The Causal Angel

De: Hannu Rajaniemi

Narrado por: Roger Wayne

With his infectious love of storytelling in all its forms, his rich characterization, and his unrivalled grasp of cutting-edge science, Hannu Rajaniemi has swiftly set a new benchmark for science fiction in the twenty-first century. Rajaniemi's future is one in which quantum effects can be manipulated by the powerful to unknowable ends; an era in which some are gods and billions of others are enslaved for the processing power of their brains; where in the inner Solar System, the once-human Sobornost endlessly iterate themselves in vast, planet-sized guberniyas, while casually running experiments on the photosphere of the sun.

In this world, Jean le Flambeur has broken out of a virtual prison and, later, into the mind of a living god. Now his one-time rescuer, the warrior Mieli, is a prisoner herself. To get her back, Jean will need tools: A quantum pyramid scheme, a pair of physical bodies, a nugget of computronium, a bunch of entangled EPR pairs, and a few very special hydrogen bombs. Jean le Flambeur, gentleman adventurer, is back. The solar system will tremble from one end to the other before he's done.

©2014 Hannu Rajaniemi (P)2014 Tantor

God damn, I wish there was more sci-fi like this.

It's hard to find sci-fi that combines relentless imagination with both a serious understanding of science and a genuine sense of fun. Hannu Rajaniemi's post-singularity adventure trilogy does that admirably. This third entry focuses heavily on the Zoku- a culture with a singular interest in modern trends that stretches credibility a bit, but that's nevertheless vividly imagined and endlessly entertaining to hear about. The novel wraps up the the story of Mieli and Jean le Flambeur nicely, though in a way that might unfortunately preclude a fourth book. Hopefully, Rajaniemi will return to this setting in future books anyway.

Having read the other two novels in the series as e-books, I can't comment on how this narrator compares to the previous one, though I can say that his narration seemed perfectly fine on it's own merits. The voices never grated, the pronunciations were more or less as I'd imagined them from the ebooks, and the overall tone seemed to fit the story. If you're considering this audiobook after having read the other novels in print or e-book format, don't let the other negative reviews dissuade you.

Interesting ride

Roger Wayne isn't quite Scott Brick, but still enjoyable. The ending is offsetting, however, dunno how I feel about it.

Wonderful story, but poor narration was so distracting

Scott Brick wove a gorgeous tapestry for the landscape of books one and two, but Roger Wayne’s changes to the pronunciation of EVERY name was so disturbing, I could simply never immerse myself in this story. His poor narration kept pushing me back out of this incredible universe.

abysmal performance

The story was, I think, excellent. But the entire time I was distract by mentally correcting the narrator's pronunciations; he pronounced nearly ever proper noun differently than the narrator of the earlier books. If that wasn't enough, his timing was poor and his performance completely lacked appropriate emotion.

The narrator could do a fine job reading business books, but shouldn't be allowed near novels.

I'm going to have to get a physical copy of Causal Angel. I want to read it and actually enjoy it, and I'll never listen to this recording again. It's a real shame that some respect wasn't paid to the first two novels. Listening to this performance was a heartbreaking, frustrating end to an excellent trilogy.

changed narrator

they changed the narrator for the third book who chose to enunciate the characters names differently than the first two books. for me personally it made it hard to listen to the book.