What do you suppose would happen if we were ever contacted by an intelligence greater than ours? Would you run in fright? Or would you find a way to fight? Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, is a wonderful novel  backed by scientific speculation, and full of end-of-the-world fanaticism.

The “end of the world” begins when a young Tyler Dupree, along with his friends, Jason and Diane, witness an incredible sight: the stars in the heavens simply disappear one night. With that, all three embark on a journey that’ll span across millions of years, and two different worlds - meeting strange characters in the process, and stretching their sanity to the limit.

This isn’t an invasion story, it’s an adventure that’ll take you through one turn after another, leaving you amazed and shaking your head page after page.

Narration

Scott Brick, a successful narrator for many audio books, was chosen to narrate Spin, in which he did a fantastic job. His trained and classy voice added another couple of notches to the quality of this audio book.

Characters

Robert Charles Wilson has a knack for developing characters with truly rich 3-D personalities, including Tyler Dupree, Jason  Lawson, Diane Lawson, and E.D. Lawson. Instead of describing each character and their psychological makeup (a novice‘s mistake), Robert Charles Wilson grows each character, and displays their unique personalities to readers through actions and dialogue in the book, rather than by simply “telling” us.

Also, as I‘ve stated in the past, any novel that can make the reader emotional is one of many signs that you‘ve found a good read. In particular, it was frustrating to listen to how naïve Diane was throughout the novel, and was even worse to how she treated Tyler. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the equally annoying relationship between Forrest Gump and Jenny…

Other Notes

Aside from the wonderful Sci-Fi  that Spin provides us, it also goes into another hot topic: religion, apocalypticism, and the effects it has on those too willing to believe without questioning. The doomsday cult depicted in this book is an eerie reminder to how naïve people can be, and how faith (taken in the wrong context) can be an extremely dangerous thing to practitioners and those around them.

Interested in listening to the story too? You can download Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin audio book for free, by signing up with Audible today. Please feel free to drop us a comment and let us know what you thought of the story.