Connected

By: Simon Denman

Narrated by: Simon Denman

Beginning with the funeral of a renowned classical violinist in a sleepy rural hamlet in the Lake District, a former theoretical physicist tries to make sense of his brother's suicide. Across the country, a university student, enjoying the unexpected attentions of an enigmatic seductress, is disturbed when his best friend falls to his death from the thirteenth floor of a neighboring campus tower block. As each tries to unravel the mystery behind the apparent suicides, they are drawn into an obsessive search for a computer-generated fractal video sequence, with startling effects on human consciousness, and which might just pave the way for discovery of the ultimate theory of everything. However, they are not the only ones to have seen the potential of this mind-altering video, and soon find themselves in a desperate race against time with gangsters from the shadowy worlds of sex, drugs, cyber-crime, and massively multi-player on-line gaming.

©2012 Simon Denman (P)2013 Cherry Hill Publishing

Engaging ideas, story; lacks depth

More of an action adventure story with gangsters and beautiful women, but enough interesting ideas from the quantum world to keep me engaged.

Fascinating story, excellent narration

What did you love best about Connected?

Mandelbrot sets, multidimensional geometry, brain science and spy thrillers all rolled up together. I'm a mathematician, how can I not like it?

What did you like best about this story?

The parallel stories and how they came together was well done, better than many I've seen.

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

Mr. Denman does a wonderful job of reading his own work; even professional narrators sometimes throw me out of the story by repeating a bit, mispronouncing a word or using a false intonation, but one would think that this author is a voice actor as well. He pulls me into the story and makes me want to stay up and listen instead of doing anything else. Oh, and he has a yummy voice in general.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Indeed it was. I hated to be pulled away from it for any reason. I was afraid of what would happen, yet fascinated.

Any additional comments?

Will there be more books? That's what I want to know. Not that I've finished even the ten stories I've set myself, but maybe when we're both retired, I'll do more stories and he'll do more novels. Math is a hard taskmaster, isn't it?