The Traveller
Ratings11
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings11
Average rating3.5
In the shadows of our modern society, an ancient conflict between good and evil is being fought. A life-and-death battle we will never see, between those who wish to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom and enlightenment... Los Angeles: A city where you have to work hard to live beneath the surface. Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are trying to do just that. Since childhood, the brothers have been shaped by the stories that their mystical father, a man of strange powers and intuition, has told them about the world in which they live. After his violent death, they have been living 'off the grid' - that is, invisible to the intricate surveillance networks that monitor our modern lives. London: Maya, a tough and feisty young woman, is playing at being a citizen, is playing at leading a normal life. But her background is anything but. Trained to fight since she was a young girl, she is the last in a long line whose duty is to protect the gifted among us. When she is summoned to Prague by her ailing father, she learns that Gabriel and Michael's lives are in danger and are in desperate need of protection. the meeting with her father before brutally killing him. Tasked to hunt down the brothers, he tracks Maya as she seeks to fulfil what turns out to be her father's last command. When Maya flies to California to find them, an extraordinary chase begins, the final running battle in the war which will reveal the secret history of our time...
Featured Series
3 primary booksFourth Realm is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2005 with contributions by John Twelve Hawks.
Reviews with the most likes.
The best part about this particular book is the author's name.
This is one of those books that I hated by the first sentence. Maybe it would have helped if there were no foreword by the author, explaining the book.
He is a surveillance paranoid, which is a disease I don't share. It ranks close to flat earthers and conspiracy theorists for me. It is fine to worry about being monitored all the times, but there is a clear distinction of when that becomes irrational.
That flaw in logic shapes the persons view of the world. And it is a very distorted perspective. In every paragraph it is made clear how much of himself the characters reflect. It is too much. There is no nuance, everyone is out to get you, all the people who don't see that are sheeps.
But that is not the reason I stopped reading. In the 25 minutes I listened, besides the paranoia, there were only talk about weapons, and how important it is for the main character to be armed and ready to kill all the time. This gives a strong hint of a action heavy book, which is never a good thing for me.
Read 0:25/15:32 3%
Is this a work of fiction - or does it expose the truth of our Surveillance Society?
But seriously, while this novel is entertaining, some of the details presented are all too real - and scary. How is society changed as we transition to an era where every action is logged, recorded, tracked, and correlated? Is there a chilling effect, stifling dissent and discussion, just because nothing is truly private and the inmates/citizens never know if the Vast Machine is watching?
By reading this book, did i just get put on a list of subversives that need to be watched?
This is the closest thing I've found to razor-sharp vision of the present/future that Neal Stephenson and William Gibson have envisioned for decades. Imagine if Y.T. from [b:Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1157396730s/830.jpg 493634] was a sword-wielding protector of a man who could cross the barriers between our world and parallel worlds? Now throw in heavy dose of Big Brother and super-surveillance or our hyper-connected “homeland security” post-9/11 workd and you have a vision of the dystopian reality of today through the eyes and imagination of John Twelve Hawks. Genius.Currently re-reading this as an audiobook. Fantastic!!!
