The Caryatids
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The Caryatids
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Narrated by:
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Jay Snyder
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By:
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Bruce Sterling
About this listen
Now, with The Caryatids, Sterling has written a stunning testament of faith in the power of human intellect, creativity, and spirit to overcome any obstacle - even the obstacles we carry inside ourselves.
The world of 2060 is divided into three spheres of influence, each fighting with the others over the resources of fallen nations and an environment degraded almost to the point of no return. There is the Dispensation, centered in Los Angeles, where entertainment and capitalism have fused with the highest of high-tech. There is the Acquis, a Green-centered collective that uses invasive neurological technology to create a networked utopia. And there is China, the sole surviving nation-state, a dinosaur that has prospered only by pitilessly pruning its own population.
Products of this monstrous world, the daughters of a monstrous mother, and - according to some - monsters themselves, are the Caryatids: the four surviving female clones of a mad Balkan genius and wanted war criminal.
Radmila is a Dispensation star determined to forget her past by building a glittering, impregnable future. Vera is an Acquis functionary dedicated to reclaiming their home, the Croatian island of Mljet, from catastrophic pollution. Sonja is a medical specialist renowned for selflessly risking herself to help others. And Biserka is a one-woman terrorist network.
The four "sisters" are united only by their hatred for their "mother" - and for one another. When evidence surfaces of a coming environmental cataclysm, the Dispensation sends its greatest statesman - or salesman - John Montgomery Montalban, husband of Radmila, and lover of Vera and Sonja, to gather the Caryatids together in an audacious plan to...
©2009 Bruce Sterling (P)2009 Audible, Inc.Critic reviews
What listeners say about The Caryatids
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Big Dave
- 28-10-18
Those female voices
The narrator really struggles with the female voices on this one. To be fair, a female reader would have been a better choice by the publisher.
The story is pretty forgettable as are a lot of the characters, although the world building is fun in parts it’s full of holes.
Not recommended but by no means terrible.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- ivoconk
- 09-04-21
Great story, poor reading
Sterling is as relentlessly inventive as ever - a plausible near future world of climate collapse and rampant consumerism. Let down by a terrible reading with the worst caricatures of female voices I’ve yet encountered on Audible - embarrassing
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Nigel Quinlan
- 11-06-24
Changing climate
With the world undergoing disastrous disintegration from man-made causes, who better to bring together the man-made solutions than three female clones as damaged and traumatised and dysfunctional as the world they're supposed to save? Most of their sisters are dead, their mother/sister is out of reach from the forces of law and order in orbit and the four surviving clones are scattered over the world, engaged in various morally dubious projects of reclamation, amelioration, sterilisation and terrorism. One man sets out to bring them together and hopes by doing so to mend the ideological divisions hampering the task of global salvation.
Well, I liked it. Sterling is too optimistic to let the world die screaming, but too much of a realist to make survival easy or cost free. The clones are like a fractured human psyche, half-mad and self-hating, to the extent that getting anything useful other than tragedy and heartbreak out of them seems impossible. Whether they succeed, and whether Sterling succeeds, is for the reader to decide.
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