The Dystopia Chronicles

Atopia, Book 2

By: Matthew Mather

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

The second book in the bestselling Atopia series.

Cast out from Atopia, Robert Baxter undertakes a globe-trotting quest to find his friend Willy’s lost body, which just may hold the key to understanding the dangers facing his home…and Jimmy Scadden’s role in the disasters that are spreading across the world.

As Robert pieces together the puzzle, he realizes that mankind’s ravenous consumption of natural resources is no longer the most immediate threat to this world. As full-scale global war erupts and an ancient apocalyptic threat resurfaces, Robert must risk losing the ones he loves to save the planet from destruction.

©2014 Matthew Mather (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved

Loved the intensity of the story

Was a great read thrilling and awe inspiring on many levels. This a True sci-fi contender that packs a punch

Fascinating, techno-philosophical, Clever ride

Where does The Dystopia Chronicles rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I rank this book pretty high up there!

Who was your favorite character and why?

Hard to say who's my favorite character, might be All the Sci-kids and Vince too.

Which character – as performed by Nick Podehl – was your favorite?

Again, difficult to say here which was my favorite because no ONE character stands alone. I like Bob, Sid and Vicious, Vince. I guess I'd have to say Nick Podehl is one of my favorite narrators/actors but honestly, I'm not so keen on his female characters. He does their voices in a way, that sounds NOTHING like a real female.

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

a bunch of moments that moved me. There are a lot of exciting and thoughtful moments in this book. I may need to audiobook it one more time.

interesting but complicated plot

Enjoyed less than Atopia as the plot became much more complicated, straying from speculative sci-fi into metaphysical realm.
Ultimately pretty interesting but at times difficult to follow.
Ready to start the third book if only because I can't imagine where the author could possibly go from here.

Well worth a listen, despite flaws

The second book in the Atopia series is all about Bob and his friends going on a quest to find Willy's body. Meanwhile, the entire world is close to destruction and only these guys can stop it.

This book has a lot of great action. The scale is truly global and it throws up surprises the whole way. It continues to explore all kinds of great ideas with virtual reality, neural networks, etc. Bob, Sid, and Vince go on a global journey not only to find Willy's body, but to learn the truth about Jimmy, Atopia, and the forces working to destroy everything. The ending was quite unexpected..the author really took a chance with it.

There were some things I didn't like. The book has an anti-religious tone, especially Christianity. Also, I felt that many things in the book were not adequately explained. Some things were even explained, with the reader being told later that the explanation was wrong, but yet no alternative was given. Many of the things in the book didn't make a lot of sense if you looked deeper, and the epilogue was extremely confusing.

Despite the issues with the book, I found it overall to be very entertaining and interesting, and well worth the read. I sincerely enjoyed it.

I listened to the audible version of the book, and I found it very well produced. The narrator does a wonderful job reading and also doing all of the various voices in the novel.

NOTE: I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

Incredible narration!

The story was pretty good a little harder to follow than Atopia. The near a tion however was incredible. The narrator is very talented and I will look for more books narrated by him just because of how much more life he gives the story. It's hard to believe That this book was narrated by one man, if you listen to it there's times you will swear it's got to be a different person doing this part or that part but it's really just him!

Love this book!

This series is wonderful so far. Fantastic story and perfect voice performance! <3 <3 On to book 3 ...

This one is not my style either...

I struggled to get into this story as well. I've been known to leave the theater for poor performances. I guess Mather is just not my style...I may try reading his books vs. audio. The story lines sound intriguiging...I just can't get past the narrators

Meta.. Very meta

Going to listen to these two books several more times to make sure u get it all

Amazing until the end, but still a 5 out of 5.

It was a good choice going with 1 narrator instead 6 the first book had. Let me say this, Nick has been the most consistent narrator I've heard. Yes even better than Luke Daniel's. Luke has greater vocal range, especially female voices, but he has a problem sucking air after every other sentence in some of his books. To hear someone sucking air after every sentence is flatout annoying.

Onto the story, it took me awhile to remember the characters from the first book. It was months between listening to books 1 and 2. On top of that I skipped the first two hours of book 1 due to poor narration. When I finally remembered all the characters the story made sense at about the 3 hour mark. I love the introduction of new characters, the military ape was a great edition. Sydney was the star of the story with Jimmy being the pseudo bad guy and Bob growing up while unknownly becoming the bad guy. I expected the final Jimmy battle to be a bit more epic but it wasn't. The ending has me confused, and the whole alternate universe went over my head.

A few downsides but all in all it was a good read

I loved Atopia and could not wait to get my hands onto this one! Matthew Mayer just has a way of bringing the reader into this fantastical world that he has imagined. But the scary thing? Not only can I imagine it for fiction, I can actually see this happening in our future!

I recommend reading the Atopia Chronicles before delving into this one. He brings back quite a few of the people that we met in Atopia and their background stories are important to what happens to the plot in this one.

In Atopia Chronicles the narration jumps from one character to another and you’re not sure where you’re standing with each character until close to the end of the stories. This one is much more stream lined and due to that I think it was a better read. Instead of being a little choppy it flowed quite well. This does start RIGHT where Atopia Chronicles left off too, leaving the questions that were left at the end to be answered! I love when an author does not skip portions. It has been a little while since I read the first but I was able to immediately fall into this story. There are just enough reminders to help that transition be very smooth.

The only thing I question is how the story progresses. Even without being as choppy as the first with narration at times I had to move backward to be able to figure out where I was. Or re-listen to a portion to ensure I got the entire story right. This also may have something to do with the fact that this is getting into some serious science fiction, which is definitely not my normal genre!

Over all I thought the narration by Nick Poedhl was done very well. The audio was very clean and easy to stay with, minus the few story portions where I got lost! I absolutely love when a narrator takes time to really tell the story. This includes adding pauses. I can get lost when the pauses are not done correctly but Nick Poedhl did a fantastic job reading this and the voices were pretty easy to tell apart.

In short: A few downsides but all in all it was a good read. I loved listening to this one even with the few times I had to look back.

Audiobook purchased for review by ABR.

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