Titan

Mammon Series, Book 1

By: Robert Kroese

Narrated by: Jonathan Beville

By the year 2032, the US federal debt has surpassed $50 trillion. The American empire is on the verge of collapse.

An entrepreneur named Kade Kapur has an idea for rescuing the debt-ridden United States: The government will issue stock in a company with exclusive mining rights to an asteroid whose orbit will soon bring it near Earth. The asteroid, which contains $10 trillion in valuable minerals, is officially called 2015 RK 16 Maimonides, but it soon comes to be known by another name: Mammon.

Fortunes are made and America seems to have avoided an economic collapse. But when the plan to capture the asteroid goes awry, the sky will fall....

©2021 Robert Kroese (P)2022 Tantor

Atlas Shrugged meets the Martian

Holy crap, what an intense car crash of hard science, bad politics, and gritty survivalism.

Could not put this book down!

Reading this book brought back memories of reading Cryptonomicon in the late 90's. Neal Stephenson did a great job touching on a possible future of online banking by the creation of cryptographic systems to protect commercial transactions, complete with an off shore bank. Titan touches on the same future possible edgy technology that could transform our world. The realism about the potential changes to our social structural about how socialism would and will break the social and monetary foundations is so real, we can see it taking place today.

The characters are so three-dimensional, the plot moves at a very fast pace. Loved this book!

Titan, an examination of a probable future

Titan is an engaging story with well developed characters that can lead the listener into emotional states, coupled with an outstanding actor who is deft enough to produce the personalities of the characters as if he had painstakingly studied them in real life!
Disclaimer, I am a huge Rex Nihilo fan so I might be slightly biased to Kroese's work, but this novel is by no means a satire. So this review is completely based on the political thriller aspect.
I found to my surprise that Kroese's opinions on the political environment mirror my own, Not that Kroese is, but I was previously a staunch republican, and now I find myself somewhere in the middle (too far left gets loony, too far right gets nuts). So In the political thriller part of the book I was like "yeah I could see that". Also it seems that maybe we share a similar library (Strange Angel).
By and large a great story that makes one want to get back to the book and see what is happening, somewhat reminiscent of "Nobody's Fool". But unfortunately Titan has quite a few exhaustive info dumps, and I have to admit, I grew a bit weary with those.
On to the voice actor, WOW and HOLY COW HE IS GOOD!!!! In my opinion his inflection is strikingly similar to Ray Porter, but the character study is decidedly better than anything I have heard from Ray Porter. Jonathon's work is so sublime and enhancing to the story without ever being over bearing, that you just don't think about his performance, It is a seamless marriage of story and acting that when pondered upon, can only be described as magical.

Robert Kroese is the 21st century Ayn Rand

Mammon is the 21st century Atlas Shrugged. Kroese's story may not ask "Who is John Galt?" But it does present a good story of just how badly politicians can sabotage the best efforts of talented and dedicated genius. After wading through countless sci-fi written by obviously left leaning authors, I finally have the pleasure of reading an author that has a real grasp of economic consequences of Socialist actions, no matter how altruistic the intent. And that's only part of the story. The believable sci-fi makes for an entertaining and inspiring story, one that is going in my permanent library.

Sci-Fi PreDocumentary

Last night I finished the book. It outlines a future that is more probable than I'd like to admit. That's why I call it a "PreDocumentary."

Ambitious & fun story by Robert with rock solid delivery by Jonathan.

Looking forward to when book 2 is ready for listening.