Beggars Ride

This is the conclusion to the Sleepless trilogy. It takes place some years after the events of Beggars and Choosers when the Sleepless launched a genetic mutation on the Sleepers of the world that made eating unnecessary. The idea was to make the Livers, the lowest caste of people, independent of the upper class but it didn't work out quite as expected as we find out in this book.

Lizzie Francy is now 18 years old and pregnant. She, her mother, her step-father Billy and Vicki Turner, the donkey who befriended them in the last book, live with a tribe of Livers in an abandoned factory. All of the Livers have been changed with the Sleepless vaccine so they absorb energy from the earth and the sun and do not need to mouth feed. The molecules show more that were injected with the vaccine also repair any cellular damage and repel any toxins from the body. Lizzie has become a genius at computer hacking (which is called data dipping). It is her abilities that got her and Vicki into a functioning factory belonging to Ten Tech corporation in order to get energy suppliers so the tribe can survive the winter. Lizzie got them in but she can't get them out. Meanwhile the owners, Dr. Jackson Aranow and his ex-wife Cazie Saunders, have been alerted to the break in and head to the factory to check it out. Jackson owns one-third of Ten Tech, his sister Theresa owns another third and Cazie owns the final third. Theresa is one of the few people on earth who has not been changed; she is debilitantingly afraid of everything and rarely ventures out of the massive apartment she and Jackson share in Manhattan. Jackson graduated from medical school just as the change was unleashed. He only uses his skill when a child is born after which he gives them the Change vaccine and they never get sick. At the Ten Tech factory Jackson meets Lizzie and Vicki which changes the trajectory of his life. Before the book ends life on earth has undergone another major shift. People like Jackson and Lizzie and Theresa and the others have a purpose in life again.

I didn't think this conclusion was a strong a book as the second book in the trilogy. Usually with trilogies, there is a reverse situation with the second being weak but the third wrapping things up with a bang. This was more of a whimper than a bang. Still an enjoyable listen even if the narrator's voice didn't seem right for some of the characters because in Beggars and Choosers the characters were voiced by different narrators. I think Blackstone made a mistake in getting rid of the extra narrators for this book. show less

The final book (as far as I know) of the Sleepless trilogy, I was not disappointed. In fact, except for the always one-dimensional character of Jennifer Sharifi (how could someone that smart be that stupid, really) whose function is to drive the story with her single-mindedness, I felt rewarded by this last book. It is a cautionary tale of a 'could happen' if two things, clean limitless energy freeing humans from having to work the way we do now, combined with genetic programming run riot. Really, of course, it is very improbable, but Kress does well at creating a consistently weird future where the poorest and least educated think of themselves as the richest since they don't have to work or do anything they don't want to..... There is show more an overlap with the characters from book 2 - two of the best of them, Lizzie the liver and Vicki Turner, the donkey, reappear. There is a new character as well, Dr. Jackson Aranow, also a donkey. Donkeys have been genetically enhanced to various degrees but have the role of looking after the livers and everything else, basically, although some, children of the rich donkeys live foolishly and frivolously within their compounds. After the donkeys are the sleepless, engineered not to need sleep, and they in turn engineer the supersleepless, geniuses beyond anything the rest of humanity can understand. Jennifer, the baddie, is a Sleepless. Sleepless are hated because, well, they don't sleep which means they end up knowing and doing twice as much as anyone else, richer smarter and better in every way including living at least twice as long ..... and most of them feel inherently superior to everyone else. They in turn come up with the supersleepless, another order of being, beyond homo sapiens in their intelligence. They, working to improve things for humans, invent a 'cell-cleaner' that they hope will free livers from the domination of donkeys and sleepless the same way the y-energy freed everyone but...... the results are quite different from what they had hoped and meanwhile bad Jenny is plotting and scheming terrible things - several good twists - and strange but satisfying ending. **** show less

I loved Beggars in Spain and have read it and the sequel, Beggars and Choosers, many times. However, this novel is a bad ending to the trilogy, mainly perhaps because my favorite character, Leisha Camden, was killed off in the second novel. Most of the characters are two-dimensional and unlikable, except for Lizzy, a throwback genius Liver who is doomed to a welfare existence.

