A Better World

The Brilliance Trilogy, Book 2

By: Marcus Sakey

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's Summary

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.

Constant suspense!

With Book 3 of the Brilliance Saga being released next month I finally got around to listening to Book 2. The concept of the thriller series is unique in my reading experience. The US is being torn apart by a war between the brilliant people, the relatively few mentally and physically talented individuals, and normal people.

Luke Daniels does a great job of narration.

Simply a solid continuation of a great idea

A Better World picks up shortly after the conclusion of Brilliance. Nick Cooper, a brilliant himself, worked for Equitable Services (under DAR) hunting down rouge or terrorist or unwanted abnorms. After taking down his boss and the President of the Untied States, after one of his charges, John Smith, enlightens Nick as to what is really going on. Now he has been asked by the new President, form Vice-President, to hunt down a new group of terrorists, The Children of Darwin. With no option to refuse.

Simultaneously Shannon, Cooper's cohort from the last story is embarking on her own missions. Both stories converge eventually. Contrasting to the last audiobook, which had only one point of view to follow, here we have to follow three. Nick Cooper, Shannon and Ethan (normal person) a scientist who's story doesn't make sense until later on. This jumping back and forth kept me for being fully immersed like I was last time.

The uniqueness that made Brilliance such an awesome story, and surrounded it with hype somewhere disappeared in A Better World. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this sequel, it just seemed more mainstream thriller with much of the action in the second half of the story. No real surprises or major plot twists. What kept me interested was the complexity of Cooper, he is the kind of guy that would be wearing a white hat in an old western. Good guy through and through, yet awesomely imperfect.

Simply a solid continuation of a great idea, I cannot wait for the next one.

Audiobook purchased by reviewer.

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Brilliant and Stupid at the Same Time

There are things to love about this book and series. Then there are things that just don’t make any sense which are very frustrating when you are really rooting for this series to succeed.

I love what Sakey has done to build his premise. I think that his conflict built by social upheaval because of the effects a generation of genius children have on the world is itself genius. It touches on all kinds of things, adjustments to new technologies, psychological effects of estrangement due to different powers and perspectives, bigotry, the national interest, family relationships, that feeling that the normal world is just changing too fast, etc. It is a fantastic and layered premise sprinkled with his interludes that give it color and make it more real to the reader. (If there were a generation of brilliant people, wouldn’t there be a “personals” section focused on them specifically? Yes. Yes there would. Of course!)
Then he has to go and screw it up with one dimensional characters and monkeywrenching the suspension of disbelief he asks of his readers.

First the characters: Most are made of wood. Professorial, wishy-washy President. Ambitious, conniving SecDef. Diabolical, megalomaniacal villain. “Protect my Family!” Hero. Other “Protect my Family!” Hero. Supportive wife. Other supportive (ex) wife. There are a few with human-like motivations, but some characters who were much better fleshed out in the first book became more one dimensional here. Daniels does yeoman-like work fleshing them out, but you can’t make substance out of nothing.

My major gripe is the laziness with which Sakey treats the contract he writes with the reader. I am all for suspension of disbelief in fiction. If the author tells me that Superman is super strong and can basically lift, well, anything, I say ok. If the author tells me then that Kryptonite is the only thing that makes him weak and it makes him weak as a kitten, I say ok. But if the same author tells me that, despite the previous statement, Superman can pick up an entire Island of Kryptonite and throw it into space because he just grits his teeth really hard simply because the author needed something really dramatic (I’m looking at you Bryan Singer), you lost me. In that case as in this one, the author breaks the promise he makes.

Nick Cooper is the greatest profiler in the world, a Brilliant who can look at people’s patterns of behavior and predict pretty much exactly what those people will do next. At the start of the first book he tracked a hacker across country to a specific bar, basically by looking at her rap sheet and her clothes closet. And I say ok. But he goes through most of this book forgetting about his fantastic gift for reading people until the end. This makes me want to scream. Cooper is supposed to be a Brilliant, but only seems to remember his gift after the author has had a chance to build the tension.

This is the problem with trying to write perspective characters who are supposed to be really, really aware. Cooper can read people’s intentions, but he never seems to use it to head off a problem; he just conveniently turns it off when the author needs to create a plot twist. If Cooper is such a brilliant profiler, why isn’t he doing it all the time to stay a step ahead of the bad guys? If you want to put a limitation on a character, you have to do it in the story, you can’t just have him forget he’s brilliant until it’s convenient.

And speaking of forgetting: Ethan Park has no idea why people might be after him or his boss until he just happens to remember halfway into the book that his lab had made the biggest scientific discovery in the last 30 years on an amazingly controversial issue? The author made the choice that it would be better for the drama if the danger was unexpected when any reasonable person would have been paranoid from page 1.

