Invasive

A Novel

By: Chuck Wendig

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

"Think Thomas Harris, Will Graham and Clarice Starling rolled into one and pitched on the knife's edge of a scenario that makes Jurassic Park look like a carnival ride. Another rip-roaring, deeply paranoid thriller about the reasons to fear the future." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

Hannah Stander is a consultant for the FBI - a futurist who helps the agency with cases that feature demonstrations of bleeding-edge technology. It's her job to help them identify unforeseen threats: hackers, AIs, genetic modification, anything that in the wrong hands could harm the homeland.

Hannah is in an airport, waiting to board a flight home to see her family, when she receives a call from Agent Hollis Copper. "I've got a cabin full of over a thousand dead bodies," he tells her. Whether those bodies are all human, he doesn't say.

What Hannah finds is a horrifying murder that points to the impossible - someone weaponizing the natural world in a most unnatural way. Discovering who - and why - will take her on a terrifying chase from the Arizona deserts to the secret island laboratory of a billionaire inventor/philanthropist. Hannah knows there are a million ways the world can end, but she just might be facing one she could never have predicted - a new threat both ancient and cutting-edge that could wipe humanity off the earth.

©2016 Chuck Wendig (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Narrator ruined the story.

The story was good, however, narration was terrible. There’s never any excitement in her voice. She spoke in a low mono tone cadence. All character voices sounded the same, and many of her sentences ended in a whisper. All in all, she sounded like someone reading a bedtime story to a three-year-old who was falling asleep herself.

Good Story, So-So Narration

Chuck Wendig delivers as always. Interesting story, not quite the same as all those other tech-gone-wrong plots. Inventive, and he keeps the humans the real monsters - because aren’t they always?

The narrator isn’t awful, but when she reads men, she makes them all sound the same - with the exception of one character with an accent. Making your voice a bit lower in pitch and creaky doesn’t make one sound more masculine; it just makes the listener fight the urge to constantly clear their throat.

Without a doubt !

Pay no attention that this is book 2 the last of the series, there is nothing that connects between the two so every book can be read by its own and compare to this one the first kind of suck.
Unlike the first this ones story makes sense even the evil plain by the so called bad guy in the story which fits perfectly today with the epidemic and global warming does makes you think that sometimes evil might be necessary and all that is before the twist which you don’t see coming at the end ( the extra evil reason in the plan ).
Enjoyed this one !

A Creepy Crawly Jurassic Park

Chuck Wendig weaves another masterpiece! His books remind me of Michael Crichton, they are well thought out and he does his research. The performance is superb, an excellent narrative that I thoroughly enjoyed.

interesting and atmospheric

my first of this authors books, an interesting perspective on the science of genetic manipulation and it's bearing on the future. protagonist is well sculpted and it's easy to care about the her outcome. the resolution is satisfying and has the feel of cold reality. recommended!

Not bad!

The author’s lefty politics leech into this book as well. If that doesn’t bother you, it’s a great book. Very visual while listening. He’s a great author and his books flow very well.

Predictable

Decent story but it was very predictable. My biggest issue is the reader. Her male voices were awful, older people sounded near death or what an old Texan sounded like. Her Icelandic accent sounded middle eastern. Made the story hard to follow at times.

Great narration, fun writing - only ok story

This is the third novel of Chuck Wendig's that I've read - and it's fair to say I've had the full range of reactions to his work. I say read, this one I listened to as an audiobook, but previously I loved his first Miriam Black novel, but couldn't warm to his take on Star Wars in Aftermath. This one? Well, it ticks all the boxes for something I ought to love.

It starts with a bang, an FBI consultant being asked to come and investigate a cabin where a weird death has taken place. The consultant, Hannah, is a futurist, who seems to have a habit of imagining all of the worst possible outcomes without ever really seeing the best. She uncovers clues that suggest that ants are being used as a weapon - and follows the trail of their little tiny feet as she hunts for the suspects.

After the start, though, things get bogged down with very little action - Wendig throws in a few dream sequences as jump scares to distract from the lack of much happening. He writes really well, his style absorbing and immediate, but it takes a while for the story to pick up the pace - with Hannah all the while making bad choices and failing to see the consequences in her own personal future.

Stick with it and about halfway through all hell breaks loose - in a good way. Suddenly I was pouring a glass of rum and enjoying the ride. Still, it took a while.

So did I love it? Hate it? In the end, somewhere in the middle. I liked it - but it took a bit of patience to hang in there. I really like Wendig's writing, but the plot here was a bit humdrum, and it was easy to predict whodunnit.

I must say, however, the narrator - XE Sands - was brilliant. Disarming in the face of scientific explanations and adding a real human uncertainty to the lead character, she really knocked it out of the park. Top notch narration.

Ants. Everywhere

I hope this never comes true, because by the amount of effort it takes to keep the fire ants out of my backyard—useless effort, I might add—it wouldn’t take long before the world was truly screwed. I enjoyed this book. The action was intense and the characters interesting. The narration was great but occasionally her voice drops too low and it’s hard to understand what she says causing me to have to turn up the volume and replay parts. She does this in most everything she narrates though. Still a good narrator. I definitely recommend this novel.

Really different

I had a hard time getting used to the narrator. Kind of offhand dramatic delivery and her voice came and went, causing me to have to adjust the volume up & down at first. I finally got used to it.
The book itself was great. I didn’t anticipate any of it. If you can get used to the narrator, I highly recommend it.