The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine

by Robert J. Sawyer, Brendan Fraser (Narrator), Vanessa Sears (Narrator)

If they upload again, what will they find?

Audible’s blockbuster original series returns with the much-anticipated sequel.

It’s 2555 and the remaining members of the Phoenix colony, both convicts and astronauts, have fully integrated since they were originally downloaded from cryogenic suspension.

Now, as the countdown to Earth's final day approaches, two groups of colonists prepare to leave on separate missions.

One group, led by Captain Letitia Garvey, will re-upload to the quantum system as they head to Zeta Tucanae to complete the original astronaut mission, while the other, led by Mayor Roscoe Koudoulian, will begin a new colony on Mars, safely away from the asteroid about to hit Earth. But tragedy strikes on the day Roscoe is set to leave, forcing him to upload his consciousness as well. Back inside their virtual silos, the astronauts and convicts alike encounter mysterious digital duplicates that could destroy their stored consciousnesses forever. In a race against time, they are forced to make impossible choices in order to exist in a world where the line between human and digital reality has blurred.

From Canada's most decorated sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer and featuring Brendan Fraser (Academy Award winner) and Vanessa Sears (Dora Award winner), The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine is a thought-provoking sci-fi thriller that takes you on a mind-bending journey where identity, memory, and morality collide in a collapsing digital future.

Genres: Audiobook, Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Space, Futuristic, Survival

Audible Audio

Published October 23, 2025

About the author

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in Toronto, the son of two university professors. He credits two of his favourite shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Search and Star Trek, with teaching him some of the fundamentals of the science-fiction craft. Sawyer was obsessed with outer space from a young age, and he vividly remembers watching the televised Apollo missions. He claims to have watched the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey 25 times. He began writing science fiction in a high school club, which he co-founded, NASFA (Northview Academy Association of Science Fiction Addicts). Sawyer graduated in 1982 from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University, where he later worked as an instructor.

Sawyer's first published book, Golden Fleece (1989), is an adaptation of short stories that had previously appeared in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This book won the Aurora Award for the best Canadian science-fiction novel in English. In the early 1990s Sawyer went on to publish his inventive Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a world of intelligent dinosaurs. His 1995 award winning The Terminal Experiment confirmed his place as a major international science-fiction writer.

A prolific writer, Sawyer has published more than 10 novels, plus two trilogies. Reviewers praise Sawyer for his concise prose, which has been compared to that of the science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Like many science fiction-writers, Sawyer welcomes the opportunities his chosen genre provides for exploring ideas. The first book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Hominids (2002), is set in a near-future society, in which a quantum computing experiment brings a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth to ours. His 2006 Mindscan explores the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a mechanical body, and the ensuing ethical, legal, and societal ramifications.

A passionate advocate for science fiction, Sawyer teaches creative writing and appears frequently in the media to discuss his genre. He prefers the label "philosophical fiction," and in no way sees himself as a predictor of the future. His mission statement for his writing is "To combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic."

http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...

Reviews

[Karolina Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes, especially when you catch a lightning in a bottle with your book, you don’t really need to write a sequel

[Cory Hawksbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as good as the first one, but I enjoy Brendan Fraser as a reader.

[Elsabeth Marriott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Narration remains great. This was not a bad book and I could have given it three stars, but the decisions of the main plot and characters really do not sit well with me at all. I did want to listen until the end but I would have been happy stopping 3/4 before the erasing.

1) I do not see any situation where downloading your 12 year daughter into your 36 year old wife’s body isn’t super creepy and this isn’t really covered. Yes the book kind of has the daughter acknowledge it doesn’t work but really this should have been covered by any of the adults in the room.

2) I have less of a problem with valentina downloading but the whole and they’ll be in a relationship and in love?! Again the problem with that is touched on but brushed aside. He has just lost his wife, they barely knew each other. Feels like he is just getting replacement wives.

3) I respect the authors choice to end the ghosts plot the way he did but that doesn’t mean I like it. And surely older leticia could have predicted younger self’s actions, and then we never hear from those going to the new planet again.

