Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

De: David Wong, Jason Pargin

Narrado por: Christy Romano

In a prosperous yet gruesomely violent near future, superhero vigilantes battle thugs whose heads are full of supervillain fantasies. The peace is kept by a team of smooth, well-dressed negotiators called The Men in Fancy Suits. Meanwhile a young girl is caught in the middle and thinks the whole thing is ridiculous.

Zoey, a recent college graduate with a worthless degree, makes a reluctant trip into the city after hearing that her estranged con artist father died in a mysterious yet spectacular way. There she finds that her scumbag dad had actually, in the final years of his life, put his amazing talent for hustling to good use: He was one of the founding members of the Fancy Suits and died in the course of his duties. Zoey is quickly entangled in the city's surreal mob war when she is taken hostage by a particularly crazy villain who imagines himself to be a Dr. Doom-level mastermind. The villain is demanding information about Zoe's father when she is rescued by The Fancy Suits. She reluctantly joins their cause and helps finish what her old man started, tapping in to her innate talent for bullshit that she inherited from her hated father. And along the way, she might just have to learn how to trust people again.

©2015 David Wong, Jason Pargin (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Silly but exciting and worth listening to

An enjoyable not-too-distant future story with a sense of humor to let you know it's not particularly serious. There is futuristic violence. And there are men (and a woman) in fancy suits.

My only issue with the story is that the main character, Zoe, is basically just an audience surrogate. She gets thrown into a big confusing world so that the other characters can explain to her how things work, and by extension, explain to us. Most of the actual events of the story don't really revolve around her--in fact, the overarching theme of the story is that everyone is sort of annoyed that she's around but she's too harmless to actually worry about.

Which is irritating to read because I want to see her succeed and do well, but her success is always coming from the strengths of the people around her. Her involvement typically just derails the plans and makes things worse.

That said, the world of Tabula Rasa is quite entertaining. It's somewhere between old-school Las Vegas and Rapture from Bioshock, a free-market no-laws society that acts as a playground for the ludicrously wealthy. And it ends up in about the same place.

All in all, it's a fun romp, and it has some interesting commentary on the state of social media. The villain has a tendency to monologue with completely inane philosophy but the book makes it extremely clear that THIS IS THE BAD GUY, DO NOT LISTEN so it's not going to corrupt your mind.

I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a diversion that makes them think a little bit, but mostly just delivers silly roll-your-eyes-and-smile humor.

Just a quick note

I loathed the bad guy in this and found Zoe to make constant bad decisions. I was hoping that they would both die at the end along with the cat. The resolution was totally unsatisfying and yet I made it all the way to the end. For that I guess I had to give it 4 stars. It managed to hold my interest even though I hated the protagonist and antagonist.

slopy plot. ending?

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

its like there is a good book there but the plot got gum stuck in its hair.
when they had to cut the gum out it made a mess of the good old plot so
then they tried to add some filler to make it better again but now its just stupid looking.

or maybe the plot is like trying to paint a house and running out of paint. but just continuing anyway with a similar but different color and this happens 3 times so the house is painted but it looks like you just don't give a shit.



my WTF flag went up like 8 times.

still it wasn't all bad.

Back Cover is misleading

I loved John dies at the end but this book was not even close. The back cover is completely misleading to what the actual story is about. The main character's actions in the book are unbelievable and take you right out of immersion. The narrators 'accents' for characters are grating and hard to listen to. The main protagonist has a philosophy that kind of misrepresents the 'alpha' stereotype to the point where you can guess how the author really feels about athletic people.

Another one

Really enjoyed this book. He's three for three! They say I have seven words to