The Extinction Trials

Preachy Philosophy And Just-Too-Far-Out-There Part V Mar Otherwise Stellar SciFi Novel. Outside of some hyper preachy philosophy in Part IV and a Part V that simply breaks everything previously established and shatters all possible suspension of disbelief, this book was truly a stellar scifi suspense/ action tale. One that should have simply ended with the conclusion of Part IV. You've got elements of Brett Battles' PROJECT EDEN, James Dashner's MAZE RUNNER, THE MATRIX, WATERWORLD , BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, Ted Dekker's CIRCLE QUADRILOGY, and a jump-right-into-the-action opener ala Jeremy Robinson's UNITY or (a bit more precisely) MASS EFFECT 2's opening level. And these are all franchises that I personally LOVE. In other words, if you show more like scifi at all, this is going to be something you'll want to explore. Even if scifi isn't really your thing, the meat of the story here, of forced proximity creating a family-of-choice, secrets, lies, betrayals, and survival... those are all human elements that Riddle uses effectively to tell his story remarkably well. So well that were it not for the issues noted at the beginning of this review, this is very *easily* a 5* tale. As is, it is still a mostly solid, action packed book, and still recommended. show less

This should have been an exciting and enjoyable book, but instead is rather dull and uninteresting. It deserves 2.5 stars and I rounded down instead of up to counter the mystifying number of 5-star reviews.

Reading the first few chapters was like deja vu, the plot and characters lifted straight from a myriad other End Of The World stories. Then the inevitable Post-Apocalyptic Adventure starts, replete with Mysteries and Intrigue, that are written in such a lifeless straightforward manner that none of it seems to matter in the slightest.

After endless repetitive chapters of strained dialogue and plodding plotting, we finally learn what's actually going on in the final pages, culminating in a nonsensical "surprise" twist that doesn't fit show more at all with the rest of the book and does nothing to answer any of the questions raised along the way or resolve the conflicts in any meaningful way. It seemed as if the author got as bored writing it as I did reading it and rushed to wrap it up.

There's plenty of good post-apocalyptic literature out there, this ain't it. show less

In a Nutshell: A pretty enjoyable dystopian thriller with an ending I didn’t see coming at all!

Story:

Six strangers wake up in a strange bunker with no memory of how they got there. They learn that they are a part of something called “The Extinction Trials”, which is a scientific experiment to restart the human race after some mysterious event called “The Change” messed up the world. They soon realise that things aren’t quite straightforward and secrets are in abundance. And none of them know whom to trust. As in every dystopian book, there is darkness, there is danger, there is AI, there is an untrustworthy government, and there is hope.

The six characters are quite distinct from each other both personally and show more professionally. We have a firefighter, a genetics professional, an emergency room doctor, a software engineer, a mechanic, and a child. Most of the characters are well-sketched and leave you in no doubt about what they would do under certain circumstances. But a lot of them had potential that wasn’t utilised properly. One of the female characters starts off as an intelligent go-getter of a woman but ends up more as a love interest. The child has barely anything to do except yell for help when needed. Having a child in a dystopian survivor group would have provided such an interesting angle but it wasn’t explored. One character is shown as having a “limitation” (which is neither named nor explained) and this shortcoming of his is mentioned again and again, as if the readers/listeners would forget it after a few chapters. Such needless repetition killed my enjoyment a little bit.

The writing is fairly straightforward, but the plot isn’t. There are ample twists and turns along the way to keep you hooked, though at times, the author’s foreshadowing prepares you in advance to keep your eyes wide open for clues. I could see some of the twists much before their big reveal, but some others came as a surprise to me. The initial chapters are very action oriented while the middle part becomes more of a suspense and drama, before switching back to action and then more suspense-drama. The content becomes a bit philosophical too at times. The pace is fast during the action and moderate to slow during the rest. The world-building is stupendous.

What struck me most was how no ages or years were revealed at all in most of the story. This does handicap you a bit when you are trying to picture the characters, but trust me, the final twist will make you realise why this information is kept from you. Until then, you just need to use the various adjectives as clues to take a guess at who is how old. At the same time, there were many doubts I had in the story, and after this final twist, I wondered how many of them could actually have been resolved earlier without hinting at the big turnaround. That may have been a difficult writing call to make, so I’ll just ignore those loopholes for now as the ending was really very clever and makes me want to forgive every gap in the earlier logic.

