Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

By: David Wong, Jason Pargin

Narrated by: Christy Romano

In a prosperous yet gruesomely violent near future, superhero vigilantes battle thugs whose heads are full of supervillain fantasies. The peace is kept by a team of smooth, well-dressed negotiators called The Men in Fancy Suits. Meanwhile a young girl is caught in the middle and thinks the whole thing is ridiculous.

Zoey, a recent college graduate with a worthless degree, makes a reluctant trip into the city after hearing that her estranged con artist father died in a mysterious yet spectacular way. There she finds that her scumbag dad had actually, in the final years of his life, put his amazing talent for hustling to good use: He was one of the founding members of the Fancy Suits and died in the course of his duties. Zoey is quickly entangled in the city's surreal mob war when she is taken hostage by a particularly crazy villain who imagines himself to be a Dr. Doom-level mastermind. The villain is demanding information about Zoe's father when she is rescued by The Fancy Suits. She reluctantly joins their cause and helps finish what her old man started, tapping in to her innate talent for bullshit that she inherited from her hated father. And along the way, she might just have to learn how to trust people again.

©2015 David Wong, Jason Pargin (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Silly but exciting and worth listening to

An enjoyable not-too-distant future story with a sense of humor to let you know it's not particularly serious. There is futuristic violence. And there are men (and a woman) in fancy suits.

My only issue with the story is that the main character, Zoe, is basically just an audience surrogate. She gets thrown into a big confusing world so that the other characters can explain to her how things work, and by extension, explain to us. Most of the actual events of the story don't really revolve around her--in fact, the overarching theme of the story is that everyone is sort of annoyed that she's around but she's too harmless to actually worry about.

Which is irritating to read because I want to see her succeed and do well, but her success is always coming from the strengths of the people around her. Her involvement typically just derails the plans and makes things worse.

That said, the world of Tabula Rasa is quite entertaining. It's somewhere between old-school Las Vegas and Rapture from Bioshock, a free-market no-laws society that acts as a playground for the ludicrously wealthy. And it ends up in about the same place.

All in all, it's a fun romp, and it has some interesting commentary on the state of social media. The villain has a tendency to monologue with completely inane philosophy but the book makes it extremely clear that THIS IS THE BAD GUY, DO NOT LISTEN so it's not going to corrupt your mind.

I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a diversion that makes them think a little bit, but mostly just delivers silly roll-your-eyes-and-smile humor.

Just a quick note

I loathed the bad guy in this and found Zoe to make constant bad decisions. I was hoping that they would both die at the end along with the cat. The resolution was totally unsatisfying and yet I made it all the way to the end. For that I guess I had to give it 4 stars. It managed to hold my interest even though I hated the protagonist and antagonist.

Another one

Really enjoyed this book. He's three for three! They say I have seven words to

slopy plot. ending?

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

its like there is a good book there but the plot got gum stuck in its hair.
when they had to cut the gum out it made a mess of the good old plot so
then they tried to add some filler to make it better again but now its just stupid looking.

or maybe the plot is like trying to paint a house and running out of paint. but just continuing anyway with a similar but different color and this happens 3 times so the house is painted but it looks like you just don't give a shit.



my WTF flag went up like 8 times.

still it wasn't all bad.

Back Cover is misleading

I loved John dies at the end but this book was not even close. The back cover is completely misleading to what the actual story is about. The main character's actions in the book are unbelievable and take you right out of immersion. The narrators 'accents' for characters are grating and hard to listen to. The main protagonist has a philosophy that kind of misrepresents the 'alpha' stereotype to the point where you can guess how the author really feels about athletic people.

Great read(er)!

I really wonder what my thoughts would have been had I read this rather than listened to it. I hope that Molech's voice would have been exactly as Christy Romano portrayed it, but I'll never know. Damn! The story line and character development are sophomoric, but, hey, with a title like this, who would expect anything different. Again, I don't know if it is Wong or Romano who gave me this impression, but I swear that Wong wrote this hoping to sell the movie rights to anyone who could sign Amy Schumer on for the project.

I kept hoping

Unfortunately it never got better which is a shame because the narrator gave it her all. She was the best part of the book by far. It was just sooo juvenile, and never grew up.

I loved this book!

Would you consider the audio edition of Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits to be better than the print version?

I have only listened to the audio version but I would read the print version too. It was a great story and I'm sure I would have stayed up all night with the print as I did with the audio.

What about Christy Romano’s performance did you like?

I loved how well she played the different characters. She has a great way of playing them and not just reading the book. I'm adding her to my list of favorite narrators.

Any additional comments?

I will definitely be listening to this book more than once and have already recommended this book to everyone I know.

Best of David Wong so far, and that's saying A LOT

Also the variation of the voices was stellar. Please keep making these. Everything was completely on point, edge of my seat. I was very late seeing Logan in theaters after I bought the tickets because I hit chapter 63 and said AWW HELL NAH WUT HAPPENS?!

Over the top fun in an over the top world

Christy Romano does an outstand job of reading/voicing this tale of huge egos and huge technology. A ton of fun for anyone who has a sense of humor about our worold and where it's going.