Towards the end of the series, most of the characters, and almost all of the likable characters have been killed off. Now we are following the life of a Liver (welfare state) named Lizzie, a "throwback" who is much smarter than her station. The thematic commentary seems to be that worthwhile people can be born to those who have become comfortable at the "bottom of the barrel". Another important character is that of a "Donkey" (the workers), Dr. Jackson Aranow, who has become comfortable with his lot in life and is unconcerned with the Livers and, indeed, anyone outside his small circle of family and friends. His world is widened by Lizzie's attempt to steal from one of his factory/warehouses. Finally, we have Jackson's sister, Tess, who show more is crippled by mental illness, agoraphobia it seems, but also widens her world. Meanwhile, the Sleepless are again under the leadership of Jennifer Sharifi, who still can't learn the lesson that she doesn't need to kill everyone in order to be safe, and that her attempts to do so are what is making her people unsafe.Shenanigans orchestrated by her are threatening to change the face of the world completely once again.
I had a hard time getting used to this new cast of characters, but by the end of the book I was wishing there were additional chapters of this trilogy. Big themes are personified well, and characters enjoy dynamic arcs. However, some characters seem to act in a way that is less in-character and more to serve the plot. Overall, an entertaining and thought-provoking read. show less

Let's get this out of the way. The first 2/3rds of this book was filled to the brim with rather boring Sleeper and Sleepless politics. It lacked all the charm of the first two novels because the first two had great characters.

They're missing from this novel.

The characters we do have didn't manage to pick up and become great until after the first nuclear explosion.

Beginning and Middle in this novel was... meh. Not horrible or anything and I really DO like heavy explorations of gene-mods, social repercussions, and (theoretically) how they lead to massive political upheaval. I just didn't think it worked particularly well here. Unlike the first two Sleepless novels. The end conclusion in this one was satisfying in its way, dealing with an show more engineered plague that causes people to be aversive, isolationist, (and oddly compassionate), building up to another plague that's half relying on imagination, putting oneself entirely in another's shoes, and half cognitive therapy. It doesn't ignore the underlying biological issue, but it does allow for transcendental biology. You know... mind over matter -- at least when it comes to happy placebo events. :)

We are not limited to our biological destiny, no matter what the naysayers say.

Let's back up here. The whole series as a whole is NOT about that. Indeed, it's a rather awesome series about super geniuses being created out of a genetic alteration that removed the need to sleep. The children are blameless, oddly awesome, but then all the normals fear their super brilliance and work-ethic and focus, they're hounded, forced to take control, and from there take over the world with varying levels of success.

This novel is the aftermath of all that. It's goodish but sometimes meandering and often rather boring until THINGS START HAPPENING. Sigh. Well, they do, and the end is quite fun, but the rest was something of a slog. Alas. I just didn't care for what was going on until after the nuke. :)

Is this enough to save the whole novel? No. But I'm glad I got to the good stuff, for all that. show less

This is the last book in a loose series that began with Beggars In Spain. On a general level it concerns moral choices available to us when people are created radically "not equal". Specifically, Kress postulates a future world where we have made some of the population sleepless through genetic modification and then begin to despise them for their unfair learning advantages. They become the next hated race. The main conflict in the group of sleepless comes between those who want to protect themselves and the group at any cost (Jenifer Sharifi) and those who would like to live in contact with "sleepers" and assimilate and assist (Leisha Camden). This conflict forms an undercurrent in this final book, as this is more a story of the other show more segments of society - the gene modified "donkeys" who run the government, have financial security, and live in protected enclaves and the "livers" who enjoy free food and do no work. The second book explains more fully the "Change" which fragmented these sectors even more completely, even while it provided long, disease free life and freely available food from any source of dirt or properly prepared organic material. This book details the breakdown of this dichotomy as "Change" needles run out and more children are susceptible to disease and death. It also combines a plot by the protective sleepless to render earth sleepers harmless by releasing an inhibiting protein which permanently affects the brain and causes fear of anything new or different. It's a rather dark vision of humanity with a small light at the end of a tunnel. This book could be read freestanding but it will make more sense if you've read Beggars In Spain and Beggars and Choosers first. show less

I was not sure if I was going to read this series after the first one, yet the characters stuck in my mind, just what was happening to them? And so I picked up the second, and then the third. I wanted to know what was going on with the sleepless, what silliness had the livers gotten into. This speaks that these stories have something that draws us in.I found many characters unpleasant, and the stories seemed to meander. Yet, I always enjoy tales of what might happen, and what we might do wrong or right. This book wraps up the series almost cruelly with some character's stories cut short, but the end, well the end leaves you watching the author's website with hope that maybe this is not the end?