WWW: Watch

Publisher's Summary

Webmind is an emerging consciousness that has befriended Caitlin Decter and grown eager to learn about her world. But Webmind has also come to the attention of WATCH - the secret government agency that monitors the Internet for any threat to the United States - and they're fully aware of Caitlin's involvement in its awakening. WATCH is convinced that Webmind represents a risk to national security and wants it purged from cyberspace. But Caitlin believes in Webmind's capacity for compassion - and she will do anything and everything necessary to protect her friend.

BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Robert J. Sawyer.

©2010 Robert J. Sawyer (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic Reviews

• Audie Award Nominee - Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Audiobook, 2011

"Original and intriguing. Sawyer makes complex sci-fi understandable and thoroughly entertaining." (Romantic Times BOOKReviews)

"Watch is a helluva fun read and an excellent science fiction book." (SF Signal)

"Cast members complement one another and are effective in differentiating the various characters and story threads. They drive forward the momentum of the plot and flesh out the novel’s distinct personalities." (AudioFile)

Unmissable!

I started reading the first book in this trilogy, WWW.wake yesterday lunchtime.

I have just finished this book, WWW.Watch today, 1932 hours EST.

That tells you all you need to know what I think of this work.

It is brilliant, clever, affecting, funny, hopeful and glorious with optimism.

I can't wait, I just can't wait for the third book, WWW.Wonder.

Jessica Almasy is wonderful in this, as young Caitlin Decter, we are going to hear a whole lot more of her. The others played their parts excellent well, but Almasy is peerless.

Audible, thank you. I shall listen to this over and over again.




brendan (Atlanta)

18 of 19 people found this review helpful

Amazing

The first book in this series was pretty good, this book however, is simply put, amazing. I have not been so moved by fiction in a very long time. As for the audio production, it is top notch, a great cast of readers somewhat dramatize the story and give it additional life. This story is one to share with everyone, I urge anyone reading this to give it a try. I have downloaded a good deal of audiobooks, and this is the only one I ever bothered to write a review of.

24 of 26 people found this review helpful

Sawyer's Best Book

Watch is Sawyer's best book to date. It was engaging and exhilarating throughout. The author's opening comments talk about how middle books are usually the worst, but I agree with him that this will end up the highlight in the trilogy. The entire narrator cast reunites for the sequel with perfect voices. One of the actors was a little low in volume for some reason, so I had to keep adjusting the volume for his sequences. The only detractor of an otherwise awesome audio book.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Nice idea driven sf

Robert J Sawyer has his flaws as a writer. His books are not exactly breathtakingly thrillers and his characters are often simple. I can understand why some people is annoyed by his liberal world view and morals. Even for a progressiv Scandinavian as me, it can get a bit to politically correct. People just aren't that nice, I find myself thinking while reading his books. And in this one especially the autistic father is a bit to much a construction for me to believe in him, Sawyers research about autism shines through the description of him.

But i really like his books. The Neanderthal trilogy and now this one are very entertaining and impossible to put down when you've started reading them. They are classic science fiction stories, driven by ideas, rather than plot and characters and as a reader you shouldn't expect more. Or less.

I am really looking forward to the last book in the series.

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

Looking forward to part 3

Although this audiobook is well suited for a teenage audience, I still found it to be thoroughly entertaining. There is nothing groundbreaking in this book. It is not a literary masterpiece by any means. However, I thought the author did a great job of keeping the storyline interesting, and the narrators portrayed the characters well.

In fact, I just finished listening to this audiobook for the 2nd time, and I seldom give any audiobook a 2nd listen.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

It Grows on You - in a good way

I began thinking part 2 was pitched at young adolescents, but was gradually disabused of the idea. The concept, begun so well in WWW.Wake, took a while to reach the forefront in this instalment. Overall, the wait was worth the patience. In any event, the narrators are very good, particularly the Caitlin Dexter voice. It makes you want to have more elaborate credits so you can tell which voice is which narrator. Webmind is well done, too. Just enough of the juvenile to be believable, I thought. All up, I thought it a creditable Book 2, but Book 1 is still out front for me. I'm keenly looking forward to the concluding installment.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Trilogy keeps getting better

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, the story is very engrossing. Lots of interesting threads.