One final hang-up that has to do with poor research: Tanks can’t get “hacked.” Sure you can foul its GPS, or maybe screw with some of its electronic systems, but the breech is loaded by human hands and the tracks are driven by mechanical linkage. And before you say it, no we weren’t waiting around for some Brilliant to invent an auto-loader. That technology has been around since before tanks. We intentionally put the human element in for safety reasons. Hacking a high-tech jet’s avionics and control systems? Ok, but tanks are mechanical; you can lock the turret with a physical lever. The funny thing is, Sakey didn’t even need to do this; the physical threat from guided missiles going off course and jets crashing would have been plenty destructive.

Better than the reviews I've read would suggest

If you haven't read the first one, this won't make much sense. If you have, and you liked it, this book will also work for you. It has the same kinds of plot holes that most science fiction has -- particularly around the way national politics and the Presidential use of force are described -- but they're not any more problematic than most other such books. People have said the story seemed forced, but I don't agree. I think this is an excellent progression of the story and actually makes some of the more unlikely aspects of the first book make a bit more sense. If anything, this one may have been a bit more grounded. There is an assassin in this story that has a type of gift not described before and I thought it was very well considered. It's the sort of thing that definitely provides a big advantage, but is also one of the hardest to live with and both aspects were well described. The gifted in this book are less perfect than in the first, and the result is more believable.

What you'd expect from the second in a trilogy

This book continued the fast pace action of the first, but without the bonus multiplier of novelty, its flaws were a little more apparent. For instance, the characters are all pretty flat and don't develop at all, and we only met a few new people. Some of the side characters only serve a plot purpose (e.g. Cooper's kids. There's no mention of their reactions to all the horrors they're seeing other than "the kids looked pale and held Natalie's hand.") Cooper's over the top macho-ism and boy scout tell the truth-ism got old quickly.

All the same, the series is still very entertaining, and I will definitely buy the third audiobook.

One of the best books I have ever listened to!

If you could sum up A Better World in three words, what would they be?

Fast Paced, exciting

Any additional comments?

This story was fast moving but not so much so that you felt that you didnt get to know the characters. Everything was well developed- I mean everything. The setting was descriptive, I knew all about the characters and the story was incredible. This was one that I could never tell what was about to happen. Incredible start to finish!

And Luke daniels was amazing as always. Great narrator! Really exceptional all around!

much better than the first book, still a way to go

Ok, I was not crazy about the first book and liked it juuust enough to give the second a try. lack of character depth, cliche plot points, etc etc.
I was pleasantly surprised by this follow-up. still not top-shelf writing by any means, and repetitive as Hell, but when I got through it I certainly wanted more. it was topical given the recent civil unrest in our country, painting a less than flattering but totally realistic view of the government response to crisis. plot hole: didn't take state government into account at all. but I digress, if you read the first and aren't sure I'd say give it a shot.

Excellent Sci Fi story!

Where does A Better World rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is in the top 25%. I really enjoyed this second book in the series.

What did you like best about this story?

There is not 1 best. It's a good story. It was written well and it had narration. I judge a story based on it sucking me in and not pissing me off. That did this well.

Any additional comments?

I can't wait until the next one comes out.

After telling my husband about the series he points out that someone owe Stan Lee some money. I don't want to get into that. But if you the like the premise of x-men you will probably enjoy this series in general. Nobody wear costumes and the skills are not quite at super natural. But idea is there. I am also impressed with the political allegory.

If you like political stories, this is also a story for you.

If you like good writing. I recommend.

non-stop thriller with a smart premise

This is an excellent followup to Brilliance, and even stands on its own as the author provides enough recap to bring a reader up to speed. Despite the fact that this book reads even more like a typical airport thriller in pacing and action, it may be even stronger than the first book was. The plot is unique and richly appropriate to discussion of terrorism and racial bias in the current world.The Brilliants' powers are scientifically possible and explainable - not superpowers that pull you out of the story in disbelief. The characters are fully fleshed out and complex. They seem believable and you have emotional responses to them. The action is fast and sometimes shocking. The language is tight, fast, and very smooth. The futuristic science and technology reads like something out of Wired - advances believably grown out of current technology. The author uses all the tricks to keep the story moving and to present a very human face on all the players in the story. The romance is restrained but feels real too - never 'love at first sight" or too overblown. This book is all about choices and their repercussions.

WOW, I was not expecting that...

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This was a solid second book. all the characters that survived book one are now more rounded out for book two. And then given new tasks. An awesome story. Quick release the Kraken...I mean book three.

What was one of the most memorable moments of A Better World?

Soren was awesome. the intrigue and political back story.

What does Luke Daniels bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Luke Daniels is good, solid narrator. never distracting. I forget that he's speaking and I'm just in the story itself. Awesome.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Soren's attack. John Smith.

Any additional comments?

Worth the download. Great book.

Absolutely Brilliant

The two books I've heard so far have been masterful, quite simply they've been brilliant.

Fast pace, but getting a bit silly in places

I enjoyed Brilliance and overall I enjoyed A Better World too, but this second book in the series is less credible and the narrator made mistakes which I found distracting. The rapid pace of action is maintained from the first book but unfortunately some chapters are ludicrous. But it was fun, so I will listen to Written in Fire, which must be a recommendation of sorts.