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Halting State
- Narrated by: Robert Ian MacKenzie
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
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Great first listens
Publisher's summary
In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls Hugo winner Charles Stross’ novel Halting State a “brilliantly conceived techno-crime thriller.”
The year is 2012, and China, India, and the United States are waging an infowar for economic domination. With innocent gamers mere pawns in the hands of electronic intelligence agencies, programmer Jack Reed is tasked with ferreting out the plot of those who would gladly trade global turmoil for personal gain.
Critic reviews
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Ruthless and supremely powerful, the Great Library is now a presence in every major city, governing the flow of knowledge to the masses. Alchemy allows the library to deliver the content of the greatest works of history instantly - but the personal ownership of books is expressly forbidden. Jess Brightwell believes in the value of the library, but the majority of his knowledge comes from illegal books obtained by his family, who are involved in the thriving black market.
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don't give up too soon.
- By Janel on 09-11-15
By: Rachel Caine
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Alternate Routes
- By: Tim Powers
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Something weird is happening to the Los Angeles freeways - phantom cars, lanes from nowhere, and sometimes unmarked off-ramps that give glimpses of a desolate desert highway - and Sebastian Vickery, disgraced ex-Secret Service agent, is a driver for a covert supernatural-evasion car service. But another government agency is using and perhaps causing the freeway anomalies, and their chief is determined to have Vickery killed because of something he learned years ago at a halted Presidential motorcade. Reluctantly aided by Ingrid Castine, a member of that agency, and a homeless Mexican boy....
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Audible perfection!
- By LISA K OMEARA on 09-04-18
By: Tim Powers
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Roadmarks
- By: Roger Zelazny
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The Road runs from the unimaginable past to the far future, and those who travel it have access to the turnoffs leading to all times and places - even to the alternate time-streams of histories that never happened. Why the Dragons of Bel'kwinith made the Road - or who they are - no one knows. But the Road has always been there and for those who know how to find it, it always will be!
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A Sparkling Gem by a Master of Sci Fi & Fantasy
- By Bonnie on 01-20-22
By: Roger Zelazny
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Hardwired
- By: Walter Jon Williams
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.
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The Best Cyberpunk I Have Read
- By David on 02-06-13
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Crimson Tempest
- Survival Wars, Book 1
- By: Anthony James
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Captain John Nathan Duggan and his crew are given a mission - find the missing ESS Crimson and bring it home. Little does Duggan realize, this is no ordinary mission. As he struggles against enemies both within and without, he desperately tries to unlock the mystery surrounding the Crimson's disappearance and the unknown weapons it carries. He soon discovers the missing warship might be the only hope for salvation that mankind has left. When everything is veiled in secrecy nothing is easy, as Duggan is about to find out.
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Rip Off Series
- By Randy on 04-22-21
By: Anthony James
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Idoru
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is an intuitive fisher for patterns of information. But Laney knows how to sift for the dangerous bits. Which makes him useful - to certain people. Chia McKenzie is here on a rescue mission. Her idol is the singer Rez, of the band Lo,Rez. When the Seattle chapter of the Lo,Rez fan club decided that he might be in trouble in Tokyo, they sent Chia to check it out. Rei Toei is the idoru - the beautiful, entirely virtual media star adored by all Japan. Rez has declared that he will marry her. This is the rumor that has brought Chia to Tokyo.
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The narrator made me turn this off in 10 seconds
- By Rob on 12-02-18
By: William Gibson
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Survival Quest
- Way of the Shaman Series # 1
- By: Vasily Mahanenko
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Barliona: a virtual world jam-packed with monsters, battles - and, predictably, players. Millions of them come to Barliona, looking forward to the things they can't get in real life: elves and magic, dragons and princesses, and unforgettable combat. The game has become so popular that players now choose to spend months online without returning home. In Barliona, anything goes: You can assault fellow players, level up, become a mythical hero, a wizard, or a legendary thief.
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A Guilty pleasure
- By Daniel on 12-18-16
By: Vasily Mahanenko
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Altered Carbon
- By: Richard K. Morgan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
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Altered Carbon
- By Jake Williams on 09-22-07
What listeners say about Halting State
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James M. Orlando
- 02-07-24
Still good on a second read
I initially read Halting State not long after it released and it helped make Charles Stross one of my favorite authors. This review is based on my second experience with the novel, as I had a lot of memory gaps on the events in the story.
The most jarring issues with this novel and its presentation are the use of second-person for the various protagonists and Robert Ian MacKenzie's accent. The former is consistent throughout the story and, because it's a fairly rare writing choice, frequently causes the audience to recover when it is used. The reader is placed in the shoes of the main character of each chapter, while all other action and interactions are presented in third person.