4) Plus the whole shredding thing was written pretty dramatically for the child until the explained it was fading not actually being shredded. I was imagining a gore fest from what leticia said when she said “why did it have to be called that”

Michael was the MVP however

[Kyle Bartsch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy moly this book sucks. I thought the first one was bad but hooooooo my gosh. Terrible characters, terrible plot progression filled with convenience and bad writing, boring story with no stakes, but the worst part, The identity politics. The same that permeate the first book for literally no other reason than stroking the ego of a deeply insecure “moralist” are still present, but this time, ramped up to 11. If I were a betting man, I’d assume that there are some skeletons in this author’s closet from years ago that he’s trying to get ahead of. That has to be the explanation. It’s appallingly egregious, like overt and obvious product placement in a bad movie. It’s so bad that even audible gave up on the production of this audiobook. Their faith in this slop is gone. They were able to keep Brendan Frasier but if he cares about his career he should get out of his clear contractual obligations to this piece of hot garbage. And the ending is even worse. Clearly this dull creature of an author had it in his mind that he’d be getting a third book deal but I hope and pray that someone at audible has some sense of what a book (audiobook) is so that it’s never made and this author can be buried in a field somewhere so that no other books from him can disgrace the world in which he inhabits. Such a shame too because again, the concept is actually kind of interesting. Too bad he missed the landing. It would be like if a professional diver, instead of landing in the pool below them, landed in the parking lot next door. What a waste of time.

TLDR; so so bad, rampant politics that add nothing, bad production, this author should teach a masterclass in destroying good concepts.

[Yavor Vlaskov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me start with the positives. Rosco's story is about the entirely human, relatable problems of growing apart as we grow as people, and reconnecting after that process; Letitia's story is about the less relatable, but really interesting moral issues related to quantum consciousnesses, a concept that has a really robust theory behind it and is honestly an inventive thing to explore.

There go the positives. Mild spoilers for something that is really so rotten that I can't think can get any further spoiled.

The negatives start with the worst execution of the "wife in fridge" trope. Imagine introducing a character just to have them killed after roughly 10 minutes of plot participation; also, imagine literally having done that so that they can be stored in said fridge just as convenient spare parts for characters the plot actually cares about. I wish I was exaggerating, this is worse than Perrin's wife thing in Amazon's WoT adaptation, which was topping my list of bad usage of that trope, up until now.

Moving on to the primary negative, which actually affects everything else - I mentioned positives associated with the other two main characters (technically there is one more narrator, but as it is a subcharacter in Rosco's plot, I am counting her within his arc's positive contribution), but have not yet mentioned anything about the third main one: Valentina.
Valentina sucks.

Valentina's entire arc is about how she is a trans woman. "Wait", I can hear someone say, "Wasn't that her entire arc for the first book, heavily taking away the spotlight from the interesting concepts of a budding post-apocalyptic society facing another apocalypse?". Sure was! Her entire arc is about the same thing now, absolutely stealing the spotlight from everything else good about the plot! What is quite worse is that how it is not just simply stealing spotlight, it is straight up *directing* spotlight. To speak more plainly: everything that happens is clearly about the culmination of Valentina's arc. Almost all plot developments revolve around that, all the complications, resolutions, are all about that. And all of them can be seen a mile away. It's all so forcefully, clumsily done, that it is a far stretch from being even remotely empowering, which is what the authors were clearly going for, and failed at spectacularly.

There is a good bit to like about this book, but the bad things about it clearly being what drives the plot forward, leaving me solidly disappointed, as I really thought it could only get better after the last one, instead of just rethreading the same muddy ground, with somehow heavier steps. This book really could have been so much more.

Narration was fine, I really enjoy this format actually, each narrator presenting the point of view of their characters, so they narrate others as well. Minor issues I took was with Fraser's narration of a certain villain character, which may have been directorial decision, but it was so clearly painting him in a negative light that when it was revealed that character is a baddie, it came as no surprise. Another minor issue was Sears' narration of the computer, she did this weird, booming voice that is usually only reserved to satire, and as the situation was not where actual satire was used, it just brought me out of the experience every time. It added up to some detriment to the experience, but overall, pretty good. Doesn't make up for the plot, but pleasant enough to not contribute to the bad taste in my mouth.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection!

[Jamie Suter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book and the first one are both very interesting sci-fi. My only warning is that a lot of the underlying and not so subtle parts of the story relate to trans people. I like the perspective this story gave to the trans experience, but I don’t think everyone would agree.

