I consumed After On as an audiobook, and as such, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
That said, I acknowledge that as a written text I might not have finished it. At times, I noticed that it tended toward sections of dense, wordy, confusing, technobabble. Also, dense, wordy, confusing philosophy, and dense, wordy, confusing real scientific theories (because this fiction is seriously grounded in our real world). I love that because I love learning.
I’m always up for listening to dense language–much more patient than reading it–and the cast of narrators does such a good job of making all of those possible detractors so real to the characters they play, that the story becomes amazingly compelling.
And for ONCE, this is a near-future book FILLED WITH GOOD GUYS. People trying to do the right thing. People grappling with real ethical and moral questions in our modern world without becoming pessimistic, despairing, or hopelessly machiavellian.
As a corporate drone who lived through much of the late 90’s and aughts in Silicon Valley, the “history” and “culture” included in the book pushed all of my happy nostalgia buttons with their accuracy. The book has strong female characters and a lot of diversity within the cast. Every character is central to the storyline.
True, the second-person, offensive challenge at the beginning of the book is a lot to take. But truly, it sucked me in and I didn’t want to stop listening to it.
Check it out if you like exemplary audiobook performances, fascinating characters, good guys, near-future science, and you are just the right bit scared about how smartphones and social media are affecting our lives.
What do you think?