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Narrated by:
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Tom Hiddleston
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By:
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J. G. Ballard
About this listen
British actor Tom Hiddleston, well-known for portraying the supervillain Loki (The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World) and the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (Midnight in Paris), brings his acting versatility and smooth voice to this visionary tale by acclaimed author J.G. Ballard (Empire of the Sun). When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds, and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors. Human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
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By: J. G. Ballard
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The Atrocity Exhibition
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- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
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-
-
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- By Darwin8u on 05-08-18
By: J. G. Ballard
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Empire of the Sun
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- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
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Performance
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Abridged version kind of ruins it.
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Hasty for the Dark is the second short story collection from the award-winning and widely appreciated British writer of horror fiction, Adam L. G. Nevill. The author's best horror stories from 2009 to 2015 are collected here for the first time.
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When you want to like it but you just can't
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The Crystal World
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Performance
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Story
Through a 'leaking' of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Fearing this transformation as a herald of the apocalypse, most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand. But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest.
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Perfect narration for Ballard's descriptive prose
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Grass
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What could be more commonplace than grass or a world covered over all its surface with a wind-whipped ocean of grass? But the planet Grass conceals horrifying secrets within its endless pastures. And as an incurable plague attacks all inhabited planets but this one, the prairie-like Grass begins to reveal these secrets - and nothing will ever be the same again.
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Speculative & Creative, Yet well Paced and Unique
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Lord of the Flies
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Great story - bad narration
- By A Mom on 03-05-08
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- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Twelve stories by science-fiction master Stanislaw Lem, nine of them never before published in English.
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Excellent!
- By Diogenes on 06-29-22
By: Stanislaw Lem
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Fight Club
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Performance
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Story
When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.
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The first rule about Fight Club is...
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Performance
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Shardik is a fantasy of tragic character, centered on the long-awaited reincarnation of the gigantic bear Shardik and his appearance among the half-barbaric Ortelgan people. Mighty, ferocious, and unpredictable, Shardik changes the life of every person in the story. His advent commences a momentous chain of events.
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Overlooked, underappreciated and forgotten epic
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The Bottoms
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow-moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man.
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Loved it!
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The Doomed City
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely considered the greatest of Russian science fiction masters, yet the novel they worked hardest on, the one that was their own favorite and that listeners worldwide have acclaimed their magnum opus, has never before been published in English. The Doomed City was so politically risky that the Strugatskys kept its existence a secret even from their closest friends for 16 years. It was only published in Russia during perestroika in the late 1980s, the last of their works to see publication.
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Great Book
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Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.
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Incredible!
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Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A Signature Performance: Kenneth Branagh plays this like a campfire ghost story, told by a haunted, slightly insane Marlow.
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Disgusting Revision
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Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)
- A Novel
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Overall
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Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
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gah!
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- Narrated by: Ric Jerrrom, William Gaminara, Sean Barrett, and others
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Performance
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- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Millennium People tells the story of David Markham, a psychologist who is searching for the truth behind a bomb that exploded on a Heathrow baggage carousel, killing his ex-wife. Infiltrating a shadowy protest group responsible for her death, David finds himself succumbing to the charismatic charms of the group's leader, who hopes to incite a violent rebellion against the government by his fanatical adherents, the spiritually and financially impoverished members of Britain's white middle class.
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A vicious boredom ruled the world
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: J. G. Ballard
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Ubik
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.
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Holy sh*t
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-17
By: Philip K. Dick
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11-22-63
- A Novel
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.
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I Owe Stephen King An Apology
- By Kelly - Write Well Academy on 04-16-12
By: Stephen King
What listeners say about High-Rise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 05-05-19
Heart of Darkness / Lord of the Flies skyscraper
J G Ballard's High-Rise is a fanciful of tale of life in a "high-rise," somewhat novel lifestyle for the 70's when the story is set. Built as a nearly fully self-contained living environment, the tower quickly degenerates into segregated groups with working class on the lower floors, professionals in the middle, and wealthy elites occupying the upper floors. The groups become territorial and begin restricting passage throughout the high-rise for services such as shops, groceries, and swimming pools by commandeering the elevators. At the same time, people avoid the outside world and even refrain from reporting crimes to the police. In the penthouse, sits the architect of the building and one individual from the lower floors attempts to confront him about the building.
