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    Anyone: A Novel
    Anyone: A Novel
    Anyone: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    Anyone: A Novel

    Written by Charles Soule

    Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

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    About this audiobook

    Charles Soule brings his signature knowledge—and wariness—of technology to his sophomore novel set in a realistic future about a brilliant female scientist who creates a technology that allows for the transfer of human consciousness between bodies, and the transformations this process wreaks upon the world.

    Inside a barn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a scientist searching for an Alzheimer’s cure throws a switch—and finds herself mysteriously transported into her husband’s body. What begins as a botched experiment will change her life—and the world—forever…

    Over two decades later, all across the planet, “flash” technology allows individuals the ability to transfer their consciousness into other bodies for specified periods, paid, registered and legal. Society has been utterly transformed by the process, from travel to warfare to entertainment; “Be anyone with Anyone” the tagline of the company offering this ultimate out-of-body experience. But beyond the reach of the law and government regulators is a sordid black market called the darkshare, where desperate “vessels” anonymously rent out their bodies, no questions asked for any purpose - sex, drugs, crime... or worse.

    Anyone masterfully interweaves the present-day story of the discovery and development of the flash with the gritty tale of one woman’s crusade to put an end to the darkness it has brought to the world twenty-five years after its creation. Like Blade Runner crossed with Get Out, Charles Soule’s thought-provoking work of speculative fiction takes us to a world where identity, morality, and technology collide.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateDec 3, 2019
    ISBN9780062931436
    Author

    Charles Soule

    Charles Soule is a New York Times-bestselling, Brooklyn-based comic book writer, musician, and attorney. He is best known for writing Daredevil, She-Hulk, Death of Wolverine and various Star Wars comics from Marvel Comics, as well as his creator-owned series Curse Words from Image Comics and the award-winning political sci-fi epic Letter 44 from Oni Press.

