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Idlewild [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Nick Sagan (Author), Clayton Barclay Jones (Reader), Beth McDonald (Reader)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Audio CD
Publisher: HighBridge Company; Unabridged; 81/4 hours on 8 CDs edition (July 14 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1565117913
ISBN-13: 978-1565117914
Product Dimensions: 16 x 12.2 x 2.9 cm
Shipping Weight: 218 g

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Billed as a near-future thriller, Sagan's first novel plods through terrain all too familiar to SF readers. The narrator awakens with amnesia in a mysterious realm easily identified as a computer-generated virtual reality, fraught with metaphors and symbols. He slowly grasps that his name is Halloween, and that he may have murdered someone called Lazarus. Eventually, he realizes he's one of a handful of high school students attending "Immersive Virtual Reality" classes at the Idlewild IVR Academy, sponsored by the Gedaechtnis Corporation, a multinational biotech company. Intimidated by the villainous teacher, Maestro, and wary of his fellow students, Halloween is determined to recover his memory, apparently damaged in a power surge that threatened to destroy the IVR, and learn what really happened to the missing Lazarus. Despite a compelling twist near the middle, the low tension and meandering plot will likely frustrate the primary target audience, mainstream fans of such futuristic action films as The Matrix and Minority Report. Sagan may not be the next Philip K. Dick or William Gibson, but he shows enough talent here to suggest he can improve on pacing in the promised sequel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The tension is palpable from the first page as a young man recovering from a powerful electrical shock realizes that all he knows is that he's about 18 and a student of some kind--and that Lazarus is dead. Halloween, as he is known, becomes certain that someone wants him dead, too. He is one of 10 students attending an exclusive Immersive Virtual Reality boarding school while their bodies lie in a hospital attached to IVs and virtual-reality equipment. Add to the mix a hard-nosed virtual schoolmaster, virtual nannies, and sophisticated computer hacking as the teens try to manipulate the system. In his first novel, the son of Carl Sagan captures perfectly the voice and actions of a rebellious, extremely intelligent teenager. Though its appeal is much wider, recommend this mesmerizing, multilayered futuristic tale to fans of Card's Ender novels. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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First Sentence
"Dropping like flies," drawls the first Gedaechtnis employee. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)

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1.0 out of 5 stars Reads like bad sci-fi channel drivel, Feb 19 2004

"allisan" (Provo, UT, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Idlewild (Hardcover)

This book tries really hard to be intelligent and probably manages to fool most, but the story is too far-fetched to take itself so seriously. The characters are drawn up like soap opera stars we're supposed to envy, but it's hard to build up any respect for shallow, angsty teens with bad attitudes, with or without their superior intelligence. Top it off with a plot that can only be described as flat-out annoying, and you've got a big waste of time on your hands. Don't do it, folks.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent and Thought-Provoking, Jan 10 2004

Sebastien Pharand (Orl�ans, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Idlewild (Hardcover)

Nick Sagan's Idlewild is best described as a cross between Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk and Neil Gaiman. This futuristic tale is all about the power of mankind over its own fate and the way in which the human race is a self-destructive one. Sagan takes us into a bleak and uncertain future that has more questions than it has answers, that has more darkness than it has light.

Welcome to Idlewild, the school of the future, where young men and women are shaped to become the very best they can be. The book opens with Halloween, a young man suffering from amnesia. He awakens in a strange, video game-like world where everything seems to be just a little bit off. He believes he has murdered Lazarus, a friend of his, though he doesn't know how or why.

As Halloween stumbles through this world, trying to uncover his personality in order to deal with the strangeness that surrounds him, he slowly unearths a plot that will change not only his existence but also the life of everyone concerned with Idlewild.

Saying any more about Idlewild would be ruining and perfectly entertaining and often thought-provoking read. Like his father, the great Carl Sagan, Nick Sagan seems to understand technology and uses it with great ease. Through his book, he poses many questions about humanity and our place in the world, questions that will stay with you for quite some time. This isn't lite reading. It's the kind of book that will make you think and debate with yourself.

Unfortunately, the book does falter in its last third, where the story seams to stall for a while until it offers us a somewhat disappointing finale. But the book is worth reading for its first half alone, which gave me something completely different and new. Sagan's writing feels cold and removed, true, but that's only because Halloween distant and removed. And the story contains enough twists and turns to please any type of reader.

Idlewild isn't a masterpiece, but it does presents its readers with a bight new voice in speculative fiction. Sagan's vision of the future is both terrifying and enticing, intriguing and completely disturbing. A very good read.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Approach with Skepticism, Jan 7 2004

Shawn Oster (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Idlewild (Hardcover)

This has everything going for it except the story itself. The jacket blurbs, cover art and author bio (I'll ignore his lineage, that really is unfair for a freshman effort) all point to an excellent, mysterious, thought-provoking story but instead you get a choppy, ill-paced, fairly flat plot.

There are a few intriguing ideas in here but the thinly veiled "twist" is actually more distracting than it is enthralling since the more read science fiction reader will have figured it out halfway through the book. Key points in the character's development are given very poor treatment, resorting to self-absorbed inner monologues and very static emotions. The ending feels rushed, as if Sagan realized nothing could save this story.

A young reader or someone fairly new to the genre might enjoy this but anyone else will most likely leave feeling at best unfulfilled or at worst angry at the time wasted.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars An impressive science fiction debut by Carl Sagan's son
When I was growing up, Carl Sagan was my hero. Thus, I was pretty much duty-bound to read the work of his son Nick (whose recorded greeting "Hello from the children of planet... Read more

Published on July 12 2006 by Daniel Jolley

5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling & Poignant
Idlewild starts off as a quirky story about a teenage amnesiac but swiftly heads into unfamiliar waters, ratcheting up the tension and the stakes until it builds into a monster of... Read more

Published on July 13 2004 by newyorkcityreader