All in all, this is a pretty typical dystopian sci-fi thriller with an atypical ending. While I had my fair share of complaints with some plot holes and some flat characters, I was hooked on to the audiobook and kept listening to know how the story went ahead. That was a big plus point: keeping me hooked regardless of my queries and misgivings.

This was my first book by A.G. Riddle and I might try some more of his works. Sci-fi fans and even newbies who want to try out this genre will find this story enjoyable.

3.75 stars from me.

I heard the audiobook as narrated by John Skelley and I enjoyed his narration thoroughly. He doesn’t force accents or voices onto the characters but just emotes them well enough for you to follow the story perfectly. He doesn’t go nasal for the female characters or squeaky for the child character, both of which sound funny when done by a male narrator. I really appreciated this idea as it showed that good narrators don’t need a variety of voices; they just need great emotive skills. The audio version clocks at almost 11 hours, but for a book where the pace keeps changing, I was happy to have heard the book than read it. Of course, keeping track of the various groups and characters is a bit tricky but experienced listeners will get the hang of what to retain and what to ignore a few chapters down the line. I won’t recommend the audiobook to newbie listeners; they will be better off reading this work.

My thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC of “The Extinction Trials”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.

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AG Riddle writes stories that include world-changing events and suspenseful travel. My first introduction to Riddle’s writing was with his Atlanta Gene series. Just like The Extinction Trials, there was travel, suspense, and budding world change.

In The Extinction Trials, two main characters quickly emerge, a neurological scientist and a fireman. Both did their career jobs nobly intending to save lives. But competing world factions, bent on wiping out existing humanity and restarting a new population, ended their prospects. One political faction used a memory steeling pandemic to accomplish that goal while the other used technology to create killer robots out of all the service robots. Fortunately, a third faction cryogenically show more preserved as many non-aligned citizens as possible to facilitate the survival of the human species.

The factional wars continued, but The Extinction Trials’ story is primarily about the two main characters, put into cryogenic sleep, who wake up in a dystopian future and are left with vague clues leading to the third faction’s sanctuary. The two end up battling other survivors on the way and mistakenly end up in the pandemic-spreading faction’s control. That faction attempts to chemically alter their minds to make them more compliant to its cause. But they escape before the changes manifest and manage to get to the sanctuary.

At the sanctuary, two advanced androids meet them and assure the couple that they can remove the changes to their brains and preserve them along with the rest of humanity. The couple emerges thousands of years after the rest of the awakened population and find themselves on a new virgin planet. During the time of their extended cryogenic sleep, humanity had built new civilizations on earth and was at a technical level similar to the 1960s. The robots provided the two main characters with a large endowment in the form of diamonds, stones that were plentiful in their former world but are rare on earth and very valuable. Using that endowment, the couple invests in promising world-changing technology companies. At the end of the book, they are going on to prepare the population for settling other planets so that the human race no longer faces extermination at the hands of its political factions.

The book’s story and its pace kept me engaged. I spent many a late hour reading when I should have been resting in preparation for the following day’s obligations. As a result of AG Riddle formulary writing, I don’t think that I would have enjoyed The Extinction Trials if I had read immediately following the Atlantis Gene. Fortunately, this is a new book that came out long after I read that series so I didn’t need to. show less

This was just extremely average. There was a bit too much introspection and not enough action for me. The story was fine, but it felt like it took a long time to get to the finish line. I never really made a connection to any of the characters either. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as it could have been either.

Prior to reading this, I was in a reading slump and this book helped me get over it. What it has going for it is that it is a page-turner with an interesting premise. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world with an atmosphere vaguely reminiscent of [b:Wool Omnibus|13453029|Wool Omnibus (Silo, #1)|Hugh Howey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349614200l/13453029._SY75_.jpg|18979356].
Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as masterful. It lacked depth and the writing was subpar. I found this novel to be very formulaic, with generic characters and a twist in the end that was so forced and out of place it made me laugh.
2.5

5 stars, The world as they knew it has ended, now what?

THE EXTINCTION TRIALS by A.G. Riddle

A small group of people wakes up in a fallout shelter and as they are learning about what is going on, one of the people waking up murders the man who was telling them about the state of the world at this time. They find that they have to work together to get any further with their escape.

Highly recommend a great dystopian science fiction novel.

Many thanks to #netgalley #legionbooks for the complimentary copy of #theextinctiontrials I was under no obligation to post a review.