Queen of Angels

By: Greg Bear

Narrated by: George Guidall

Emanuel Goldsmith, a famous poet, murdered eight people, then disappeared. Three people want to find him: an aspiring writer, an embittered scientist who wants to use him, and a policewoman who needs to put him in custody before the Selectors, a vigilante organization, get to him first.

©1990 Greg Bear (P)1991 Recorded Books

Near future perspectives on mass killings

Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels follows multiple perspectives related to a mass killing. There’s the police detective assigned to the case who ends up navigating an international dust-up. There’s the father of one of the victims who captures the killer and has a psychiatrist / psychologist go inside his head to at-tempt to understand the motives. And then there’s a close friend who struggles to comprehend the atypical behavior. The killer is never officially apprehended, but the basis for the behavior is gradually revealed. At the same time, an AI space probe sending back information on a nearby star, becomes self-aware and compromises the mission.

Bear packs quite a bit of baggage into this tale. The significance on the binary millennium (2048) seems a bit geeky. Much of the verbiage is introspective, while the international diplomatic kerfuffle seemed forced. The space probe looks like a concept that was never fully fleshed out for a standalone story.

The narration is very well done with excellent character distinction. Pacing is on the slow side.

fantastic, a whole new experience on audio

read this when it came out and found it very dense, but listening to it 20 years later on audio I am just blown away. great all around.

Excellent story

I read Queen Of Angels shortly after it was published and found it sneakily compelling. I think it was maybe the fifth Bear novel I had read at that time. Revisiting this story on audible today it is, if anything, even more powerful.

The primary protagonist being a "transform" is remarkably prescient. I found all of the characters well drawn and compelling, including the AI.

The journey into the Country of the Mind of Goldsmith was astonishing.

Not to give away anything (I hope), it is well worth the listen, and /or read.

A trove of great ideas

Interesting ideas, not great synthesis- - - - - - - - - - - .

Excellent SF that has aged well

Where does Queen of Angels rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Among fiction, very high. The narrator was excellent and the story was engrossing.

What did you like best about this story?

I liked the complexity of the story and the way the author managed to make interesting characters while also introducing fascinating scientific topics (of varied fields).

What about George Guidall’s performance did you like?

It was easy to tell by his intonation which character he was portraying. He got across emotion without ever seeming tawdry.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not in one sitting (it is 19 hours long), but it was definitely a book I was always excited to get back to.

What a find

Quite surprised with this work of Greg Bear. While I never read something of his that disappointed me, this is such an excellent read that I feel lucky to have read it. The story line is rich and holds the tension all along. As it is told from many POVs and it is up to the reader to patch them into coherent unfoldment of events. Interesting thinking about Art and especially literature, but above all is the thrill of tracing the awakening of the AI characters. Definitely recommended.

Waaaaannnnnddddeeeerrrrssss..................

A meandering work from a great author. Paints an incredibly intricate picture of the Orwellian 1984 societal structure, decades down the road.

But if it is supposed to be a murder mystery, it becomes lost in the fog of each character's existentialism.

If the point of the wiring was to get you add list into their reality, it is a masterpiece. But if it is meant to be a murder mystery, it fails miserably.

The lack of continuity made me stop halfway through, after finding that I had stopped listening several times, and had to remind to where it had lost my interest yet again.

Brilliant, prescient, resonant masterpiece

Often imitated, never duplicated, Greg Bear's stunning journey into humanity's heart of darkness & the innocence & nascent wisdom of newly created life has clearly fired the imaginations of legions of writers, artists and filmmakers & remains one of the greatest, most influential books of the 20th cent., sf or otherwise. George Guidall's pitch-perfect performance only adds to its power. 🤍

Too long.

I'm sure other people love it, but, for me, there's just way too much ponderous plodding detail that leaves me with, "Who cares!?"