Void Star

By: Zachary Mason

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Tristan Morris, Sean Pratt, Michael Braun

Not far in the future, the seas have risen, and the central latitudes are emptying. But it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor.

Irina isn't rich, not quite, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It's a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from aging.

Kern has no such access; he's one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built favelas on the city's periphery, where he lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely - the mathematically inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he's fled to LA after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.

A ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop's screen in her employer's eyeglasses. None is safe as they're pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.

Vivid, tumultuous, and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason's mind-bending follow-up to his critically acclaimed novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

©2017 Zachary Mason (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Brilliant ode to Neuromancer, if you have patience

By the end of this book I was 100% on board, listening to an ode to Gibson that should unofficially be called book 1.5 of the sprawl trilogy. There's no way the author wrote this in a vacuum, because it's old school cyberpunk to its bones and even copies Gibson's poetic style and alternating protagonists structure. Favelas, street kids, hacking wizards, 3 alternating protagonists on a collision course, a perspective only copious expense accounts can provide, AIs making you question what a human soul is - it's all here.

But it is a SLOW start, jumping right in without enough action or excitement to call it in media res. The first 25-35% is bogged down in flowery descriptions of things you just don't care about yet, and may not even be curious about. What does it mean that something has the texture of disentered cities within disentered cities...? It's provocative, yes, but opaque to the point of only having the meaning you choose to give it. Nothing really happens to anyone, just happens around them - at first.

Really, I just lacked trust in the author at this point, so a part of me wasn't willing to give him any slack or even my full attention. This is a book that has, at one point, put me to sleep, but the last half of which made sleep impossible. It was exactly the same for me with Neuromancer, so maybe I am the problem.

As you begin to see what is going on, how the stories connect, your heart begins to race with the tension and stakes of even a simple conversation. The energy and threat in every moment becomes palpable even as you're still asking questions, wondering what is even happening. Each character starts to make moves, and choices, that fully change the world they inhabit. They become dangerous, major players, ripping down a carefully built world of the power players who thought them pawns. I am now determined to give Void Star an entire second listen, because my inattentiveness in the first chapters has certainly robbed me of parts of a story I am now desperate to get more of, and experience again in full knowledge of all it's secrets.

Some of the narrators are fantastic, especially Cassandra Campbell, and some are not. One in particular constantly mispronounced words. Basically each narrator embodies one character and reads all their chapters. I thought it was a little messy at first but I'm enjoying it now.

A gem of it’s genre

This is the best book I’ve ever had in a very long time. It has a very well thought out and intricate storyline set and an updated cyberpunk backdrop.
The characters are all interesting, and I like the blending of true AIs interacting with both virtual and real-world people. It’s pretty mind blowing.
I did find that the parallels with Neuromancer a bit overt, but I thought it was well done anyways. I’m looking forward to reading more in this universe.

Better book than audio

Maybe it was the distractions but I found the book a bit hard to follow at first. It was really well written but listening to it was a bit disorienting. The ending left me wanting more and it felt like a very mellow dramatic wrap-up.

Beautifully written sci-fi masterfully performed

Would you consider the audio edition of Void Star to be better than the print version?

With the different narrators each performing a different POV character, it made differentiating the different story lines easier. In the book, chapters are generally less than 10 pages long and characters can change rather rapidly. Hard to judge if it was better than reading the book, but the production value was high and I know the narration heightened the experience of certain scenes in the book.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Void Star?

The ending, especially in relation to Kern, is very satisfying and truly enriches everything that preceded it. Much of the prose is very beautiful and reminds of some of the best and classic books I've read in the past. Sometimes it feels more like poetry but it fits just perfect.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Irina, performed by Cassandra Campbell, and Kern, performed by Michael Braun, stood out most to me. Braun perfectly captures Kern's more frenetic violent story while also being able to relate the character's innocence and naivety. Campbell is doing most of the heavy lifting story-wise, but her performance really is beautiful and matches the prose very well while keeping an edge in more tense scenes.

Any additional comments?

I don't usually reread books, but I think I'll be revisiting this one. I'll definitely be picking up a hard copy.

so much potential

seemed to just drag on and on the story is actually really good but its split between three points of view that switched way to soon between them to fast and the narrators who I like seemed to talk like .. i dont know every sentence was a statement. Some one else might have a different opinion will buy authours​ next book even though this one was lacking. Definetly good enough to deserve a second chance.