The December Protocol

De: Devin Hanson

Narrado por: Rhett Samuel Price

For Amazon best-selling author Devin Hanson, the question is not how to achieve immortality, the question is what happens when we do?

Throughout the entirety of history, humanity has fought against sickness, old age, frailty, even death itself hoping for eternal life. Countless legends and stories share the same hunt: extend our lifetimes beyond the impossibly brief moment we have. Hanson imagines life beyond those legends and stories - a solar system where humanity has discovered the secret to immortal life, at an extreme cost. What horrors await a society that rests an economy on the most scarce resource man has ever known - eternal life?

Join The December Protocol in following three characters uniquely affected by the most amazing technological change humanity has ever experienced. Min, an ageless Earth-born marshal older than the very Martian colonies he fights to enforce a brittle and bleak law upon. Angeline, a young girl terrified by the social and scientific necessities prompted by the promise of eternal life. Marcus, a man brought to his knees by that emperor of all maladies, cancer, willing to pay the ultimate price for perfect health through immortality.

The December Protocol rockets the listener into the late 24th century and raises thrilling questions about how far mankind would go to preserve the most precious gift we've ever received: immortality.

©2017 Devin Hanson (P)2018 Devin Hanson

Great book!

Humanity has achieved immortality, but at what cost? Could you imagine being able to live forever, free of disease? What would you do to be able to afford your monthly treatment to remain that way? What would you be willing to overlook and ignore? Could you ignore the fact that young girls are being kidnapped and killed for their eggs? There are many women willing to sell their eggs for a nice sum of money, bit where there's a lot of money to be made, there will certainly be a criminal element as well. This mostly takes place on Mars since Earth has banned this practice. This was an excellent book and my first by this author. I'd love to check out more of his work. The narrator isn't new to me though. I really enjoy Rhett Samuel Price! He's an excellent story teller who is great at expressing the emotions of the characters and great at doing several voices and accents for both sexes.

Good story, well told.

Hanson's dystopic vision of life on Mars in the future is imaginative and grim, with fully realized science and great characters, all vying for immortality. I loved Rhett Samuel Price's narration. He's got one of those deep, sonorous voices but he doesn't rest on it. Instead he creates vivid characterizations, even of the smallest roles. The central character, the marshall Min Yang, is heroic and tough without being cartoonish, and I quickly began to root for him. The many brave girls, indifferent scientists, and greedy crooks gave Price an acting challenge and he rose to it. Hanson and Price are a great team in the creation of this cynical, sometimes funny, sometimes violent, always enthralling world.

Fast Paced Sci-Fi

Great classic sci-fi takes place on Mars, where a procedure is legal for prolonging life indefinitely - but at a cost. This story takes you into the underground world of body snatching and ovaries harvesting, and the fight for justice on a planet of refugees and criminals.

So many ways to die on Mars

I do love a good detective novel. And I love Mars stories. This tale wraps both up in a pretty entertaining listen. My favorite character was Min, who has been around a long time and seen how human society (both on Earth and on Mars) has evolved over the decades. I pictured him as an albino version of Gaff from the original Blade Runner movie. He’s a bit shady in some ways but has hard boundaries on other things (like murdering young ladies for their ovaries).

The setting was well integrated into the story. Mars doesn’t have much water or usable soil, so human waste (including the dead) are reused for fuel and manure. Yeast is mashed and melded into many unpalatable foods. It was enough to make we feel like we were on Mars and not just an Earth #2. However, I think it could be strengthened a bit. Mars lacks the regular live organisms in the soil, but the dirt itself can be easily sewn with those organisms, like from human waste. Also, I wondered why there was no talk of insect meals. Then there’s also nori as part of the cheapeast meals yet tea is super expensive. Assuming that both have to be shipped in from Earth (since there isn’t enough luxury water to grow either tea trees or seaweed), I would think that they would both be considered luxury items. Anyhoo, if you don’t give it too much thought, the setting really works for the detective story.

I want to applaud having a scifi story that doesn’t bat an eye at discussing menstrual cycles. Yay! But this story takes the cake for worst period ever – a period that can get you killed! These black market egg harvesters are hard core. Instead of just taking an egg or two a month, they take the ovaries and then dump the bodies in to the reclamation units. Ugh!

I have lots and lots of questions about the science behind the main plot point. If you need mature eggs for the super secret serum that turns you into an immortal albino, then how are you convincing all those harvested ovaries to keep maturing and spitting out eggs? If you have the science to do that outside of a human body, then you probably have the science to create ovaries in a lab to begin with. As with the setting, as long as you don’t think about it too much, the ovary thing makes for an exciting reason for the plot of carry on.

All around, it was a fun scifi flick that had a most satisfactory ending. I routed for Angeline the last quarter of the book. I was glad to see Min and Rou declare war on those corrupt officials and business people who perpetuated this ovary stealing ring. 4/5 stars.

The Narration: Rhett Samuel Price has a great voice and he totally nailed Min. I loved his light Asian accent, as the story called for. His female voices were believable as well. There were a handful of mispronounced words like susurrus & scarification but they were few and far between. The pacing was perfect & there were no technical issues with this recording. 4.5/5 stars.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Rhett Samuel Price. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

Great

I enjoyed the story very much and the narrator did a good job
Thank you