The I.P.O.

By: Dan Koontz

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

A tragic accident. An opportunistic CEO. A shocking announcement at the opening of a bizarre new stock market. Seven year-old Ryan Tyler, Jr. has just been adopted. By a corporation. Ticker symbol RTJ is the initial public offering on James Prescott’s Avillage Exchange, a market that trades in the financial futures of exceptionally gifted orphans. Before the brilliant first-grader has even had a chance to catch his breath, he is whisked off to live with seemingly perfect new parents he’s not sure he can trust. And he’s got a sinking feeling that the only ally he has from his previous life is somehow conspiring with the corporation. With Prescott and a board of directors pulling strings behind the scenes, Ryan’s only chance at freeing himself from his shareholders may be to team up with his fellow Avillage orphans: an embittered computer-programming savant, a once-in-a-generation NBA prospect, and a show-stopping Latin American model. Koontz’s fast-paced yet introspective writing style is sure to keep your mind whirring and the pages turning, right to the explosive final page.

Great story Terrible reader

Great story but oh so poorly read! Virtual voice is monotone with no nuance , feeling or zing to the story. Very distracting and makes the story confusing. Get a human reader please!

This is a story with a new twist! Our greatest advancements can indeed lead to our greatest evils.

Congratulations Dan Koontz. What a great first book! I am looking forward to your future novels. The virtual voice presentation is acceptable and the quality of this technology will surely flourish.

What a story!!

This was such a well written with great characters, interesting story! Could not turn off!!

voice too mechanical.

I liked the story was good but the voice was too distracting. I’m not a fan of AI readings.

Decent book

While I enjoyed the story, the narration was quite disappointing. It was bad enough to be distracting from time to time.

Not a fan of ai reading

This ai reading was not great… the intonations were not always in the right place and some words were not correct in context— also it read dates like 11/16 as 11-16ths soooo it was kind of off on certain things— the story was good though and I wish we knew what happened further along the story of Ryan

I thought it was Dean

I was pleasantly surprised! I like it a lot. When I ordered this audio I thought it was Dean Knootz (I bet he gets that a lot) so it was good that I did like it. I however didn’t care for the unemotional reading from the IP.

AI voice is not ready

Story starts slow for a Koontz novel. The generated audio was not great. Poor inflections. No changes in speech for various characters. Not one of Koontz’ best. Likely will not pick up another generated reader.

Interesting premise

The story line had an interesting premise but the narration was LAME, flat, emotionless and it ruined the story!

Good storyline would make a good movie!

Until computer generated audio learns to pronounce words correctly and with the proper inflection, it should NOT be used for Audio books! I HATE IT!