The Memory Agent (Unabridged)
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Crime never changes. Punishment does.
In a time when prisons no longer contain inmates behind concrete and steel, the convicted serve their time while asleep, rehabilitating in virtual reality while blissfully unaware of their crimes.
Roger Parker is a professional prison breaker, skilled at navigating these strange penal dream worlds and extracting those imprisoned there - for a price. Parker wants out of the game, but a powerful senator, desperate to save his son, convinces Parker to pull one last job. The clincher? An opportunity for Parker to find his wife, herself interned, lost somewhere in a treacherous, time-shifting Manhattan cyberscape.
As Parker and his team make their hallucinatory journey between worlds, memory and motive lose coherence and integrity, and the clock begins to run out: internal security detects the breaker, and sets out to remove him - permanently.
Unable to rely on his perceptions, unsure of the truth or even his very identity, will Parker break out... or be broken?
Customer Reviews
Think of a giant MMORPG for convicts
Being a fan of James Anderson Foster since I first listened to him in the Adrian’s Undead Diary series. And being, not really a fan, but one who thinks that dual narrations can be a treat to listen to. I am surprised that I have not listened to The Memory Agent sooner than now.
This is such an interesting yet not totally unique story. The concept of the mental prisons is absolutely fascinating to me. Especially since I have been recently bitten by the LitRPG bug. So I related to the technology in that way. Think of a giant MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Role Playing Game) where convicts are sent to live out their sentence as someone else in a new reality. Mind you this happens with no knowledge of it happening because the convicted has the pleasure of having their memory’s erased before “plunging in”.
Matthew B.J. Delaney chose to present this story in a way that seemed haphazard and confusing at the time of listening. After processing the story for a couple days I was convinced that Delaney was trying to present his story similarly to the way some Hollywood blockbuster movies are organized. Making me do the work of connecting the dots and drawing conclusions until more is revealed.
Not sure who made the call of the dual narration for this book, whoever it was, they made the right choice. The narrators switched everytime the timeline jumped or you could think of it as a different voice for the different realities. Making it very clear as to what storyline was happening at the moment.
I think this was my first time listening to James Patrick Cronin. He has a pleasant voice that adequately conveys the emotions needed at any given time. Cronin’s voice was very soothing, calm and collected. I would listen to him again without thinking twice.
This was on of James Anderson Foster’s best performances that I have heard. There was a confidence coming from him that I do not remember hearing in the past. You could hear the effort he was putting into his performance to make this a pleasurable listening experience.
My beef is with the production quality of Foster’s performance. Brilliance Audio clearly, for some unknown reason, had Foster processed with some kind of noise gate, this is a technique that essentially turns the mic on and off depending on the volume of sound coming into it. This resulted in a clipping off a couple milliseconds of almost every new paragraph voiced by Foster. Making “Parker” sound more like “Harker”. If something like this happens once or twice I probably wouldn’t have said anything. But, it started to become a little distracting.
Audiobook was provided for review by the narrator.
Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog
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