[E · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 star. Listened to this book via Audible 🎧

… I hated this. Truly hated it. The first iteration had momentum and ideas worth engaging with but this version is just truly awful. It is dull, repetitive, and strangely hollow. The science is gone, replaced by endless dialogue that circles itself without advancing anything meaningful. The duplication of characters feels confusing rather than clever, as though the narrative is stalling for time. The daughter’s voice is shrill to the point of distraction. This audiobook offers nothing the original did not already do better. Listen to the first one and skip this one entirely. Not even Brendan Fraser could save this.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the sequel to The Downloaded which I gave three stars to as I did like it but there were some things that rubbed me the wrong way. I also bought The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine through Audible and again it featured a cast narration led by Brendan Fraser, who was again excellent as Roscoe. I've always liked Sawyer as an author as his is always smooth and easy to digest.

The gist of the two novels: In 2059 two groups of people are put in to cryonic suspension in a facility in Canada. One group are astronauts who are about to leave Earth on a mission to colonize another planet and the second group are a bunch of convicted murders who volunteer to serve their time virtually to shorten their physical sentences. While they are "asleep" a cataclysmic event occurs and the astronauts never leave Earth, and they and the criminals in cryosleep are frozen for an additional 500 years. They all wake up at the same time, in 2555, and there is much conflict and drama which unfolds between the highly educated and trained astronauts and knuckle-dragging (some psychotic) murderers. As this second book opens there is a Earth-destroying event about to happen so the astronauts are readying to leave and the criminals are preparing to escape to Mars where there is an established colony. There is an accident involving Roscoe (the mayor of the criminals) and his wife and he has to re-upload his consciousness into the quantum computer running everything. The computer glitches and there is a major problem to solve which could jeopardize the space mission and lives of everyone.

I did not like this book. The plot was very thin most of the way through and there was just too much confusing "quantum" talk. I'm not smart enough to understand what was going on and it all just felt like gibberish after a while. Because of the accident there were extra meat bodies in storage so those whose consciousness was stored in the computer could download into them if they wanted to. This turned out to be the primary drama for most of the book. I was bored with it, it was weird and uninteresting.

Just like in the first novel, the people 33 years in the future are still fascinated in the same classic movies and pop culture as me! There was so much of this that it became annoying. So many movie quotes and so much discussion - some of the movies they quoted and talked about which I recall off the top of my head were Planet of the Apes, Dirty Harry, The Fly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator. Wasn't there anything super popular with catchy quotes made in their lifetimes?

The novel is told through a several different perspectives, with each chapter being from a particular person's point of view with their dedicated narrator. This worked well. What didn't work well was the excruciating the slow-moving and convoluted plot. By the end I didn't care who was in whose body and just wanted it to be over with. I really only could stand on character by the end of the book.

I'm guessing there will be a third book to this series to answer the question of what happened to the astronauts as we sort of get closure on the fate of the criminals on Mars. I might read it, if enough time lapses for me to forget the aversion I had for this latest installment. Time will tell.

[Ashleigh Mattern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert J. Sawyer is a master storyteller, and he did it again with the Downloaded 2. I'm not a huge fan of this series' focus on leftist ideology and identity politics, but the story still drew me in, and the acting was fantastic.

[Hunter Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did give the first book five stars. This was a huge swing and a miss. What a waste of an awesome idea. There are literally endless ways the author could have played this sequel out and he chose such a boring, meandering, bizarre, ridonkulous, and useless story. This felt like it was written on a dare in one night. Is this even the same author? Are these the same characters? Wow, this is so bad it literally bothers me. The author cannot write children either and the voice actor amplified the bad writing. If I could give this negative stars I would. This just went OFF the rails, it is a dumpster fire. The whole Oedipus shite-show where the dude Rosco downloads his daughter into his former wife's body??? WTF? Who does not think this is creepy AF. There are so many other examples but this is so bizarrely bad I would believe it if this was some sort of cruel joke. All I can say is "Bless your heart" Robert J. Sawyer.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t wait for the next one!

[Joe Karpierz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert J. Sawyer has been around awhile. His first novel, GOLDEN FLEECE, was published in 1990. In the intervening thirty five years Sawyer has explored a wide range of subjects, like consciousness, the relationship between science and religion, morality, genetics, quantum physics, psychology, parallel universes, sentience in a computer (there's probably a better way of saying that, but I digress), and a whole list of other things. His 26th and latest book, THE DOWNLOADED 2: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE, continues and adds on to the story begun in 2023's Audible
Original THE DOWNLOADED. We'll get to the narration in a bit, but let's start with the story.

When last we left our protagonists - Letitia Garvey, leader of the first group of humans that would explore interstellar space; and Roscoe Koudoulian, ex-convict and now mayor of the town of Waterloo - there was a bit of a problem. An asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. With the aid of the Martians, Garvey's crew would still head on out to interstellar space, and the townspeople of Waterloo would be relocated to Mars. All well and good.