This tale is a psychological fantasy where a single building becomes a microcosm for the larger collection of humans into densely packed cities. While much of the action appears unrealistic, it is simply mirroring behaviors happening all the time in most large metropolitan cities,
The narration is exceptional. Tom Hiddleston renders an excellent performance. It should be noted that Tom was sufficiently impressed with the writing to go on to produce and star in a cinematic adaptation of the work.
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1 person found this helpful
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- TiffanyD
- 11-23-18
Bonkers Dystopia
If you are a real stickler for dystopian fiction that follows a logical path to dystopia, this might not be for you. I didn't totally buy the path that we traveled down with our high rise neighbors. But, if you can suspend your disbelief just a little bit, this is a bananas story about a true urban jungle. Hiddleston's narration provides just the right sort of blase indifference that suits the novel's tone and balances the novel's insanity.
I found it a little disappointing that no women's perspectives were explored and we mostly had three men's perspective, but it was the '70s and I guess J.G. Ballard wasn't all that woke. On the other hand, it was the '70s but things felt very modern. Every now and again there would be a mention of a pay phone or a film camera but generally speaking, this felt like it could be set in 2018 as easily as any other late 20th/early 21st century era.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Haissan Neiman
- 02-22-18
Society in Micro
I was doubtful at first of purchasing this, but the name Hiddleston brought me in and I was not disappointed.
The story starts in a rather mundane manner and slowly draws you in for later contrast. O found this whole story unsettling. If you are squeamish be prepared for discomfort, after all discomfort makes for a good look inward and challenges your point of view.
My reactions at times were a desire to strangle some of the characters.
I am recommending this story to anyone I can. Finishing it was a sweet release.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joe C. Dietz
- 02-09-18
Fairly one beat storytelling
I enjoyed the story and the examination of our base instincts and nature and how we could potentially recent back to a less evolved way of life, so very quickly.
While Tom Hiddleston is a great actor and wonderful in films....his narration is fairly pedantic and unenthusiastic.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sarah
- 12-04-15
Hard To Swallow
The story is an interesting one that left me feeling a little uneasy, I enjoyed it very much however and would recommend it.
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- S. Freeney
- 04-09-15
A dream voice for a nightmare story
loved this book, and Hiddleston's smooth, modulated voice made this the first audiobook I have actuall ever finished. Cannot wait for the movie.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-27-19
Interesting book
Good narration. Interesting concept of fighting for survival in a high rise building. I wish it went a little more in depth to some of the crazies that went loose and how leadership among the floors collapsed.
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- Robert Iris
- 10-05-15
Captivating story
Very interesting update to the lord of the flies, not a zombie tale like I thought it might have been, it gives a very credible breakdown of society in a microcosm.
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- Kelly
- 07-03-16
It ends abruptly
This story is a little depressing. It's a display of the rapid decline in civilization within this building. These "supposed" wealthy and professional people just flat out turn into psycho animals. I would like to see a part 2 or better ending. Would police ever show up to the building? Would the bldg investors ever let their investment turn into trash? Security is nowhere to be found inside the bldg, etc
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- Jennifer Seidler
- 06-11-15
Dry narrative, odd structure, great performance
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Probably not. I liked the story, the manner in which it explored the basest impulses of human nature, how people can descend into animalism. But, the narrative was full of "info dumps," and was structured more as a rather repetitive lecture rather than a story arc. The story arc was there, but the rising action was too quick, there was no real turning point, no real climax, and the falling action fell with a thump. The ending was done well, though, giving the story a cyclical feeling with the idea that the whole thing could happen all over again. The writing was stilted, and there was very little dialogue at all. Characterization was more tell than show. Lots of telling in this story, in fact. Yet, if this book was meant to break the molds of typical writing and was meant in itself to be a breakdown of the societal norms then it did the job.
What other book might you compare High-Rise to and why?
High Rise is like no other book that I've read, other than perhaps Lord of the Flies.
What does Tom Hiddleston bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Tom Hiddleston's reading kept me interested in the story. He took the dry, rambling narrative and gave it life and character. He made the parts that were repetitive of each other and gave them different tones and emphases. He brought the "feeling" out of a rather unfeeling style of writing.
Do you think High-Rise needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
No. Not at all.
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