A Better World: The Brilliance Trilogy, Book 2 (Unabridged‪)‬

Way too slow and long a start to be a great audiobook. The first one was great, this one was OK.

I would like to thank Thomas Mercer & NetGalley for an e-book of this story to review. Though I received this e-book for free, that has no impact upon the honesty of my review.

Goodreads Teaser: The brilliants changed everything.

Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we’d only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person’s most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional...and the rest of us.

Now a terrorist network led by brilliants has crippled three cities. Supermarket shelves stand empty. 911 calls go unanswered. Fanatics are burning people alive.

Nick Cooper has always fought to make the world better for his children. As both a brilliant and an advisor to the president of the United States, he’s against everything the terrorists represent. But as America slides toward a devastating civil war, Cooper is forced to play a game he dares not lose—because his opponents have their own vision of a better world.

And to reach it, they’re willing to burn this one down.

This stunning sequel manages to raise the already exceptionally high bar set by the first book in the series. We continue to follow Nick Cooper through this engaging story, learning the outcome of his choice to release the damning video that forever changed his point of view about his career, boss, and ultimately his own government. As Nick struggles to come to terms with the direction his world has taken, he is also trying to balance his family life and his growing feelings for The Girl Who Walks Through Walls.
Bouncing between Cooper's saga and that of Ethan Park, it seems a sure bet that their two worlds will collide at some point. Ethan is a scientist, a geek who's been working on a project so hush-hush he can't even tell his own wife what he's doing. But when a homegrown terrorist group brings three major cities to their knees in a matter of hours Ethan's world radically changes. Suddenly his non-disclosure agreement doesn't seem so important. Maybe because he and his wife, together with their three month old daughter are running for their lives.
The power plays and drama contained in this story are breathtaking. Formerly inscrutable players become clear as glass, while others remain murky at best. And of course at the heart of it all is John Smith. Just who is he? The activist wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit? A criminal mastermind planning to revolutionize the world? A psychopath marching to his own beat? Or all of the above? It's up to Nick Cooper to figure him out, and Heaven help him if he gets it wrong.
Very little of what takes place in this story is calm or mundane. Instead almost everything is supercharged with enough emotional intensity to level several football fields full of people. The ups and downs are part of what make this book so compelling, but again the characters are so well crafted that they are the real powerhouses of the book. Combine the two and you've a recipe for a smash hit!