Bioshock: Rapture
Written by John Shirley
Narrated by Jeffrey Kafer
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
John Shirley
John Shirley is one of the original cyberpunk authors, and appears in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. His novel City Come A-Walkin’, and his Song Called Youth trilogy, are regarded as seminal cyberpunk works. He is the winner of the 1998 Bram Stoker Award for his story collection, Black Butterflies: A Flock on the Dark Side. His novels include A Splendid Chaos, Demons, Wetbones, Black Glass, Crawlers, The Other End, High, and Stormland. Shirley has also written scripts for films such as The Crow and television shows such as Stark Trek: Deep Space Nine, as well as lyrics for American rock band Blue Öyster Cult.
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Reviews for Bioshock
48 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing, makes you feel like living in Rapture! Well written AND read
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This helped me to understand what happened to Rapture more clearly. Great book!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5WOW! I was not sure how I was going to like this book but now that I literally just finished reading it, I have to say it was beyound my expectations. Dae's story is amazing, her transition from slave to Magnus' Handmaiden is very well writen. The story line was great, I never got bored, The sex was HOT, the other story lines were also great. GREAT BOOK!!!!!!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great story about Magnus and Daenaira. She has been held as a slave for 8 years and suddenly out of the blue, guards show up and whisk her away to the Sanctuary. She has been abused and does not trust anyone. Magnus has no idea that she has gone through such torture, he simply wants a new handmaiden and the Gods sent him Dae. The relationship between the two of them is intense and very detailed. An additional plot about someone trying to take over the Sanctuary is also included, I think just the relationship aspect would have been enough. It was that good. But, the possible downfall of the Sanctuary was also very good and just added to the story. J. Frank is one of my favorite authors. Her writing is just plain good. I really liked this book and loved all the characters. J. Frank doesn't just give you tidbits of each character of importance, she gives you great details so you can understand why they do or say the things they do. I think that is another one of the reasons I like her writing so much.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I love this series. I enjoy it more and more with each book. This one is about the highest priest of the Shadowdwellers and how he learns to trust again. Of course there is a lot of sword fighting and sex too. That helps. I really liked his partner. She was a slave and he "bought" her to become his handmaiden. Handmaiden's are the priests right hand. She has trust problems too, since she was a slave for most of her life. But she is very strong and intelligent and knows just what her priest needs. Next one comes out in January. I am looking forward to it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've never played the Bioshock game, but I was drawn by the novel's premise. Rapture is an equivalent of the Atlantis valley from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", moved to an underwater setting where everything goes tragically wrong. Industrialist Andrew Ryan is tired of government interference, so he sets up his own city outside of national boundaries to create a tax-free libertarian utopia. Its only downside is that once you're in, you can't leave. The flaws of Rapture are soon evident, when it becomes riddled with immoral characters who have no problem stomping on the rights of others and can't be sufficiently controlled. Meanwhile the underclass swells and quickly reaches a dead end. With large numbers of its citizens feeling trapped in this enclosed society where hand-outs are frowned upon, trouble is soon brewing. Layered over this is the necessary setup for the video games that will carry the story forward past this novel's end: we see bizarre new technologies being employed in this 1950s setting that are still the stuff of sci-fi today, arising from a complete lack of regulation and regard for morality. Scenes of horror ensue.I wondered whether this novel would be openly judgemental of Ayn Rand (represented in the person of Andrew Ryan) but it is only a straightforward exploration of how her envisioned utopia’s rise and fall might play out, building on the premise that a fall would indeed happen. As a novel it would have been more successful had it remained focused on the two contrasting characters it starts with: Bill the plumber, who becomes a significant figure in Rapture's maintenance and Ryan's most trusted advisor, the kind of person Rapture was intended for; and Fontaine the mobster, who represents the darker side of people who are drawn by what Rapture has to offer. These could have sufficed to tell the entire story by themselves and been made to play off one another. Fontaine is the engine by which the fall comes about, but Bill's story is essentially that of the novel. Their stories and character depth become watered down due to other characters’ perspectives competing for page count, so it isn’t all that it could have been but the threads are there. I became well-versed in what are presumably the game's key elements, except for the Big Daddies: in contrast to other things that were evolving step-by-step (e.g. the Little Sisters), I didn't see the same logical development of how the Daddies came to be; they just suddenly were. This was costly to fully portraying the latter half of Ryan's character arc as he’s confronted with the downfall of Rapture, something I'd anticipated reading to see how it was handled. Bioshock: Rapture is a fast-paced story, it makes some fun allusions, and it displays some real effort and interest on the author's part that I’d feared would be lacking. Narrower focus and a less episodic structure would have helped, but I didn't feel the novel was simply riding on the video game's reputation. Viewed as a tragedy the utopia story is complete and I don’t feel forced to play the game afterward. As to how politically and socially realistic you find this tragedy’s portrayal to be, that will only depend on the baggage you bring with you.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5very good prequel to the game, i just bought the game series again because of it. Stays very true to the games universe and includes the creation of the audio diaries you see around rapture
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Awesome audio! I play the game but the audio books are always more entertaining! I love it.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Bioshock: Rapture by John Shirley is a book with some really interesting ideas set in a great epic-scale environment. Given its origins, it's commendable that it didn't read like a computer game, but unfortunately it did not rise above the quality of a very average tie-in novel. The characterisation is barely adequate -- almost all the characters have very little complexity or depth. I couldn't imagine many of them as real people, and I didn't care much for any of them. The first third of the book I struggled through; the middle third -- once the underwater city had been built -- was interesting and gripping, but I found the final quarter quite tedious: the book suffers badly in that the author clearly has to set up a lot of characters and stories, but is unable to bring almost any of them to any kind of closure. Presumably the closure to these stories are found in the Bioshock games. So, this is not a prequel (as advertised on the cover); this is strictly back-story.I'm forced to conclude that it's for fans of the game only.