The Lives of Tao

By: Wesley Chu

Narrated by: Mikael Naramore

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen wakes up and starts hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumes he’s losing it.

He isn’t.

As of last night, he has a passenger in his brain - an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Over the millennia his people have trained human heroes to be great leaders, to advance our species at a rate far beyond what it would have achieved on its own. Split into two opposing factions - the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix - the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet… and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes.

So now Roen must train to be a hero worthy of his unwanted companion. Like that’s going to end up well.…

©2013 Wesley Chu (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Wesley Chu is my hero.… He has to be the coolest science fiction writer in the world." (Lavie Tidhar, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Osama)

Voice acting...

I felt that although the voice acting was good as the MC matured he still was voiced with a winey voice until the end. Even in passages when he was described as grunting out military commands it sounded as if he was a child wineying or complaining to get his way. The voice acting did not make sense for the context of the story at that point and really killed the end of this book for me.

Refreshing take!

I thought this book was very unique. I loved the idea of carrying around a passenger in your head from whom, if you chose to listen, you could learn a great deal.

The idea of a long, behind the scenes conflict between the Prophus and the Genjix scratched my inner conspiracy theory loving brain.

The characters were interesting and following their motivations was fascinating. I especially loved watching the growth of the main character, Roen, who starts out like many of us - overweight, stuck in a dead in job, and unable to move forward with his life- and becomes confident and interesting by the end of the book.

The narrative was well paced and I loved that Chu could make you sad, make you laugh, and horrify you all within a few pages. Will definitely listen again - and definitely adding the sequel to my wish list!

#aliens #funny #underdog #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

Awesome Read! Go For It!

Very entertaining! I enjoyed every minute of it!
Loved it! This was an amazing book!

wonderful reading, good story

I enjoyed listening while driving. I owned the paperback first, but it starts a bit slow. Mikael has a great performance of voice and pace to make even the ramp up enjoyable, and by the end you want to hear a prologue before finding something else to hear.

An underrated listen !

I urge to listen to this story...if... you like action, sci-fi . Those are not uncommon combinations. However, I find that many times the action overwhelms the characters in a story. This is not the case with "The lives of Tao". Wesley Chu takes the time to develop his main characters and we care about them. We also feel the conflict he is dragged into. This story works on many levels. The reader added to the pleasure by making sure we knew who was involved when and giving them their voice. I was sad when we got to the end and am looking forward to book 2.

Sentient Parasite Lit

So we have the Trills from Deep Space Nine, the Goa'uld from Star Gate, the Souls from The Host, and a ton of others in a wide range of video games. And now we have the Prophus/Genjix in this story. For the most part I enjoy these stories, in particular in book form because we get to hear the sentient parasite converse with the protagonist..

Overall I greatly enjoyed this opening entry in the series and will be going forward with the story. But my goodness, the protagonist is making mistakes in this story like he was born in another era. And when he would make these mistakes, in my mind I kept on saying . . . . Oh Come ON!!!!!. Just a continuous number of poor judgement calls that continually kept throwing me out of the story.

It kinda felt like it was fake drama introduced into the story to create additional conflict. And by how Chu writes and tells his story, I can tell he was just being lazy. Because he is a good story teller. Our protagonist should not be making the same type of mistakes further in this series simply because the conditions in book 1, will no longer exist.

Starts off slow, but patience will be rewarded

The first chapter or two were confusing and jumped around with names and characters enough for me to almost move to a new book. But, once I caught up to where the author was trying to get me, the book was a 5 star book! Funny, action packed, and a bit of drama. Not a bad book at all.

An Action/Comedy book is hard to find.

What made the experience of listening to The Lives of Tao the most enjoyable?

Good Action/Comedy books are few, and far between, until Wesley Chu brought Tao into the picture. The witty banter and unique story makes this book fantastic!

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Lives of Tao?

The snappy comments back and forth between Roan and Tao. Constantly hilarious, and sometimes insightful.

Have you listened to any of Mikael Naramore’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Not sure. But the narrations were great and made it easy to distinguish between characters in the story.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Laugh mostly, cringe sometimes (in a good way).

Fantastic start of a series!

If you could sum up The Lives of Tao in three words, what would they be?

Fast Moving Science Fiction

Which character – as performed by Mikael Naramore – was your favorite?

Roan was my favorite.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

How to host an alien.

Any additional comments?

Loved this book by Wes Chu. Fast moving story. I am delighted there are 2 more in the series!

Something

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Overall, yes. The vast majority of the book was enjoyable, only beginning to wear as the main character continued to use the same tired lines of thought and worn out phrases to express himself. There was the sense that the author was trying to poke fun at or reference cheesy spy and action classic tropes, but being boring for the sake of being cute is still being boring.

I will say that I became swept up in the world he created of secret behind-the-scenes alien warfare throughout history, and loved the basic concept of the book. Would even be interested to see more stories set in this universe, but perhaps with a different tone.

The core problem was perhaps one of target audience. The further I got into the book, the more I felt that this would have made an excellent teen or young adult book, even though it was clearly not trying to be. It felt too toothless, the main character almost impossibly immature after a point, to be about adults. Perhaps if I had started it viewing it as a book for teens I would have been lenient.

Would you ever listen to anything by Wesley Chu again?

Probably. This felt like a sophomore attempt, a talented and imaginative writer still trying to break free of the bounds of convention and, for lack of a better term, self-doubt. Many times he began down a good path only to fall back on the same outcomes, situations, and phrases. The bulk of the work, however, was fine.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Mikael Naramore?

Yes. Naramore's narration was overall good, his inability to deliver an English accent not withstanding. HIs characters were clearly defined and consistent, which is important in a book that contains multiple simultaneous conversations occurring on different levels.

Could you see The Lives of Tao being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Yes, but it would accused of being something of a "Chuck" rip-off. I think it would make a fairly good TV series. It could be fun to cast the voices of impressive older actors (Patrick Stewart springs to mind) as the disembodied aliens giving advice, with young up-and-coming TV talents in the leads.

Any additional comments?

I would recommend saving your money and hoping for a sequel. It's a great world, but the characters don't live up to it. Centuries of military wisdom and experience consistently give way to blind, short-sighted action, and the main character pretty stubbornly refuses to mature, think, or grow. Until a sudden last act change where he becomes a collected yet bloodthirsty freedom fighter without any real expectation.

The book tries for high mindedness, but ends up feeling like it was written for 14 year old boys. I look forward to seeing whether this author can bring his visions in line with his talent in the future.