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    Reviews for Anyone

    4/5

    62 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Intense Nordic drama!A boy locked in a school's broom closet views something strange out of the window.A Catholic nun whose locked away her own secrets, including the reasons for her not quite belonging despite her best efforts. Her sense of humor, her attachment to her dog George Harrison and her rose garden don't quite still her heart. The persuasive church hierarchy who don't want to know. Cardinal Raffin, a sly holder of Sister Joanna Marie's life from before. He thinks that sending a nun with secrets can be controlled to investigate a school where abuse charges have been made. That this will suffice.Sister Joanna is sent not once but twice, in her forties and then twenty years later to investigate complaints about the church school. The major part of the novel, is set in Reykjavík, Iceland. How Sister Joanna comes to speak Icelandic is another story that we glimpse as Joanna recalls her time at the Sorbonne as she waits in Paris for her evening flight. Later we come to know more details.I felt like I was constantly in an ice storm reading this, not quite knowing which way was up, but aware of danger. The clues are just beyond reach, almost. I often felt overwhelmed by Joanna's powerlessness in the face of the church hierarchy. I felt the weight of her secrets. I lived the consequences of both her indecisions and her decisions.The ending was a surprise and yet not really. The story looks at the interweaving of the past and present, of how small vacillations, even non action can effect the future. That I am forced to reflect on all that goes on long after I finished reading further commends this story by Olafsson to me. At its heart it is dark and yet the light enters, just in rather different ways.A HarperCollins ARC via NetGalley
    • 3/5
      While aspects of the story were engaging, the jumping in time with no references to who was speaking made it very difficult to follow.
    • 4/5
      Set in Iceland and Paris, Sister Johanna is sent back to Iceland to re-investigate a allegations of abuse that she had investigated 20 years earlier. The story moves through three different time periods that were sometimes confusing in audiobook format. The story is classic Scandinavian noir which I quite enjoyed.
    • 3/5
      The Scarament. Olaf Olafsson. 2019. I rushed to read this because I was so taken with the Olafsson’s Restoration. What could I not like about a book that features a nun investigating a possible crime of abuse that is set in Iceland? It is told in flashbacks, and that is confusing at times as Sister Joanna’s memory blends with the present. It is beautifully written. The descriptions of winter in Iceland and the time Sister studied in Paris made me feel like I was there. The horrors of abuse are made even more horrible by the understated way they are described. I am not sure I agree with the resolution, but I have a better understanding of Sister’s motives.
    • 4/5
      Sister Johanna Marie, a middle-aged French nun, speaks Icelandic. This she learned from a roommate at the Sorbonne many years ago: a roommate with whom she fell in love and whose presence drove her into the convent. Although she never made her feelings known, she has been hounded for decades by her bishop, now a cardinal, for his perceptions of her feelings, and twice he has emotionally blackmailed her into investigating accusations of child abuse by priests. The second time, sent to Reykjavík because of her knowledge of the language, the nun is emotionally tortured for several reasons: she wonders what's happened to the Icelandic girl and whether she should try to find her; she frets over her failure the first time the bishop recruited her for this task; she finds herself being officially thwarted at every turn by her superiors and the parents and children involved; and, as becomes evident only late in the book, she pushes this investigation too far. What also becomes clear only in the last half of the book is that there are two timelines in her travel to Iceland. The second trip, which comes into focus only slowly, is years after the first, and comes about because her presence is requested by a (now-grown) child she met briefly during the old investigation. The shifts between timelines are not at all clear, and I do think this confusion weakens the reader's ability to appreciate the facts being developed. The nun is insecure, not overly likable, and not particularly wise, and the story is told entirely from her point of view. She feels her life may have had no meaning, and the reader may agree with her, although there is a surprise ending that gives some evidence that she may leave the world a better place. Still, she sees God in her life only when she faces the evil she finds, and I think that must be terribly sad for a religious.
    • 4/5
      3.5 Dark and bleak, is this story of a young woman who struggles with a sexual orientation condemned by the Catholic Church. Going back and forth in time and alternating between Paris and Iceland, the story takes the reader inside the abuse accusations in the church. A nun herself now, she is tasked with the responsibility of investigating the abuse accusations arising out of a boys Catholic school in Iceland and their priest. Silence, a most potent motif is a result of sins kept hidden, of boys and their parents who are afraid to speak. The end result was unexpected, and surprising.I liked this, sometimes it is all in the atmosphere, and this book has it in spaces. The story had a authentic feel, the cold, brooding landscape, a scandal that has hit churches hard all over the world. It all fit together. Plus, I was reading while sitting in front of my picture window, while the sky darkened, the sun set and it seemed like I could imagine the story happening just as it did. Not quite the happy holiday story I should be reading, but it did fit the melancholy I am prone to as the sun stays hidden so often in winter months.ARC from Netgalley.
    • 5/5
      Really intelligent, complex story. Worth the length! Would definitely recommend.
    • 4/5
      Every scientific researcher dreams of inventing a world changing drug or process or finding a totally new item but very few actually do. Scientific research generally builds tiny step by tiny step until the accumulation of data and information adds to the general knowledge in a meaningful way. However, every once in a while there is a genuine Eureka moment and then the scientist has to figure out how to devlop the discovery. Sometimes that is the most difficult part especially keeping control over what could be undesirable applications. This book takes a good look at that. Gabrielle White is conducting neurological research aimed at finding a cure for Alzheimer's Disease using high intensity light. Since she had a baby a year ago she has been working out of a lab built in an old barn on the property she and her husband own outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. A Detroit millionaire has given her a substantial amount of money to conduct her research in return for ownership of any usable technology but the funding has almost gone and he's not likely to renew it. Gabrielle (Gabby) decides to blow all the remaining funds on powering the laser up to full capacity and then suddenly she is in the house looking down at her daughter. Except she feels wrong, clumsy and too big, and that's when she realizes that she is in her husband's body. Learning how to control the "flash" as she calls it so that she can get back into her own body is her first order of business. Once she has finally done that she has to figure out how to prevent this discovery from falling into the wrong hands which includes the man who bankrolled her research. Twenty years in the future a young woman called Annami is working for the Anyone company that controls the flash technology which is used by people all over the world to get places and do things that would have taken time and travel before or not even be possible. The story of what occurred in the intervening 20 years comes out slowly but we know that Annami wants to change the system so it's pretty obvious that Gabby somehow lost control of it. This was fascinating and a really good look at the pros and cons of world changing discoveries. I couldn't help but think of the two women, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their development of the CRISPR technology. I saw one interview with Doudna who said that she has lost a lot of sleep worrying about how the technology could be misused. If you want a fictional look at a real scientific quandary I recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Charles Soule outdid himself with his speculative fiction/thriller that is socially impactful and yet a total trill ride, with excellent execution, phenomenal pacing, and I was completely hooked from the very first chapter. Literally, I would try and read while walking through the house, because I could barely manage to drag my eyes away from what was happening in this novel. I also had no idea what was going to happen next, and you know how much I LOVE that...!

      That ending though....? Jesus, what a mind- blower. I’m really going to have to think about this ending for a while.
      This truly outstanding novel has well thought out characters (one of which is hardcore...!), great villains, some fighting, a little blood, some death, and some truly heinous acts that *still* leave me with my mouth hanging open. Man, can Charles Soule write!

      Luckily, as soon as I got to about chapter three, I could see I would love this intense novel, and ran for my local library’s online catalog, to see if Soule had written anything else. He has, and I got the audiobook, which I am also listening to, and really like. But this novel is different, and maybe a bit better, imo.

      Great quotes:

      “If you can't tell who's inside the skin of the person you're talking to, maybe you can't judge them so quickly based on the color of that skin. You have to judge them based on who they are. How they act."

      "I am a mother first, then a scientist, a wife, and a black woman. People in my field, people in the grocery store, people in general -- they see that list backward. Maybe they don't see anything at all past the first thing -- a black woman."

      5 stars for this thrilling novel, and recommended to anyone and everyone. Please go out and read it now!
    • 3/5
      A little hard to follow, but a good read. Very strong start, a satisfying end.
    • 3/5
      An interesting exploration of the social impact of technology. The parallel story lines of the discovery of the ability to project the mind into another body, and the cultural and social impact of that twenty years later is a fascinating approach. There’s a lot of really clever ideas here, some great observational insights, and thought provoking concepts all exceptionally well written; but it failed to engage me on an emotional level, as I gradually noticed I was picking up other things to read and leaving this on the coffee table on a more frequent basis.