Darwin's Children

A Novel

By: Greg Bear

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Greg Bear’s Nebula Award-winning novel Darwin’s Radio painted a chilling portrait of humankind on the threshold of a radical leap in evolution. Now, Bear continues his provocative tale of the human race confronted by an uncertain future, where “survival of the fittest” takes on astonishing and controversial new dimensions.

Eleven years have passed since SHEVA, an ancient retrovirus, was discovered in human DNA - a retrovirus that caused mutations in the human genome and heralded the arrival of a new wave of genetically enhanced humans. Now, these changed children have reached adolescence...and face a world that is outraged about their very existence. For these special youths, possessed of remarkable, advanced traits that mark a major turning point in human development, are also ticking time bombs harboring hosts of viruses that could exterminate the "old" human race.

Fear and hatred of the virus children have made them a persecuted underclass, quarantined by the government in special “schools”, targeted by federally sanctioned bounty hunters, and demonized by hysterical segments of the population. But pockets of resistance have sprung up among those opposed to treating the children like dangerous diseases - and who fear the worst if the government’s draconian measures are carried to their extreme.

Scientists Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson are part of this small but determined minority. Once at the forefront of the discovery and study of the SHEVA outbreak, they now live as virtual exiles in the Virginia suburbs with their daughter, Stella - a bright, inquisitive virus child who is quickly maturing, straining to break free of the protective world her parents have built around her, and eager to seek out others of her kind.

But for all their precautions, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella have not slipped below the government's radar. The agencies fanatically devoted to segregating and controlling the new-breed children monitor their every move - watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike the next blow in their escalating war to preserve "humankind" at any cost.

©2003 Greg Bear (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Bear's sure sense of character, his fluid prose style and the fascinating culture his 'Shevite' children begin to develop all make for serious SF of the highest order." (Publishers Weekly)

"Top-shelf science fiction, thrilling and intellectually charged." (Amazon.com)

Good book. ok performance.

Was surprised Scott Brick ' s performance was a bit lackluster. perhaps an issue of direction. story was good, though choppy time line at places.

Greg Bear At his best... Hard Science

This story is hard science. Some of the DNA / phage interactions in the book are now being research in bio labs today. Evolutionary “jump” theories are now being supported by some science studies into dogs and insects. This is a great story of hard Sci-Fi and Ben tells it well.

Sequel disappoints

The narrator was amazing, however, the story was not nearly as engaging as the original.

couldn't stand the narrator's reading

This may be a good book (Greg Bear's books usually are) but the narrator gave so many wrong and obnoxious inflections to the words and sentences, that I couldn't stand to listen to the whole thing. Odd, because I've heard Scott Brick read other books where he doesn't do this. Sad that he did here, and that the director, or producer let it go through. It ruins the book.

Get the abridged version and do yourself a favor

The idea was compelling, but it jumped around a lot and this is very confusing in an audio book. It meandered and spent way too much time dwelling on meaningless details in descriptions. I can see how the Sheva children would pay attention to smells, but he even excessively described smells that only the humans were present for, and would not normally be noticed by humans or worthy of description.

I also thought the children were rather odd as mutants go. Why would an enhanced sense of smell be an evolutionary advance? It went overboard on the role viruses would play, instead of giving them an expanded role in genetics, he gave them the entire role in genetics and reproduction.

Then he threw in stuff about one of the characters having a deep religious epiphany and went on and on about it. It made no sense in the plot and must have just been something he wanted to share.

The characters spent too much time in maudlin navel-staring. And the language was frequently overwrought and melodramatic.

This was my first Greg Bear book and it will be my last. I don't like his style--way too much superfluous descripion. I'm not rating the book lower than two stars because it had an interesting idea, even if I hated how he executed it. I also cared about some of the characters.

Didn't grab me...

I couldn't get into this book. The premise was interesting and some of the characters were appealing but I felt like the story jumped around too much--and without enough transition from place to place or time to time. This gave the story a disjointed feeling for me.

I kept listening to this one, because I was curious about the outcome, but it was something I had to make myself do. Usually I look forward to walking or going for a drive because of the story I'm 'reading' but this one didn't grab me and I had to force myself to keep going.

I don't know how much of a difference it would have made to have read the other Darwin book (didn't realize there WAS a previous storyline) but if you haven't read it I don't really recommend this one.

Scott Brick ruins another story

Will someone at Audible please tell Scott Brick, the narrator, to just READ and not act the story? PLEASE.

It's not only that Brick is bad at dramatic reading, it is also condescending. Does he think that the listeners are three-year-olds and want an overacted bedtime story?

He reduces the narrative to caricature. Listening to hours of phony accents and overblown emotions in every line is exhausting. If I were the author of this series, I'd consider getting counsel.

Although it's hard to dig out the actual text from the crush of poor and oversimplified narration, Darwin's Children is an engaging story especially for those with an anthropological or biological background.

A disappointment

I've read other Bear (Blood Music, and Forge of God many years ago) and remember them fondly, so I was overjoyed when I found his newer material on Audible. However, despite the fact that the central idea is interesting, I was deeply disappointed by Darwin's Children.

First, the science is questionable. Bear gets some minor details about retrotransposons wrong, but what really bugged me was the SHEVA-infected women who become virus factories (a hypothesis that's sure to fail the parsimony test). Finally, Bear seems to believe the Victorian notion that evolution is a progression towards perfection.

Sometimes inconsistencies in Bear's characters are so irritating that they interrupt the flow of the story. For instance, Kaye does nothing by weep in the car outside the house where Stella has been abducted; most mothers would charge in to save their child. And Mitch, who used to be some kind of anthropologist, says that he respects Native Americans so much, he's dug up their sacred gravesites.

In all, this book was either a hurried or sloppy effort that could have been improved with the help of a good editor and fact checker.

Ruined by the narrator

I like Bear's books, and I am sure that I would enjoy this one, but the narrator is dismal. He singsongs through the whole thing, as if he is bored of the story. It doesn't matter what he is saying, the cadence never changes, and it certainly doesn't reflect (let alone enhance) the story. He sounds petulant, like a father reading a book to a child he desperately wants to put to sleep.

Is it just this book? No. I made the mistake of picking up another by this same narrator (Paul of Dune - don't do it!) I lasted about 5 minutes in that one. It took about 90 minutes in this one before I just couldn't take it any more. I think the book has a lot of promise, but not in this format.

Science-driven plot; weirdly over-emoted reading

This book is a worthwhile sequel -- definitely worthwhile if you read and enjoyed the first book. I found the plot to be unconventional, lacking the traditional kinds of drama found in this genre, but I also found it quite engaging as it was, meandering through highs and lows without having a core conflict. The characters are interesting, and a number of them are developed enough to offer compelling subplots. Picking up with Kate and Mitch from the previous novel makes it easy to slide into caring about the characters.

The biggest drawback in this audiobook is the fact that the reader, whose voice is deep and clear, adopts a reading style in which virtually every sentence is read as though it is the most dramatic moment in the novel. This over-emoting is unbelievably distracting, at least at first, and makes it hard sometimes to stomach large doses of the audio. It's unfortunate, because it's not the most dramatic book -- and a straighter, more even-keeled delivery would fit the narrative well. However, in this case the producer got it wrong and gave terrible direction to the reader. It is this aspect alone that makes the audiobook hard to recommend.