Apex

By: Ramez Naam

Narrated by: Stephanie Cannon

Length: 23 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's Summary

The explosive conclusion to Nexus and Crux.

Global unrest spreads through the US, China, and beyond. Secrets and lies set off shockwaves of anger, rippling from mind to mind. Riot police battle neutrally linked protestors. Armies are mobilized. Political orders fall. Nexus-driven revolution is in here.

Against this backdrop a new breed of posthuman children are growing into their powers. And a once-dead scientist, driven mad by her torture, is closing in on her plans to seize planet's electronic systems and reforge everything in her image. A new Apex species is here. The world will never be the same.

Ramez Naam is a professional technologist and was involved in the development of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook. He holds a seat on the advisory board of the Institute for Accelerating Change, is a member of the World Future Society, a senior associate of the Foresight Institute, and a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Please note that following customer feed-back, sections of this product have been re-recorded. New audio has been made available as of 23 October 2015.

©2015 Ramez Naam (P)2015 Audible, Ltd.

Furious ranting review. Worst narration ever

What did you like best about Apex? What did you like least?

The story was the best thing about this book, Naam is an excellent writer and I've been waiting anxiously for the release of this book only to have my ears violated by Stephanie Canon's racist and offensive portrayals of some of my favorite characters in literature.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I really like Fang. A loyal and strong character with a great sense of humor (for a posthuman killing machine that is) then Stephanie Canon shows up and takes a big plop on him, ruining his part in the book, making me cringe at the writing that was properly voiced in the first two books. Boooo Stephanie Canon, boooo.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Stephanie Canon?

Gilbert Gottfried would have been a better choice. Ben Affleck would have been better, Emo Phillips, Paul Reubens, Bobcat Goldthwait would all have done a better job. Mickey Rooney in his portrayal of Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's would have come up even. What were you guys thinking??? But seriously, get Mikael Naramore back and do it again.

Do you think Apex needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No, the story is done. anything more would be guilding the lilly. I do however think Apex needs to be re-recorded by someone who doesn't have a subconscious hatred of the asian people.

Any additional comments?

As you can tell I'm furious. I demand a re-recording at the personal expense of the people who put their stamp of approval on Stephanie Canon's performance. Those people should be fired... from a cannon... into manure.

16 of 16 people found this review helpful

Excellent book and conclusion but suffers from TERRIBLE reader and performance

Great finale to this series, but plagued by horribly racist cartoon-ish portrayal from the voice actor. It's a good story with an embarrassing performance...

15 of 15 people found this review helpful

Worst. Narration. Ever.

What disappointed you about Apex?

I really thought I could make it to the end of this book, but the narration was simply intolerable. She voices all the Chinese characters as if they work at City Wok on South Park. Was there no one associated with this project who realized what a bad idea that was?

What was one of the most memorable moments of Apex?

Listening to Charlie Chan and his family discuss the geopolitical implications of transhumanism.

What didn’t you like about Stephanie Canon’s performance?

Her Chinese accent is one of the most racially-insensitive things I've heard in a while. It is impossible to take any of the Chinese characters seriously. You keep expecting them to mention their "Numbah One Son".

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The story is great, but the audio is unlistenable. They should consider re-recording this with a better narrator.

10 of 10 people found this review helpful

Narrator choice is disappointing.

What did you like best about Apex? What did you like least?

Story and characters. Horrible narration. One step above my text-to-speech app.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Apex?

I will let you know when I finish READING the book. There is no way I can make it past hour one of Ms. Canon's "performance".

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Stephanie Canon?

Either one of the first two narrators in the series. I have no idea why she was chosen for the finale.

19 of 20 people found this review helpful

Wrong narrator

Loved the concepts but the narration is killing all the joy I expected to get from this book. Her voice is so wrong for this book.

18 of 19 people found this review helpful

Stereotypic accents

The stories good but the lady with her stereotypic Asian accents ruins it. She also makes the people in America have a Boston accent.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

OMG, the accents...

I really got into this series for the action, the science, and the speculation. Book 3 continues the tradition. He might have keep pushing a bit further, but on the other hand it was a solid finish to the trilogy.

But the accents!! hahahaha omg, I could not believe she was saying Feng's voice in the most stereotypical Asian accent possible. It was like a joke. Actually, it might have been better if she had done her stereotypes properly, but all of the Asians sounded exactly the same! Nakamura, should have had a distinctly different accent from Shu or any of the Chinese or Thai. Jeezus, is this lady a professional audiobook reader?

14 of 15 people found this review helpful

Didn't live up to the first two books.

Did not like the narrators voive impression of Asian people. could have cut out 3 hours or more of filler.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Who directed this performance?

Any additional comments?

I have to assume that a voice actor is given the book with a team that would include, at least, a director. It's baffling that someone would choose to do such extreme Chinese accents including the heavy rolled 'l's. The sections of the story with Chinese characters speaking really just knock you out of the story - it's pretty uncomfortable and distracting. I like Stephanie Canon's voice and crisp pronunciation for most of the book but the accents are too much.

The story itself is good but I think that I would recommend reading the written book rather than listening to this audible performance.

12 of 13 people found this review helpful

Apex: Now with horribly racist Chinese accents!

What didn’t you like about Stephanie Canon’s performance?

If you ignore the "Asian" voices for a moment, Stephanie Canon is pretty mediocre. She mispronounces a fair number of words (causality becomes casualty, tyrannies rhymes with fannies).

As soon as Ms. Canon began to do her awful, stereotypical caricature of Asian voices, I thought she was going to tell a joke about "flied lice." While it's normal for characters in movies and audiobooks who are speaking another language to speak English with an accent, these are the most horrendous, offensive Asian accents I've ever heard. We're no longer in the era of Charlie Chan talking about "number one son." The only thing that would be worse would be to know that she had put on yellow face for her performance and taped her eyes at a slant.

Her voice acting basically ruined Apex for me, which is a shame, because I had really been looking forward to it.

17 of 21 people found this review helpful

Decent ending for a good trilogy

What did you like best about Apex? What did you like least?

The conclusion to the saga was quite enjoyable.

What didn’t you like about Stephanie Canon’s performance?

the narrator Stephanie Canon did not suit the text at all. Her voice would have suited a childrens book and her character acting was terrible.

Was Apex worth the listening time?

Sure

Any additional comments?

Changing the narrator from two males in two previous books to a female in the finale was a terrible choise.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

amazing

Such an exciting book and trilogy. it felt like o could also get connected to the mind of people in the book and see through their eyes!

Not as good

the women reading this put on the worst male voice ever. especially for the Chinese, she sounds like she's talking through a snorkel! Got bored of the story in the end but not whether that was her voice or the story that bored. Either way, she ruined it for me.

Different narrator

Story continues to be great but the change of narrator made it difficult to listen to all 3 books in a row. The efforts at male voices and accents in this talking book are so bad it distracted from the plot. Really wish it was possible to have narrator consistency in a series like this.

Brilliant story not so great performance

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

Would definitely recommend the book not so sure on this audio version the performance is not good. Too many of the characterisations either sound alike or sound childish!

What did you like best about this story?

Brilliant end to Ramez Naam's trilogy

Great finale

This tied everything up in a very satisfying way..All in all one of the most enjoyable series I've listened to in ages.Fast paced,intelligent,and thought provoking.Well worth a listen..only one complaint and that was the narration,she does a good job but as the first two books had a male narrator its very jarring.a very poor decision,whoever makes these calls obviously has no common sense at all.