The Phlebotomist

By: Chris Panatier

Narrated by: Veronique Olin

Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

To recover from a cataclysmic war, the Harvest was created to pass blood to those affected by radiation. But this charitable act has led to a society segregated entirely by blood type. Patriot thanks and rewards your generous gift based on the compatibility of your donation, meaning that whoever can give to the most, gets the most back. While working as a reaper for the draw, Willa chances upon an idea to resurrect an obsolete collection technique that could rebalance the city. But in her quest to put this in motion, she instead uncovers a secret that threatens her entire foundations....

©2020 Chris Panatier (P)2020 Angry Robot

The writing is stellar. The reader is excellent.

This dystopian novel keeps you guessing. The characters are well-drawn, with clear and individual voices. These are people we come to care a great deal about. Especially appealing, too, is that the heroines are not the usual young single white males, or young single white females. Refreshing, indeed. The language is spot on—with frequent smiles elicited by the remarks of a few of the characters, and of one character in particular. I would quote, but that would be ruin the moments. The narration is beyond excellent. Each character is clearly delineated! I am not a regular reader of Sci Fi fantasy. Suffice to say, this book transcends it genre. It so needs to be adapted to the big screen!

True Phleb

I honestly feel like “The Phlebotomist” was written for me. I truly enjoyed the start of every chapter. Anyone in the Medical field or that knows Medical Terminology is gonna get an extra kick out of it for sure. Not only is this book written well, the audio artist truly brought the book to life. Bringing to life the wonderful characters the author wrote. Willa and Lock are 🫀Heart. Bringing to life a Future that combines so many fandoms. My only warning is you’ll get hocked. I want more of this universe.

Great Read/Listen

I was very impressed with this book. I can’t wait to read more from the author!

Good but not great

Solid 3 stars from me. It was just kind of fine which is a little disappointing because the first 1/3 of it really captured my interest.

Starts off strong with a lot of interesting ideas about blood based identity politics and dystopian world building but doesn't quite live up to its promises. I had a feeling what the "twist" was going to be before it's revealed and I thought surely they won't go there, it's too obvious of a metaphor but nope, they went there and that's where my interest took a nose dive. At least they had a few original ideas presented about certain aspects of said "twist" but it took something that originally felt more like a clever social commentary into cliche that I wish it left alone.

The characters were great though. I think the only one that I didn't enjoy was the teenager but that's because of the narrators choice of how to portray their voice. they leaned waaaay too far into 80's valley girl and it was challenging to listen to. But otherwise the narrator does a decent job.

Overall it was fine. loved the first bit but kind of struggled through the rest of it and the ending didn't really stick the landing for me.