The Worldship Humility

By: RR Haywood

Narrated by: Colin Morgan

About the audiobook:

The Worldship Humility is the start of The Code trilogy, written exclusively for audio by sci-fi author R. R. Haywood. Narrator Colin Morgan brings the colourful characters and treacherous escapades of The Worldship Humility to life, a gripping space adventure which will appeal to fans of Ready Player One, Bladerunner and Haywood’s previous best-selling works, Extracted and The Undead.

Summary:

It’s been 120 years since the 50 or so worldships containing the few million survivors set off after planet Earth was destroyed by a meteor.

On the Worldship Humility, Sam, an Airlock Operative, is bored. Living in space should be full of adventure, except it isn’t, and he fills his time hacking 3-D movie posters.

Petty thief Yasmine Dufont is also from the WS Humility, but she is not bored. Growing up in the Elfors, the lawless lower levels of the ship, has seen her surrounded by violence and squalor since birth, and now she wants out. She wants to escape to the luxury of the Ab-Spa on top of WS Abstinence, where they eat real food instead of rats and synth cubes.

Meanwhile, the sleek-hulled, unmanned Gagarin has come back from punching out ahead of the fleet in the ever-continuing search for a new home. Nearly all hope is lost that a new planet will ever be found, until the Gagarin returns with a code of information that suggests a habitable planet has been found. This news should be shared with the whole fleet, but a few rogue captains want to keep the information to themselves and colonise the new planet.

When Yasmine inadvertently steals the code, she and Sam become caught up in a dangerous game of murder, corruption, political wrangling and...porridge, with sex-addicted Detective Zhang Woo hot on their heels, his own life at risk if he fails to get the code back.

About the author:

R. R. Haywood is the author of Amazon UK’s number one horror series The Undead, which propelled him into the top 20 best-selling Amazon authors in the UK. Haywood is a Washington Post best-selling author and both the Undead series and the Extracted trilogy are Audible best sellers.

About the narrator:

Colin's television credits include Humans, The Living and the Dead, The Fall and Merlin. His film credits include Benjamin, The Happy Prince, Legend and Testament of Youth. Theatre credits include Translations (The National Theatre); Gloria (Hampstead Theatre); Mojo (Harold Pinter Theatre); The Tempest (Shakespeare's Globe); Our Private Life (Royal Court); A Prayer for My Daughter and All About My Mother (The Old Vic).

©2019 RR Haywood (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Colin Morgan is amazing and so is this book

Not being an audiobook person, I admit I struggled to get into it. I was given a free credit for this particular book and am not being paid to review it.

As a fan of Colin Morgan (the narrator) from his role in Merlin, I was blown away by his reading. If you didn't know this was done by only one person, you really wouldn't know! His characters are all so distinct (and that's saying something since there are scores of them!), and they're consistent from beginning to end. He is an absolute natural when it comes to voice work, and I do hope he continues.

The story itself ran the gamut of emotions, in turn laugh-out-loud funny, thought-provoking, and heart-breaking. I grew to care about these characters. No one in this world is truly good, but moral shades of gray. It's a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is working toward some self-fulfilling goal, usually at the expense of others. Political intrigue, romance, loads of humor, and people simply struggling to live, this book has it all. I didn't realize when I started, though, that it's part of a series, so be warned, it doesn't completely wrap up at the end.

10/10 would recommend this book! Read it!

I understand the mixed reviews, but I loved this..

First and foremost, I found myself chuckling regularly throughout this book. What can I say, I still find Home Alone and Caddyshack hilarious, After the rather tedious and painful start, I found myself greatly enjoying the story. There is a lot of F--_, F---edity, F---ing, F---, F---, F--- from one character. THIS IS NOT A BOOK YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO WITH CHILDREN IN EARSHOT. Be safe, use a headset! I normally would be griping about the excessive foul language, but I think Haywood did a reasonable job pulling it off. It wasn't every character, it wasn't every chapter, it was one character and I suspect that most of us know someone like that who curses every second word. Yasmine was fairly consistent in that when she felt threatened or angry, she went into foulmouthed mode. Sam as the main character was a bit too predictable acting more like an extra-immature 18 year rather than a 30ish year old man. That said, it's not unreasonable to imagine that in a cloistered environment with VR as a preventative activity that a lack of maturity would be the result. I hope to see character depth and growth for Sam now that he has some life experience to draw on. I greatly enjoyed this first book and will be looking for the second when it is available.

If Haywood had trimmed it back the cursing a bit, done a better job integrating the info dump at the beginning, and balanced his character development and plot development, I would have given it 5 stars. An excellent book, but if you are looking for a serious space-opera, a high tech thriller, or a super serious read, you may want to keep looking.

Intricate story, extremely well told.

Laugh out loud. Wince at the sadness. Fall in love with the characters. Satisfying character arcs. Open but perfect ending.

Again, some of the finest array of character voices I’ve heard. They will stay with me for a long time.

Great performance of a fun, intriguing story

I got this title on a whim when it came up as a suggestion, and I'm very glad I did. Colin Morgan does an amazing job as narrator, giving each character a very distinctive voice, to the point where you know who is speaking without need for dialogue tags. The story is funny, exciting, and genuine. You understand why the characters do what they do, even when it's a bad idea. I really enjoyed this, and it held my interest throughout.

Not really science fiction

This is really a heist story, the fact they are on a starship is relatively irrelevant. Fair story but I will not purchase any additional books for this story line. The narrator did a really good job. If you are looking for sci-fi look elsewhere

such a amazing writer !!!

great story can't wait to "read" what happens next!!! every one should read his books.

Fun!!

This was a fun listen. I loved the story line and how different and sy fy like it was. It was a great listen. I was closely following all of the characters and couldn't stop listening.

A fun listen with a wonderful narrator

I wanted to write this review because Colin Morgan did such an amazing job narrating this book. He has distinct voices for the different characters and the dialogue sounds natural, not stilted. I am going to check out more titles narrated by him, as well as those written by RR Haywood. I hope there are others that bring back the same characters.

Very fun, light space comedic drama

Sick of dystopian space adventures? This will cheer you up. It's not unlike something that Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Young Lady's Primer/Diamond Age, blah blah blah) might have written. When one character yells "Let's get swifty" I had visions of Rick and Morty. Highly recommended.

loved it!

Amazing! Brilliant narrator and great story, made me laugh out loud a few times. Part two is the first time I've ever pre-ordered an audio book!