The Lottery Ticket

By: CJ Williams

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When revenge costs $1.8 billion, it’s worth every penny.

Devin Reed has hit rock bottom – literally – he sleeps on cot #187 in a homeless shelter. Once a successful shipping company owner, he lost everything to Marcus Thorne, the solar system’s most ruthless corporate titan. With his business destroyed and his wife dead from tainted medicine, Devin has nothing left but rage and a burning desire for payback.

Then fate intervenes in the form of a discarded lottery ticket pulled from a trash bin. One impulsive rescue of someone else’s “worthless” paper. Overnight, Devin is transformed from shelter resident to a billionaire. Now he has the ultimate war chest – and Marcus Thorne has no idea what’s coming for him.

What follows is the most expensive revenge plot in human history; a systematic campaign to dismantle Thorne’s corporate empire one “accident” at a time. From the docks of Luna to the asteroid belt, Devin assembles an unlikely crew of fellow Thorne victims, a blacklisted engineer, a disgraced military intelligence officer, and a young journalist with family secrets. Together, they’ll expose corruption, hijack supply chains, and turn Thorne’s own tactics against him.

But Thorne didn’t become a trillionaire by playing fair. As the corporate war escalates from boardroom sabotage to actual space battles, Devin discovers that some victories cost more than money – and the line between justice and vengeance is thinner than the vacuum of space.

A darkly comic space opera about the price of revenge, the power of found family, and what happens when the ultimate underdog gets unlimited resources to settle an old score.

First virtual voice book I’ve ever actually been able to get through

To begin with, I really cannot listen to books done with virtual voice. Until listening to this book, I’ve only encounter titles where the intonations done by the performing AI were unbearable. However, in this particular case, the female AI that they used in it mostly got it right as far as the emotional intentions that should be used based on what was being said. That’s why I enjoyed this book and was able to get through it. It was an excellent story, and overall, I liked it greatly. I hope Audible will continue on the trend of improving that technology.

Audible to do more like this!

A well told story

Great story from start to finish. I liked the twists in the turns and the plot. And it was science fiction so what’s not delight.

the story was great.

the "virtual voice" audio was terrible. I won't try another audio book with it for years. the technology is not working yet.

good guy wins

would have been better with a live narrator. the AI mispronounced names then pronounces them correctly in the next sentence.

The first AI narrator I’ve heard - not ok

AI narration will never replace voice over artists if it always sounds like this. It’s metallic and monotone - very little natural inflection and no character voices. I hope audible replaces this attempt with a proper artist.