METAtropolis: Green Space

 

METAtropolis: Green Space cover

METAtropolis: Green Space

METAtropolis: Green Space

By Jay Lake , Elizabeth Bear , Karl Schroeder , Seanan McGuire , Tobias S. Buckell ,Mary Robinette Kowal , Ken Scholes

Metropolis Green Space is the third book in the Metropolis book series. Previous books in the series were METAtropolis, edited by John Scalzi and METAtropolis: Cascadia edited by Jay Lake .

For those of you not familiar with the METAtropolis books, this is a book series that was started in 2008 by Audible. METAtroplis is a collection of short stories written by several different people. All stories in this collection take place in a futuristic dystopian environmental disaster world.

One of the things I liked about previous books in this series is that each story told me more about the world and how different people deal with different problems caused by our misuse of the environment. Green Space strays from this formula as most of the short stories revolve around the single story arc. While the story was interesting, I really miss the “What’s next” feeling of one story ending and the next beginning. Not that the story was bad, just not what I wanted when I picked up this book. The stories also seem to have a much darker feel about them compared to the previous books in this series.

The 14 hours and 6 minutes of this book was narrated by Dion Graham, Robin Miles, Mark Boyett, Scott Brick, Allyson Johnson,Sanjiv Jhaveri, Jennifer Van Dyck, Jonathan DavisOne of the nice things about the previous books in the series is that the book editor announced and explained how the author came up with the idea and how it fits in to the world of METAtropolis before it was read. One of the reasons that this may not have happened was the editor may not have been as involved with this book as previous books and in the series. He/She was not listed on the Audible or the Amazon pages.

As with any compilation this book had multiple narrators, sometimes more than one per story. I did not find the narration these stories terribly bad but they weren’t exceptionally good either. I did enjoy Scott Brick’s narration, but that could be a personal preference. I find people either love him or hate him. I say overall the narration of this book was on par with the writing. It really didn’t add to any of the stories but it wasn’t a distraction from them either.

Overall I enjoyed this book, I wouldn’t just pick the series up here because you’re going to miss all the fun of the world building in the first two books.

What of the nice things about the previous books in the series is that the book editor announced and explained how the author came up with the idea and how it fits in to the world of METAtropolis before it was read. One of the reasons that this may not have happened was the editor may not have been as involved as with this book as previous books and in the  series. He/She was not listed on the Audible or the Amazon pages.

As with any compilation this book had multiple narrators, sometimes more than one per story. I did not find the narration these stories terribly bad but they weren’t exceptionally good either. I did enjoy Scott Brick narration, that could be a personal preference, I find people either love him or hate him. I say overall the narration of this book was on par with the writing, it really didn’t add any to the stories but it wasn’t a distraction from them either.

Overall I enjoyed this book, I wouldn’t just pick up the series here because you’re going to miss all the fun of the world building in the first two books.

Overall 7 out of 10
Narration 7 out of 10
Story 7 out of 10

You can buy this book at Amazon or Audible.

Happy Listening

One Comment

  1. Reply

    Awesome review! It seems your experience was a little different than mine but I agree about the editor’s notes. It would have been nice if they had done the same for this book too. Scott Brick was indeed quite good but I also liked the rest of the narrators. I think I was just excited that there’s another Metatropolis book. 😀

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