A Better World

The Brilliance Trilogy, Book 2

By: Marcus Sakey

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

The brilliants changed everything.

Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we'd only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person's most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional...and the rest of us.

Now a terrorist network led by brilliants has crippled three cities. Supermarket shelves stand empty. 911 calls go unanswered. Fanatics are burning people alive.

Nick Cooper has always fought to make the world better for his children. As both a brilliant and an advisor to the president of the United States, he's against everything the terrorists represent. But as America slides toward a devastating civil war, Cooper is forced to play a game he dares not lose - because his opponents have their own vision of a better world.

And to reach it, they're willing to burn this one down.

From Marcus Sakey, "the master of the mindful page turner" (Gillian Flynn) and "one of our best storytellers" (Michael Connelly), Book Two of the Brilliance Saga is a relentless thrill ride that will change the way you look at your world - and the people around you.

©2014 Marcus Sakey. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Exceptional!

A new favorite author! This was part 2, follow-up to Brilliance, and just as good. One of my top 10 favorite books of 2014!

I can only hope there is a third one of this saga!

Originally published at: A Girl that Likes Books

First impression

This is the second installment on the Brilliance Saga. I really enjoyed the first one (you can find my review here) and so it was a no brainer to get the second one. Sakey continues to tackle the subject of how society reacts to difference from the status quo, and since we were already introduce to the concept of brilliance, A Better World leans more towards the political part of the equation. How would science deal with a new phenomenon, how would the oppress minority counter react to such oppression, how would the government and the anti government institutions play their cards? All of these questions and more are discussed in this series and certainly with more depth in this second part. I can only hope there is a third one.

Final thoughts

First thing I have to commend from this book is how it tackles science. Sometimes books, particularly on science fiction, go into such an elaborated push of science or even worst, state things that are in no way possible; both situations are hard for me to digest, particularly when the deal with biology. I did not get that from this book. Every scientific explanation was well constructed and made sense in accordance with the world that was being built by the author, without being so overly complicated that would made me lose interest.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was the multiple layers of every character. Every time I think I am starting to know the character and will be able to know what he/she is going to do another facet appears and it changes the result beautifully. They are very...human characters if you want, they are not all bad not all good. Characters that you were rooting for in the first book, you might want to slap them in this one and the other way around.
And Sharon, she is a great character; she is a bad ass all the way through. The scenes of her commanding attacks, for example; she has an imposing, determined personality, but can also be very sweet and endearing at times.

The rhythm of the book is good and I would say fast enough for an action book, without omitting details, or passing through them in a blur. Once again, enough detail to make it interesting, without making it into a dissertation. At times I will admit that I could do with a less description of people's intents through Nick's eyes, but at the same time, these scenes go so fast that they don't necessarily bother me, and it gives the book a movie feeling; I feel this would be a great series to make into a TV series or even a movie, and if I am not mistaken there is already talk of it happening.

So with all this praise, why am I not giving it a full 5? There is still something missing but I haven't been able to pin point to what it is. At the end I get what I was expecting and it was very well delivered, but I can't say with certainty that I got more than that.

Should be one book.

Brilliance is a great concept and a good sci-fi action book. A Better World continues the story, but doesn’t stand alone and there is so much review of the first book that the flow is ruined. It would be so much better if the trilogy were written as one book.

Excellent, exciting, engrossing etc

I highly recommend this series, from beginning to end every book keeps you on the edge of your seat and the voices always fit the characters.

Couldn't put it down.

This book was exciting, and the characters were relatable. The narrator was great, as always.

Great!

Loved it. Great concept. The way Marcus develops his characters is excellent. I cant wait to get to the next one in the series.

Better than the first!

the author did a great job of expanding on the first book. Cooper is a badass but a believable badass more similar to Jason Bourne than James Bond. buying third book now!

Love this narrator

I love Luke Daniels. This is a good series. I’m going to listen to the last one right now.

Another great action thriller in the series!

I hope this series gets made into movies, it grabs you from the start and it's a constant thrill ride, I can just envision certain actors playing Nick and Shannon, etc.

Engaging but a bit of a stretch

The book was engaging and the performance of it was excellent. Though I thought the story premise was good but the string of events in it a bit far fetched needing more concrete reasons for the decisions made by characters twirls the core conflict. I may have jumped into this book out of sequence but by itself I found the book entertaining albeit not totally believable .