Brilliance: The Brilliance Trilogy, Book 1 (Unabridged‪)‬

I would like to thank Thomas & Mercer, as well as NetGalley, for a copy of this ebook to review. Though I received this ebook for free, that has no impact upon the honesty of my review.

Goodreads Teaser: In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called "brilliants," and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in - and betray his own kind.

From Marcus Sakey, "a modern master of suspense" (Chicago Sun-Times) and "one of our best storytellers" (Michael Connelly), comes an adventure that’s at once breakneck thriller and shrewd social commentary; a gripping tale of a world fundamentally different and yet horrifyingly similar to our own, where being born gifted can be a terrible curse.

As the first book of a series I'd expected this to be heavy on the world building and character development, but the two dovetailed nicely, cutting down on the slower material. This story essentially explodes off the page from the beginning until the end.

What really made this book work for me was how focused it was on the personalities. Other books about people with extraordinary mental abilities often get stuck in the description and use of those abilities, sometimes forgetting the person wielding them. Not Brilliance. Here we get deep into Nick Cooper's psyche and all that makes him tick. As we, and he, learn more about who he is and how he relates to the world around him he becomes the force that moves the story forward. His relationships bring in new characters and their relation to Cooper determines how much we learn about them in most cases.

Cooper's life is one of action, and pretty much always has been. He's a faithful believer in what he's doing, which is protecting the world from the abnorms gone rogue. But the reason he's the best at what he does is the fact that he too is an abnorm, or twist as he likes to call them. But part of the problem is that his work has cut him off from contact with others like him, something he isn't consciously aware is a problem. But at his core, his deepest belief is in protecting his family. Everything he does comes back to wanting a better, safer world for his two kids to grow up in. And that's what makes him so damned relatable. Not his abilities, not his faith that what he's doing is the right thing, but his love of his kids. But to protect them he'll have to step outside his safety zone, quite literally. He will have to become the very thing he hunts, and make everyone believe it's true if he's to have even a chance of pulling this off.

Following Cooper through his personal and professional interactions is like riding a roller coaster blindfolded. With this story's twists and turns you simply never know where you'll end up or what's coming next. And that's what makes this such an exhilarating read. Well that and the layers of commentary on not just the social system in his world, but how it's reflected in ours. So you can read this simply for the thrills involved, or for the messages included, or like me you can absorb them both. Though I'll say that I often stayed in the story and only got back to the messages on an active level upon putting the book down, and that didn't happen very often once I began reading. But both the thrills and messages are still percolating in my mind as I write this, and I'm sure they'll continue to do so as I read the next book, and the one coming after that. And I can't wait to get started on them!

I started off liking this story a lot, but the narration is making consider just borrowing the printed book from the public library and finishing it that way.

The scenes where the main protagonist interacts with his two children are absolute agony to sit through. The narrator changes his voice to a grating, ear-splitting whine that sounds like a stand-up comedian doing an impression of a child that annoyed him in a park. Such an impression would normally end quickly in a standup bit, but in this audiobook is just goes on and on and on, sounding like an endless conversation between Batman, My Little Pony, and SpongeBob.

A child does not have to sound like an obnoxious cartoon character. Just say that the child said something, and say it in a normal voice. Don't squeak it out in some heinous, nausea-inducing falsetto, please.

Best audio book ever. Excellent narrator.