MacKenzie's accent is only jarring for the first minute or so of the book, then most American listeners will have adapted and enjoy his presentation without difficulty. He is eloquent and overflowing with voices for the various characters.
From my initial reading of Halting State over a decade ago, my memory retained the main premise, the ending, and that's about it. The characters were lost, but I'm glad I found them again. Their interactions felt natural. Some character decisions give me a stronger "what a stupid choice!" than they did when I was younger. That's experience, I guess.
Halting state was much more enjoyable for my younger self on my initial reading than listening to the audio version today. I'll rate it "You're a perfect snapshot of the expectations of near-future technology, society, and the economy in the early 2010's, but you're also a little bothersome."
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- Arturo
- 04-03-15
I need moré Stross
I cant get enough of this universe. Can't wait to see what else this elder God dreams of. Awesome book
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- Brian
- 05-03-18
This is difficult subject matter for fiction
If you aren't already quasi-tech savvy, you may want to skip this. I applaud the author for his vanguard approach to the influence of the virtial online world to our "meatspace" existence. I call this honest hard sci-fi.
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- Richard
- 04-02-16
sorry to see it end
tough going at first (starts with 3 separate narratives), but came together nicely. Loved the Scottish flavor.
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- XReviewer
- 06-14-15
Dense read
This book is really too dense to listen to. The performance complete w Scottish accents is excellent but does not make easier for a non native. Great story; Stross combines his knowledge of economics and IT to great effect, once again making us think differently about both.
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1 person found this helpful
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- someone else
- 06-23-23
second person narrative
The plot of the story is interesting, but narrating in second person and switching characters can be confusing. The narration doesn't help with this problem, either.
Also, it is thick with British slang, which is not bad, but is something of which you should be aware of you're not familiar.
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- Norman
- 01-16-17
My favorite book
Any additional comments?
Near future sci-fi, with new variants on crime, computing and living, that are not just plausible but seem prophetic. The characters are real and would be great friends. the follow up book is not as good but Charlie Stross writes great initial books.
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- Dennis D Duquette
- 07-28-17
POV its only flaw
This would have been absolutely amazing if Stross had only used 1st or 3rd person. Addressing the reader personally makes it harder for me to stay in the story.
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 08-22-11
An excellent listen with a dynamite plot
CS has unleashed a real winner with Halting State. Set in the near future, the author combines the worlds of online gaming and cyber-espionage with a unique multi-1st person narrative style. Both worlds are evolved in ways that are not only quite convincing, but also reveal a keen sense of where things are going. For example, the fact that online games develop a level of complexity that requires independent companies to manage ingame economic stability in order to maintain a level of "fun" by the participants rings true as outlined. What begins as an apparent farce, the robbery of an online game bank (in the gamespace) is slowly revealed to portend dramatic ramifications.
The characters are believable and engaging each in their own way. The twists and turns, along with the many surprises, both inside and outside the gaming world make for a riveting tale. Most near future sci-fi tends to minimally extrapolate current trends with sci-fi elements relegated to batman "utility belt" gimmicks; Halting State manages to leap ahead without leaving the reader behind and produces a world one can imagine existing in the next several years that is substantially different from our own, but still quite recognizable.
The narrator also deserves special kudos for pulling off a reading of a story set in Scotland where the accents are authentic, but easily understood and not overwhelming.
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4 people found this helpful
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- S. Yates
- 08-14-16
Fun, technical, with just enough thrills
Any additional comments?
This turned out to be clever, satirical, well-plotted SF/techno-thriller. I'm glad I kept reading despite my difficulty in getting into the book at first. Stross has used three POV characters and each line is told in the second person, a POV I haven't seen much since my "choose your own adventure" days. Moreover, with it told from the second person as if you were three different characters, it is all the more disorienting as you leap from Elaine (a forensic accountant with a medieval battle reenactment hobby), to Sue (a tough-minded Scottish police sergeant), to Jack (an insecure, unemployed game programmer). It helps that you get to like all three characters and that Stross has a good eye for the humor in our technological present and future, and a definite fondness for gamers and everyone's desire to escape their reality. The story is a little convoluted, but it still mostly makes sense and is complex in a believable way. Perhaps the highest praise I can give was I really wanted to know what happened to some of the characters after the story ended. If you like William Gibson-esque tech, but want a little Vonnegut humor and flair, you could do worse than Halting State.
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1 person found this helpful