All That We See or Seem

By: Ken Liu

Narrated by: Kat Cleave

Award­-winning author Ken Liu returns with his first scifi thriller in a brand-new series following former “orphan hacker” Julia Z as she is thrust into a high-stakes adventure where she must use her AI-whispering skills to unravel a virtual reality mystery, rescue a kidnapped dream artist, and confront the blurred lines between technology, selfhood, and the power of shared dreams.

Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the “orphan hacker,” is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a quiet Boston suburb.

But when a lawyer named Piers—whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals—barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary life she has painstakingly created at risk as she can’t walk away from helping Piers and Elli, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an oneirofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee’s memories and providing an emotionally resonant narrative experience. While these collective dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also dreaming one-on-one with the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding the return of his dreams in exchange for Elli.

Unraveling the real and unreal leads Julia on an adventure that takes her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche.

interesting concepts, some weird narration

The story kept my interest for the first 3/4, then I started to lose focus, maybe that's just me. No spoilers. When the narrator consistently mispronounced "solder" I started listening for errors instead of the story. I was really into it before that.

Captivating, Great Charaters, and Believable World!

Love love love the story and the characters! The portrait of both the technologies and behaviors of all characters are so believable. The theme and social phenomena depicted in the story are spot on: privacy issues, digital crimes, personal AI, new art form in the lonely gen-AI era…. Listening to the thinking process of the bad guys, I thought oh my god that’s totally how someone like him would project his values onto other people. And the story was so thrilling and have multiple memorable turns. I felt like watching a movie when listening to it, and I pray that this book will be adapted for the big screen soon! Highly recommend to sci-fi lovers and who want to learn how the real world would be like (some of it are already true, saying this as an AI researcher living in Silicon Valley).

A poor performance undermined an average piece of writing.

I have enjoyed Ken Liu’s other work but this one seemed a bit phoned in. The commentary on technology and human nature could have been illustrated more richly with fewer inconsistencies.
My biggest problem with this title was the performance and lack of editing. I have never heard someone mispronounce so many common words or emphasize the wrong part of sentences so they lose their intended meaning. The author must be furious with the production team.

Fascinating protagonist, dystopian vision of an AI enhanced future, and attention to verisimilitude.

The story unfolds in the near future as our augmented reality is shaped by AI. But the old forces of idealism, greed, and revenge continue to battle. The book is very cinematic and has lots of twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat.

Decent story so far - narration was.. off

Acura pronounced “Akuhra”, Soldering pronounced “soldiering”. Lots of other examples. I thought maybe it was me until we got to the “soldiering irons” - then I knew. Story is ok so far, but that narration is sloppy at best.