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Mal Goes to War

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Mal Goes to War

By: Edward Ashton
Narrated by: Katherine Chin, John Pirhalla
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About this listen

The humans are fighting again. Go figure.

As a free AI, Mal finds the war between the modded and augmented Federals and the puritanical Humanists about as interesting as a battle between rival anthills. He's not above scouting the battlefield for salvage, though, and when the Humanists abruptly cut off access to infospace, he finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary, and responsible for the safety of the modded girl she died protecting.

A dark comedy wrapped in a techno thriller's skin, Mal Goes to War provides a satirical take on war, artificial intelligence, and what it really means to be human.

©2024 Edward Ashton (P)2024 Macmillan Audio Adventure Dark Humour Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Witty War Robotics
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The story was nicely narrated. Most of the characters were well and distinctly characterised. The story was enjoyable enough, being not too heavy and it rolled along at a good pace with some interesting changes in tack. It won't stay with you forever, but it was an enjoyable adventure and I'd not turn down a sequel. I would be happy to never hear the phrase "a long 5 seconds" again though, which suggests the editor needed to pull their finger out a bit!

Nicely narrated with an enjoyable easy story

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Really good read. Excellent world building with plenty of future politics and tech. Funny and well performed. This was very enjoyable.

Great near future sci fi story; funny and exciting

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I got this book because I had finished reading the Mickey7 duology, which I absolutely loved, and was excited to experience other works from the same author.
The narration, for the most part, is phenomenal. John Pirhalla does 99% of the narration and voices throughout the audiobook and does a fantastic job in giving individual voices and performances to every character.
When it comes to Katherine Chin, they greatly underutilise her, as you only ever hear her during radio communications with her voicing a single character, which can actually throw you off as whenever that character is speaking outside of radio communications she's voiced by John Pirhalla.
When it comes to the story, I didn't find it quite as enjoyable as Mickey7 or Antimatter Blues.
Outside of the fight scenes, the characters had little to no urgency, they would have a vague objective of getting to a location and would just stumble into situations. This is very much a story containing reactive characters rather than proactive characters, where the majority of the story are the characters reacting to events, rather than the characters being the reason for events.
It was hard to grasp the motivation of a lot of the characters, some were clearly defined such as with our main character Mal, but other seem to have this just loose reason for sticking around.
That's not to say that the writing was bad, as I did find all of the characters to be well fleshed out and believable for the situation, although I would have liked a greater dive into a lot of their backstories, so even though the story being told wasn't always gripping, the way it was told was still good.
I would say if you've liked other works by Edward Ashton, or maybe the Bobiverse Series by Dennis E. Taylor, then I would still recommend giving this one a go, as you'd likely enjoy this as well. Just bear in mind it might not be his greatest work.

It's good, not great, but definitley not bad

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I read this book because I love post human or AI lead characters. unfortinatly all of the supporting cast have no real likeable qualities. none of them even seem to like each other.
the main cast stumble from scene to scene with only dumb luck and plot armor to keep the story moving.
in the end I enjoyed it but only in spite of these flaws and only just.

interesting premise with unlikable characters

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checks all boxes ...
Ay- eye is the topic, brilliantly written and presented .

for those who loved Denis Taylors bobiverse, this will be an immediate hit... the author's brought a wonderful story to the page.
Ay-eye... and all that that means.

Malware ( our protagonist) goes from being a casual observer of mankind to its eventual saviour, set in a future (which is scarily ) not too far distant.

superb.

Sci-fi done brilliantly

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