Ghosts of Tomorrow

By: Michael R. Fletcher

Narrated by: Rosa B. Watkinson

Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

The Brain Trade: Grown in crèches and programmed with a tribal warrior code, the minds of children are harvested by the black market. Sold to the highest bidder, they're installed in deadly combat machines and assassin chassis.

Griffin, a junior Investigations agent for the North American Trade Union, is put on the case: Find and close the illegal crèches. Installed in a combat chassis, Abdul, a depressed 17-year-old killed during the Secession Wars in Old Montreal, is assigned as Griffin's Heavy Weapons support. Nadia, a state-sanctioned investigative reporter working the stolen children story, pushes Griffin ever deeper into the nightmare of the brain trade.

In the La Carpio slums of Costa Rica, the scanned mind of an autistic girl named only 88 runs the South American Mafia's business interests. But 88 wants more. She wants freedom. And she has come to see humanity as a threat. She has an answer: Archaeidae. He died when he was eight. At 14, a six-gun slinging, katana-wielding machine of death, he is the deadliest assassin alive.

Two children against the world. The world is going to need some help.

©2017 Michael R. Fletcher (P)2018 Michael R. Fletcher

Solid Sci-Fi with dark and dusky overtones

Ghosts of Tomorrow was not something that I expected. looking at that awesome cover I thought it was just going to be a dystopian battle book, but this novel goes a lot deeper than the superficial romp I was expecting. Seriously, this is deep, dark, and disturbing because you know that if the science put forth here were possible then this is exactly what would happen, and that makes it terrifying.

The book, as the cover suggest is gutwrenchingly violent, but in a good way! ;P The action is extremely intense and is very well written. If this were a paper novel I would say that it popped off the page, but given that this is Audible I can tell you that the scenes are brutally vivid and as action packed as a Michael Bay movie that was written by Shakepeare. The plot is sinister, children are having their brains/minds stolen for corporate use, because children's minds work better than adults in the process they use to create processors.

One thing that I loved about this book is the utter lack of mercy when it came to characters. You think GRR Martin is tough? There are characters who show up and die in the same chapter, and just like in real life there is no rhyme nor reason to it other than that's the way it goes. Everything happens for a reason, i.e. is central to the plot, and deaths are not just toss aways. This is a cyberpunk tale set in a dystopian society, so don't look for rainbows, unicorns, and sunshine. The story is unrelenting and moves forward like a shark in search of prey.

Watkinson's narration took a little to get used too. She is most certainly British, but when she speaks she almost comes across as angry, cross, or upset. It was hard for me to tell, but she has a strange cadence and emphasizes words I would not have accentuated. Granted, once you listen to her you can go along for the ride, and I just wrote it off as "future Speech", but it took me some time to settle in to her style.

The book is very well written, with a wonky narration style, but it is well worth the time and money you'll be putting into it. It is deep, and will you thinking about things you have never considered before. Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. Getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.

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Best cyberpunk I've read since Snow Crash

Snow Crash was an affectionate parody of cyberpunk's excesses with a black samurai pizza boy who worked for the Italian mob and a 15-year-old Fedex girl with a sedative-equipped chastity belt. Ghosts of Tomororw, by contrast, embraces every one of the excesses of Neil Stephenson's book but manages to present them in a horrifying as well as tragic light. Many of the murderous cyborg killers in this book act like hyperactive overstimulated video-game addicted fourteen-year-olds. Which makes sense because they are hyperactive overstimulated video-game addicted fourteen-year-olds. They've just had their brains destroyed to make scans so the easily-indoctrinated child-soldiers can be unleashed on the rest of the world.

The premise is humanity has become addicted to the use of scans as a substitute for still-undeveloped artificial intelligence. Scans are a process where a human brain is destroyed but their personality and intelligence is copied onto an electronic format. They're much faster than regular humans in piloting, managing business assets, and even serving as assassins but the demand for them is overwhelming. This has resulted in the mob and other organized crime syndicates start trafficking children to be killed in their preteen years by the thousands, providing society with the scans they don't question the origin of.