As these things go, however, all was not to be well and good for very long. While searching for a missing child just hours before departure to Mars, tragedy struck Roscoe, resulting in him having to be uploaded. And that's where things go awry. Back in their cryogenic silos, both groups of people (those going on the interstellar voyage and those going to Mars) encounter digital duplicates of themselves, which because of the nature of the quantum computers that house the consciousnesses are a danger to all those uploaded individuals. So, it's a race to not only determine a solution for dealing with the duplicates, but to implement that solution as well.

Anyone who has read any number of Sawyer's novels knows that there's always more than one plot thread in his novels, and it's always more involved and thought-provoking than what appears to
be the main storyline. THE DOWNLOADED 2 is no different, and this is where the subtitle GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE comes in. To be fair, the digital duplicates are the ghosts in the machine, but the relationships between the originals and ghosts is what gives this novel its meat and heft. While I don't want to give away anything about the interactions between the characters and their
duplicates (and while that doesn't quite cover the all the situations, I'll just leave it that way) I think it's probably no great surprise that the most interesting and involved story involves Roscoe.

As with his other novels, Sawyer does not disappoint when it comes to scientific and technical accuracy, morality, character relationships, and inclusivity. The transgender character from the
THE DOWNLOADED, Valentina, plays a prominent role in the story, and I expect and hope that will continue if there is a DOWNLOADED 3 (which I also hope will happen because the story is not
quite finished yet. This novel is also about family and its importance, no matter who that family is and how they manifest themself (there, that ought to pique your interest). Not only is the book well written, it is tightly plotted with no waste or padding. All of which is to say that THE DOWNLOADED 2: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE is yet another terrific entry in Sawyer's catalogue.
He continues to turn out excellent books that play with your emotions and make you think about the implications of everything you've read.

THE DOWNLOADED 2: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE is, like its predecessor (although I might point out there was a print edition of that book published, as there will be of this one), an Audible
Original, and to my delight the cast from the first book returned for this one. That means Brendan Fraser is back as Roscoe, and Vanessa Sears is back as Letitia. Not only does that provide continuity from one book to the next, it allows us to hear their excellent narration (as well as other actors') all over again. The full cast audio narration of this book is outstanding, and I hope that if there is a DOWNLOADED 3 the cast will return.

This is a fantastic book all the way around. If I have a gripe, is that it's too short (which means, of course, that I'm potentially contradicting what I said earlier about no waste or padding).
One way or another, this novel is well worth your time, from both story and narration standpoints.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert J. Sawyer is the most "cringe" author I've ever read. The references in this novel are more annoying than all of the references in Ready Player One and its sequel. It's just ... people don't talk like this. And it's everyone in all of his books or what? This is my third Robert Sawyer book. I previously read Mindscan in which the main character is for some reason obsessed with Finding Nemo and his love interest wrote Not Jurassic Park. But The Downloaded was worse with multiple main characters being "movie buffs" who constantly quote movies and this one is even worse. Who does this? I love movies. I often quote popular movies to people who I know will know these quotes. Who do I not quote random movies to? People who I don't expect to have seen those movies? Like I'm not dropping Lord of the Rings quotes to my children or Terminator quotes to random coworkers. Time and place! All of the characters in these books don't act like humans.

And yes, we get it, you're Canadian. Look I'm from Ottawa and it's nice that he will randomly reference hotels or streets in Ottawa. I'm sure this book is really cool to someone who lived in the great city of Waterloo. It's all just so obvious.

Okay on to the story. People are uploading and downloading and here we have some convoluted stuff. It seems like there were better solutions to a lot of problems. The biggest plot hole of the book was really evident. The system can not handle the duplicate consciousnesses (why?) and so they need to basically reduce the number that are running. Okay so... download them? No really. You have bodies. You have duplicates of people and bodies for almost all of them. Download all of the people to their bodies and I think there was only like one other person left so instead of murdering 14 people, just kill 1? Or you know just load them somewhere else. It's just very convoluted.

Anyway one good thing is I'm reading thinking "Oh are they going to tackle the idea that this dude wants to bang the body that his daughter is in? No way this guy is way too tame for that." and then he sort of mentions it. I mean he's not Heinlein so he doesn't actually bang his daughter but the fact that it gets mentioned was very funny.