What did you like best about this story?

Wondering what would happen next.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Caitlin

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Unfortunately, I was most moved to cringe every time the narrator mispronounced

Any additional comments?

A very interesting examination of consciousness in many contexts and at many levels.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Super continuation of the story begun in "Wake"

This is not a book that stands on its own. It is part of a trilogy and you really should read WWW:Wake before you read this one. That being said, this is very good. The concept Mr. Sawyer advanced in the first part of the series is flushed out and made even better in this one. I think I enjoyed this second piece more than the first one. The characters were more real and fully actualized than they were in the first piece, This is very fine concept-based science fiction. In other words, this is not a space opera or a thriller set on another planet. It's the real deal, genre-wise. It made me think. That's why I read ... especially sci fi! Read part 1 then definitely read this. Haven't gotten to the 3rd installment yet, but looking forward to it.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Best of the three

The author states in the forward that he thinks of this book has his best book ever. It's clearly the best book of the three in the series.

I loved the meta reference to the narrator of this Audible book, Mark Vietor, being the perfect voice for which the self-aware entity, WebMind, chooses to speak as when he presents himself to the world. Very funny, and a nice compliment to one of the narrators of the book.

The author has a lot of different things he wants to teach the listener and uses this book to flush out those topics. The nature of consciousness, how Darwin's Dangerous Idea permeates everything we know and understand, emerging properties arise from complex systems that originate from incredibly simple procedures, and so on.

I appreciate these books because my wife and I listened to them on a long car ride and I really don't like fiction, and my wife really doesn't like non-fiction and these are definitely a compromise between the two. She gets to learn about the world in the guise of fiction and I get to learn empathetically through the experiences of others while delving into the nature of being about being (Dasein) and how the other must first experience presense in the world in order to realize existence.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Info dumping and internet surveillance

I listened to this on a long drive to a friend's house. Audible had put it on the 2-for-1 credit sale, where they had offered several second-book-in-a-series books. I read the first book of this trilogy three years ago when it was nominated for a Hugo Award.

In the first book of this series, Caitlin has gained sight for the first time, and ends up also being able to see the world wide web from her implant. Not too long after, she starts communicating with WebMind, an unknown consciousness brought up from the web itself. This book starts with her communicating more with [him], telling her parents, and the worldwide internet security people learning about it.

It is interesting to read a book about internet security in light of recent events. Robert J. Sawyer actually uses Caitlin and WebMind to make the argument that surveillance isn't bad, in fact people do less illegal activity when they know they're being watched. So that was an interesting conclusion, and that idea combined with the multiple narrating voices made the ending very creepy. I'm not sure he meant it to be, but I definitely found it to be. 1984 isn't true! Surveillance makes society better! What.....

The author's info-dumps are a little silly. We learn a lot about evolution during a makeout session. I don't like it when a main character knows everything, is wiser than everyone, or can figure out anything on her own. It actually makes the book less exciting to have everything laid out for the reader that way. Her parents are so supportive! She can outsmart the NSA! Yeah.

For the most part, the audio production by Audible Frontiers was well done. The woman narrating Caitlin was great, but seemed to use accents on a whim (Caitlin and her mother are from Texas but their accents only show up every once in a while), and the two American characters' sections had such low volume that I had to keep adjusting in my car. I don't want to be thinking about production as I listen to a story, and I had to. The other misstep was having the author introduce the story.. usually a good idea, but RJS was a bit pompous about how his 2nd books of trilogies are always the best, and how LUCKY I was going to be to hear this, which might be his BEST BOOK EVER. I almost turned it off right then! I was glad I stuck with it, but fair warning.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Great reading and good story!

The reading is great with familiar voices for the different characters. The story picks up from the first book, WWW wake, and continues the storylines.
If you liked the first book you won't be disappointed!

A smarmy utopian singularity series.

As a modern day fairy story it is okay, perhaps. The series unfortunately unwinds to a silly end. The performance is good but the story has too many contentious elements and opinionated discussions. A friend of mine would consider it regressive rather than progressive, and I tend to agree with him.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful