CIA" by Robert Littell. It gives you 40 hours of espionage at its best.
Those two recommendations require a bit of a commitment time-wise; if you just want to be mildly entertained for a few hours, then go ahead and spend/waste a credit on "The Traveler": there certainly are worse books than this one out there.

This is not much worse than most fiction. The characters are less than two dimensional (maybe 1.5 dimensions) and the story is about as simple as they come. Otherwise the writing is not terribly bad. I was unhappily surprised to find at the non-ending of this book that it is the first in a trilogy. Although I stuck this book out to the end, I would not subject myself to another volume.

The author says that the surveillance technology described in the book is real, and exists today. Clearly some of the technology does exist today, but some seems the product of paranoia. Auto GPS systems are passive (they don?t transmit). Although many products (including tires) have ID chips, these would not be readable from any substantial distance, and the data linking the ID to a vehicle is unlikely to exist. From my experience in the software field, it is difficult to get two departments of the same company to share data. It seems unlikely to me they would share this data with the vast machine without compensation. Satellite phones, on the other hand, do transmit and are trackable and people walking around with metal swords would likely be detected by any vast machine worth its chips. The overall impression I get is this book is an elaborate excuse for not paying ones income taxes. This does not make for compelling fiction.