Atlas Alone
Written by Emma Newman
Narrated by Emma Newman
4/5
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About this audiobook
Six months after she left, Dee is struggling to manage her rage toward the people who ordered the nuclear strike that destroyed Earth. She's trying to find those responsible, but she's not getting very far alone.
A dedicated gamer, Dee is endeavoring to discover a mersive good enough to enable her to escape her trauma. When she is approached by a designer who asks her to play test his new game, she hopes it will be what she needs-but it isn't like any mersive she's played before. When a man suddenly dies in the real world, she realizes that at the same time in the game, she killed a character who bears a striking resemblance to the dead man-a man she discovers was one of those responsible for the death of millions on Earth.
Disturbed, but thinking it must be a coincidence, Dee continues the hunt for information. But when she finds out the plans for the future colony, she realizes that to save what is left of humanity, she might have to do something that risks what remains of her own.
Emma Newman
Emma Newman was born in a tiny coastal village in Cornwall during one of the hottest summers on record. Four years later she started to write stories and never stopped until she penned a short story that secured her a place at Oxford University to read Experimental Psychology. In 2011 Emma embarked on an ambitious project to write and distribute one short story per week – all of them set in her Split Worlds milieu – completely free to her mailing list subscribers. A debut short-story collection, From Dark Places, was published in 2011 and her debut post-apocalyptic novel for young adults, 20 Years Later, was published just one year later – presumably Emma didn’t want to wait another nineteen… Emma is also a professional audiobook narrator. She now lives in Somerset with her husband, son and far too many books.
More audiobooks from Emma Newman
Before, After, Alone: A Planetfall Universe short story collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Before Mars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Alone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Atlas Alone
70 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5"Atlas Alone" is the story of a former corporate slave (literally) on a spaceship headed towards a distant planet, humanity's new hope. She is burdened with secret knowledge that someone on board committed genocide before they left Earth, knowledge she has no way to act on until some anonymous hacker on board starts infiltrating her virtual reality games, offering to help her get revenge. Newman's ability to keep the final two or three chapters' worth of story almost entirely obfuscated throughout the reading experience to get there keeps impressing me, novel by novel. Having consumed unknown thousands of stories in my life, I'm used to at this point having a fairly decent sense, subconsciously or consciously, as to what any given story is headed towards -- even with the ones I love. Newman dances around this intuitive expectation rather brilliantly, with snappy, almost shockingly quick finales in each of these 'Planetfall' novels, that usually focuses on some seemingly tertiary aspect of the story I wasn't quite realising would turn out to be its focus. And yet, it always works. That's not to say some twists aren't telegraphed and can be predicted (I saw one of the main ones in this book coming a mile away, for instance), but the _direction_ of the story, more than the actual reveals, is always something satisfyingly other than what I'd have first thought. "Atlas Alone" is very much following in this tradition, with perhaps the most chillingly unexpected final twist yet, in my eyes. (And, endearingly, both darker and less dark than what I _was_ sort of expecting, at the same time,)With this novel, what has only been hinted at in the previous installments becomes rather clear: All of the (fairly standalone) novels in this series are pointing towards some kind of explosive mutual convergence. I'd be very excited to read that, should Newman ever get to write it. Because based on these four, she definitely knows what she's doing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nice twist.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mostly did not like this all that much. The ending was good. I liked the twist in the last few pages almost enough to redeem the tortureporn in the first half of the book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You need to have read at least After Atlas in the same series before reading this one (although the other books work as standalones). I found this one a very emotional read because the main character in this book has PTSD and for various plot reasons has to face up to all their traumas. And there's the usual mystery element I've come to expect from these books and a rather breathtaking cliffhanger. So recommended with caution if you're in the mood to have your heart wrung out but Newman does approach these topics with kindness and compassion.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On the second Atlas, the few survivors of humanity are heading towards the colony that might be waiting for them. The three people who know and care that someone on the ship ordered the death of the billions left behind on Earth are trying to figure out who that might be when a death gives Carl, the investigator, something to do. Meanwhile, Dee gets a job offer using her skills in creating entertainment for one of the elites on the ship—and she might be involved in that death, as well. All the Planetfall books have been about human failings and the way that “the greater good” is neither sufficient nor usually present when invoked to explain atrocities; this one is particularly brutal but definitely in line with the rest.