Queen of Angels

By: Greg Bear

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's Summary

Emanuel Goldsmith, a famous poet, murdered eight people, then disappeared. Three people want to find him: an aspiring writer, an embittered scientist who wants to use him, and a policewoman who needs to put him in custody before the Selectors, a vigilante organization, get to him first.

©1990 Greg Bear (P)1991 Recorded Books

Excellent SF that has aged well

Where does Queen of Angels rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Among fiction, very high. The narrator was excellent and the story was engrossing.

What did you like best about this story?

I liked the complexity of the story and the way the author managed to make interesting characters while also introducing fascinating scientific topics (of varied fields).

What about George Guidall’s performance did you like?

It was easy to tell by his intonation which character he was portraying. He got across emotion without ever seeming tawdry.

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

Not in one sitting (it is 19 hours long), but it was definitely a book I was always excited to get back to.

fantastic, a whole new experience on audio

read this when it came out and found it very dense, but listening to it 20 years later on audio I am just blown away. great all around.

What a find

Quite surprised with this work of Greg Bear. While I never read something of his that disappointed me, this is such an excellent read that I feel lucky to have read it. The story line is rich and holds the tension all along. As it is told from many POVs and it is up to the reader to patch them into coherent unfoldment of events. Interesting thinking about Art and especially literature, but above all is the thrill of tracing the awakening of the AI characters. Definitely recommended.

A trove of great ideas

Interesting ideas, not great synthesis- - - - - - - - - - - .

Excellent story

I read Queen Of Angels shortly after it was published and found it sneakily compelling. I think it was maybe the fifth Bear novel I had read at that time. Revisiting this story on audible today it is, if anything, even more powerful.

The primary protagonist being a "transform" is remarkably prescient. I found all of the characters well drawn and compelling, including the AI.

The journey into the Country of the Mind of Goldsmith was astonishing.

Not to give away anything (I hope), it is well worth the listen, and /or read.

Waaaaannnnnddddeeeerrrrssss..................

A meandering work from a great author. Paints an incredibly intricate picture of the Orwellian 1984 societal structure, decades down the road.

But if it is supposed to be a murder mystery, it becomes lost in the fog of each character's existentialism.

If the point of the wiring was to get you add list into their reality, it is a masterpiece. But if it is meant to be a murder mystery, it fails miserably.

The lack of continuity made me stop halfway through, after finding that I had stopped listening several times, and had to remind to where it had lost my interest yet again.