The resolution to the whole problem of the book is really silly. Shove someone in a simulation forever. Can't they like clone a body or make a robot or something? They're martians. Surely Audible and Robert J. Sawyer are working on The Downloaded 3 where we learn about the race of aliens or something who destroyed the earth who are the reason for which the Martians turn off the lights at night. Or something. Oh I'll probably read it if it's free. Expect autistic characters who quote movies incessantly to people who haven't seen them and even though Canada has been melted he will find an excuse to reference many cities in Ontario.

And why are there two Brandon Frasers on the cover art? He's the only character who isn't actually duplicated. I kept waiting for his "Just murdered a guy" twin to show up but... nope. Not this story.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please don't write another book on this series. The first was great. but this was horrible, only occasionally having good or interesting moments. It felt like everything was just explaining in detail the things that were fine as vague descriptions in the first book.

[Bill Philibin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5 Stars)

This was honestly just :ok" for me. Yes, I did like the narration, and the plot is an interesting one (basic same plot as the first one). But it just missed the mark really.

Only one of the characters was even mildly interesting, and it was a very minor character. The rest of the "main" characters were just continuations from the first book and no new "growth". Their environment was flat and described without emotion. And even the one "new" character felt less than real.

Plus there was a lot of "cringe" to me... From the strange father/daughter/lover "thing" to the unnaturally forced Trans pandering, to the trite stereotypes... when I wasn't feeling uncomfortable, I was astounded by the sheer stupidity and naivety of the characters, or just bored.

In addition to the plot holes that didn't seem intentional, there was a huge hanging thread in this, so I am sure there will be a third installment, I'm just not sure I'm looking forward to it.

[Melanie Mansfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wish I had stopped with part one.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

This reminded me of those useless DLCs that are added to good games.

[Cheyenne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot! The first one was probably my favorite Audible Original so far, so it had a lot to live up to, and while I still think I preferred the first one, this was a solid sequel. I think part of the reason that the first one hit harder was because it contained really huge ideas. Awesome science fiction technology was shown in the multiple contexts in which it might exist in the world, and then the shock of an apocalypse was thrown in, and humanity had to figure out how to deal with it. In this sequel, however, the main plot (Roscoe's) is interpersonal in nature, while the mass life-threatening plot (Letitia's) takes a bit of a backseat. I was okay with this, as I found Roscoe's plot more compelling, but it would have been nice to mix the action and the interpersonal a little more equally. Additionally, Letitia's plot ends on a bit of a mic drop moment, and I was shocked that we never got back to it or saw any ramifications for what happened. By the end, it's clear that Sawyer is setting us up for a third book, but I still would have liked even one more short chapter about it.

Additionally, while I really enjoyed Roscoe's plot and was genuinely shocked by some of the twists (my gast was flabbered, as Roscoe might say), I didn't think Sawyer took enough time to build up Marie's character or Roscoe's grief for her. She was really nothing more than a fridged plot device, and while I don't say that with any negative judgment toward Sawyer, who does well with his other female characters imo, it did feel a bit transparent. Roscoe kept telling us that he felt grief for Marie, but I certainly never felt his grief myself. He was too immediately distracted with other life-altering revelations (which, fair), and it was pretty clear from the focus of the opening chapters that Marie would be disposable and that Roscoe and Valentina would end up together. Oddly enough, I felt I knew Marie best in the chapter where Valentina grieved her. I would have liked maybe one more hour of audiobook here, split up between Roscoe's relationship with Marie on Earth (to get us to care about her as a character) and moments of reflection on his grief for her as he is also dealing with everything else.

Though this one wasn't quite as perfect to me as the first, I still really loved it and am looking forward to the strongly-hinted-at book 3!

[Lani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this second book in the series, and I am deeply annoyed that there may not be a third, because this premise is excellent and I am not done hanging out in this world yet.

The characters are the real draw here. They are sharp, capable, and just self aware enough to comment on the ridiculousness of their situation. The book has that satisfying sense of knowing exactly what it is trying to do and then doing it confidently, without overexplaining itself or getting bogged down in pretending it is Very Important Science Fiction.

I listened to the audiobook, which has a full cast, and Brendan Fraser is one of the main narrators. He is fantastic. Warm, funny, and perfectly calibrated for the tone of the book. He adds a lot of personality without ever distracting from the story, and honestly makes an already fun book even better.

