C-Shapes

By: Matthew Fish

Narrated by: Matt Conlon

Eight years after a virus has left half of the population of the world mentally unstable, a man named Ethan Chase enters into a program to become a "Sitter", or caretaker, to two "Unstables". One of which, is a girl, a "Mirror", who believes that she leaves for Paris every Sunday and returns on Tuesday and often mimics and repeats the actions of those around her. The other, a highly functioning "Amnesiac" named Noah who is at one moment lucid and the next completely incoherent. As Ethan develops an unlikely, and looked down upon, friendship with his two cases - he begins to realize that line between being normal and abnormal are not that different as he is swept up in events far beyond his control.

©2016 Matthew Fish (P)2016 Matthew Fish

Wraps up nicely

At first I wasn't really sold on the story, but the more I listened, the more I enjoyed. Narration was great (Although he did stumble a few times, which did break immersion briefly). Kinda sad there isn't a sequel.

Generic scifi with a twist

C-shapes is a science fiction book written by Matthew Fish, that tells the story about Ethan Chase, an ordinary nobody that gets job in the worlds largest corporation, C-shapes, whose mission it is to find a cure to a virus outbreak that swept the globe and made billions of people unstable. Ethan gets assigned to take daily care of two infected people and make sure they take their symptom suppressing medications. In contrast to the usual public approach to sick individuals, Ethan quickly develops a close friendship to both of these subjects, and he treats them much better than C-shapes caretakers usually does. As the story progresses, one of the infected individuals turn out to have a deep secret that quickly envelops Ethan, and he is forced to do change his life drastically.

I found the book to be okay written, but nothing too special. It did the job, but it didn’t make any parts of the story outstanding.

The story itself provided a different look to the usual virus outbreak with zombie wannabes story, which was nice. Care taking infected people? That’s new! Unfortunately, about halfway through, it turned into your regular ‘run from the zombies’ kind of story, of which it wasn’t outstanding in any way. In general, the entire virus part was too underdeveloped, as you ended up with more questions than answers, which in some cases was nice, but here didn’t really do enough to provide a deep world building background for the story to settle in. Why did the infected people sometimes go nuts? Why were there different kind of symptoms for infectees? Where did the virus originate and why did it become such a world spanning issue (After all, it seems quite a bit worse than SARS-CoV-2!)? Why was only one company working on a cure?
The story did put up some twists on why things was as they were, which was nice, but it didn’t push it nearly enough, and I felt that it could have been quite a bit more. As mentioned above, the second part of the story was mostly a ‘run from zombies’ kind of story, and was only carried by character interactions, and character development, but the characters themselves weren’t very developed, so I personally didn’t care too much about them. They were quite cliched, and that didn’t help at all. The main characters pick up a traveling partner towards the end, and he was an excellent example of the issue - He was completely one dimensional cliché guy, and quite frankly, extremely boring. His actions were always overly extreme for no good reason, other than his brief background description, and he wasn’t needed in the story at all.
And in the end, the ending was wrapped up, and it felt completely flat for me. We had hints of a mystery, but the mystery turned out to be very unexciting, and not on that explained any of the overall questions unfortunately. At least it provided and end for the characters.
The book did try to provide some answers to what it means to be human, but it didn’t go to deep into this unfortunately, as it would have suited the story. Instead it turned more into a repetitive ping pong of two loving people trying to convince each other that they were in love, which wasn’t really doing much for the story.

I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Matt Conlon. He did a fine job, with a clear voice and nice pacing. There were a few editing errors, with the narrator coughing, and short repeated sections, but nothing too major that took much away from the enjoyment fortunately.

Overall, an okay new take on an overdone genre, but one that ultimately ends up falling somewhat flat and doesn’t provide much over other similar stories. Don’t pick this if you simply have a virus outbreak story fetisch, but more if you want a simple and contained scifi story, that asks simple questions on what it means to be human.

I received this audiobook for free in return for a review. I have no affiliation with the author, the narrator, the publisher, or their pets (Although I am sure the latter are quite nice!).

Amazing Book

This book was amazing, I was not expecting how it would end, twist and turns and all kinds of fun. I look forward to more books in this universe.

This book was provided for free, however, these are my honest opinions and review.

Really great take on an overdone genre. Loved it!

The book has an interesting take on an overdone genre. The story is well done and I enjoyed every minute of it. would definitely recommend. only downside is there's maybe four instances of were there is a repeating of a word or clearing of a throat. its and editing thing. not enough to warrant a reduction of a star.

Good starting point, but needs some editing.

The story had lots of potential, but fell short. There was no real conclusion to wrap everything up, no cure, and no explanation of how there were mass agro attacks. we can assume that they will keep happening unless humans fundimentally change. also, the narrator continues to cough, reread sections, and has little inflection.

Great story, terrible recording.

the story was amazing and really kept me interested. The worst part was the recording. it was edited so poorly and there were so many errors.

Well done book

It was a different form of dystopian book than I am used to but it kept me entertained throughout. Well done!