Thankfully, not everyone is a monstrous psychopath and a few individuals are trying to curb the rampant child-murder. Griffin is a NATU (North American Trade Union) agent working with plucky reporter Nadia and a 17-year-old new combat-chassis-equipped scan named Abdul. Griffin failed in his first attempt to shut down a child slavery ring and has resolved to never do so again, no matter how much collateral damage gets in his way. Abdul is a man who "died" thanks to a spider-mine and has taken what form of survival he could but is going rapidly insane from the sensory deprivation his new life entails. Naida? Naida regurgitates the party line even though it's complete nonsense. These are the "good guys" on the case.

The bad guys are Riina, a mid-level mafia boss who has murdered and scanned thousands of children with the belief he's doing the impoverished children of Third World Nations a favor. 88 is an autistic girl murdered as a pre-teen and turned into a digital goddess on the quest for a "mother" she barely remembers. There's Miles Lorkner, a billionaire who believes scans are the future of humanity and thus it's perfectly justified to murder however many people necessary to resolve the world's problems with them. Finally, there's Archaeidae who is the aforementioned fourteen-year-old cowboy spider samurai assassin--and a character so insane that he steals the show every time he's on page.

It's difficult to say what character is my favorite as they're all so vividly realized. I really liked Griffin and Nadia's relationship despite them being the two most normal characters in the book. Abdul's existential angst is entirely justified since he's in a sensory-deprivation tank with the only purpose left to him being murder. 88 is also blissfully tragic and I sympathized with her even as her bodycount approaches five figures. I even liked reading about Lorkner's psychotic breakdown as it's clear the man envisioned himself as an ubermensch but is incredibly unprepared for life as a scan.

The book is full of action, intrigue, murder, crazy situations, double-crosses, triple crosses, and allegiances shifting constantly. Every character is motivated and three-dimensional but all of them tend toward the extreme because it's an extreme world. However, the saddest part of the book is that it's depiction of thousands of children used up for scans every year is not so different from the same kinds of kids today being used up for other kinds of trafficking. We're not so far removed from the cyber-hell in the book and the only difference is we have less block-destroying battles between cyborgs. Which is a shame.

The narrator does an excellent job but I note I think a male narrator would have done a better job given so many of the parts were men and Rosa's voice sounds distractedly similar to Marina Sirtis (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Mass Effect). The characters aren't British for the most part as well. Even so, I approve of this book greatly.

I really wanted to like this book

It was very difficult for me to listen to the narration, the story was interesting, but I couldnt listen the narrator any longer I got 7 chapters in and had to stop.

Great book, terrible narrator

The story is entertaining, but the narrator is absolutely horrible. She sounds like a buffoon, and apparently has no idea how to pronounce words, even accounting for the British accent. The way she makes the characters sound makes me want to puncture my ear drums.

pretty good cyberpunk thriller

engaging story especially once it got rolling. technology and plot gaps certainly exist, but that didn't take away from the fun of the ride.

It's just Okay!!

It's not the worst book I have listen too but it's the best either. The narrator was just average. The concept of the book was good at first but after a while it seemed very repetitive and repeated itself quite a bit. Overall I'd say save your money don't waste a credit. I had high hopes

A wild ride

My copy was a bit buggy in places, might be a feature for all I know.

The story itself was amazing, if a bit grimdark, and I never felt like it was predictable.

ending was a bit of a downer but the story is all the better for it.

The cover art brought me in...

I had my eye on this book for awhile because that cover artwork is freakin' spectacular! Love that image, and while I don't necessarily feel it captures the character and environment from the book (I get a serious weird western vibe), it certainly evokes a story unto itself as any great illustration should. As for the narrative, it was GRITTY, DARK, and VIOLENT. Caps are on purpose, because everything is dialed to eleven here (Spinal Tap reference which illustrates my point perfectly to those who know) so readers need to be prepared. I really liked the technology posited, and it made for a compelling and thought provoking world in which to explore. The narrator likewise was perfect for the novel, though I found myself noticing British pronunciations of various words because they were just different enough to pull me out of the narrative at times. This would not be an issue if reading the novel in print, so chalk one up for the added dimension of Audible narration! Needless to say, this is highly recommended on all counts.

Good story

But the reader mispronounced many words “acquiesce” “detritus” to name a couple.
Still good though

wicked cool!

super fun! dark awesome world, relatable and fun characters, well the mechanics are anyway. hope this is just the start of a long series.