Is it groundbreaking? Probably not. Is it entertaining? Absolutely. It is clever, fast, and funny, with a future that feels plausible enough to be unsettling but mostly just fun to explore. I finished it thinking, yes, this was a good time, and also, I would like more of this please.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept was interesting, much like the first. The conflict and storyline... horribly executed. The "ghosts" conflict took very long to arrive at, and vanished quite easily. The gender-bending was rough in the first book, but this took it to a new level. In your face transgender propaganda... oh and don't forget the subtle pedophilia. Major plot holes throughout, a bunch of dangling story arcs that I'm sure will be twisted into a "Downloaded 3: Queers in the Quantum". I told myself I shouldn't read this based on my dislike of the first book's writing, and storytelling. I just loved the concept of it... but I'm writing this to my future self: DO NOT READ THE 3RD BOOK that will eventually come out. The problems with the book will not be redeemed by another storyline. The problem is the writing quality, pure and simple.

[Whitney Morales · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed this book. First book was better but I wasn’t disappointed with this one, besides one of my favorite characters, Penolong, not being in this one. 😭
Anyway, this book mainly follows Roscoe’s journey to Mars and his experience on Mars. Although, you do hear from all the main characters from the first book when a twist occurs with the characters who are uploaded in the quantum computer.
But the twist that happens towards the end of the book had me side eyeing so hard.
Aside from that extremely unhinged detour, the story was engaging and had fun future-tech ideas.
Just… be prepared for the weirdness.
You’ll know it when you hit it. 🤣

[Alishia Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid second installment. I honestly wondered how they’d justify a book two, but they pulled it off, even with the political threads woven in, the heart of the story stayed grounded and meaningful.

My only gripe? It felt a bit rushed compared to the slow-burn depth of the first book, which is why it lost a star for me. I wanted a little more time to breathe in the world and the emotions.

But let’s be real… Brendan Fraser narrating? I’ll take that gift from the audiobook gods any day. ✨🎧

[Scott Jann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, much like Sawyer's other books. This, like other sequels, benefited from having already set up the characters and was able to hit the ground (page?) running, and jump right into the story. The Audible production was a huge plus, the narrators were excellent. I kept thinking back to Amazon's Upload series, which I had recently watched, as I went through this book, since the concept seemed so similar. Sawyer has a lot of interesting ideas about consciousness and future quantum technology, I always enjoy seeing where he takes those ideas in a story.

[Satis Jaxon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason that I’m not giving a five star is because as a parent, if my kid would be like, “I want to live here.” I would have uploaded as well, maybe even convince Valentina to be a family, because the quantum computer can handle 3 of them in a room at a time. Easy choice, I would’ve even left her the choice of downloading and I’d still chill with my kid, cause he had already lost her twice. Went to prison. Woke up and she was actually dead. I’d rather watch her grow up like she had projected with the cgi idea.

[K.A. Mielke · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sequel has all the same problems as the first book—mostly the annoying and repetitive language around the book’s one trans character as Sawyer constantly reminds us at every turn about Valentina’s male body, I fucking get it—but with the central conflict now being Roscoe choosing whether to give his dead wife’s body to his ex girlfriend or his daughter. I’m all for fucked up moral quandaries in fiction, but Sawyer’s writing just isn’t strong enough to enjoy this particular fucked up moral quandary.

Still love Brendan Fraser though.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s 2555, and staying alive ain’t simple or easy. There’s a bloody big asteroid headed for Earth. The Martians want to help, but keep your dangerous ape selves on the other side of our planet. The folks headed to Proxima have had to change stars. And now the quantum computer is acting up, duplicating people and threatening to decohere.

The audible narration is well done. All in all, an enjoyable listen.

[Tracy Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed this more than the preceding book. It was easier for me to understand all the sci-fi dystopian world elements. All the narrators did a good job but Brendan Fraser was outstanding. His emotions in dealing with love and loss really came through.

These plot lines deal with human consciousness downloaded into brain dead bodied and people living in virtual reality worlds of their choosing. Subjects of astroids, colonies on Mars and beings from other worlds all play out. Enjoy!

[Amanda Large · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved book 2 even more than book 1. It was great to see the return of some of my favorite characters along with a glimpse into more of the world before the events of book 1. There were a lot of ethical conundrums introduced that made it such an interesting read. I loved listening to the audiobook and hearing the performances from the readers. It was a great experience. I highly recommend this series!!!

[Amanda Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan for books but I love Brendan Frasier and I thought the premise was interesting so I got the first and second in the series and listened to them in succession. I thought both were well done. The tech stuff lost me a few times but the characters were interesting and likable. Overall they were both good listens. I liked the first a little better than the second but not significantly enough to not recommend them both.