Regular price: $17.49

Membership details Membership details
  • A 30-day trial plus your first audiobook, free.
  • 1 credit/month after trial – good for any book, any price.
  • Easy exchanges – swap any book you don’t love.
  • Keep your audiobooks, even if you cancel.
  • After your trial, Audible is just $14.95/month.
Buy Now for $17.49
Select or Add a new payment method

Buy Now with 1 Credit

By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Buy Now for $17.49

Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

Fourteen-year-old Anax thinks she knows her history. She'd better. She's sat facing three Examiners and her grueling five-hour examination on the 2077 Great War has just begun. If she passes, she'll be admitted into The Academy - the elite institution that runs her utopian society. But Anax is about to discover that for all her learning, the history she's been taught isn't the whole story. And that The Academy isn't what she believes it to be.
Anax's examination leads us into a future where ancient - eternal - philosophical questions have dramatically collided with the march of technology, where just what it means to be human is up for debate, and where the concealed stain of an 'original sin' threatens the very existence of her brave new world.
©2009 Bernard Beckett (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Show More Show Less

Critic Reviews

"Highly original, sinewy and cerebral, this remarkable thriller fuses intricate ideas with real emotion and suspense. I found it fascinating and thought-provoking. It gripped me like a vice." (Jonathan Stroud)
Show More Show Less

See More Like This

People who bought this also bought...

Audible.com Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful
5 out of 5 stars
By Amy on 03-22-13

A Wrenching, Challenging, Thought-Provoking Wonder

This is a one-of-a-kind gem I can't recommend highly enough. Surely it's one of dystopian science fiction's best-kept secrets. Imagine an isolated island preserved from world plague by its remote location. Now imagine the inhabitants creating a community based on Plato's REPUBLIC.

What does it mean to be alive? To be an individual? To be a member of a community? To be responsible? Whatever you expect this book will be, it will surprise you. I've listened to this more than once, and yet the twist ending never fails to take my breath away.

Don't be fooled if you see this referred to as a "young adult" novel; it's a perfect listen for thoughtful adults, as well.

Read More Hide me

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

3 out of 5 stars
By NMwritergal on 10-25-16

You have to be in the right mood for this one

The frame (Anax taking her 5-hr exam) is a device for the story she tells about Adam Ford and an AI. Yes, tells--not a lot of showing. And even the story she tells isn't much of one. Basically this book is about philosophical questions, such as "What is consciousness?"

Because there isn't a lot of "showing," and there's not a lot of fluff; it's not something you can listen to with half an ear.

I did find it interesting, but it was (in part) my mood. I had just finished reading something from the '40s, which was also quite philosophical and not exactly action-packed.

As far as the twist, halfway though I had most of it figured out, though it didn't spoil the book for me because I was interested in the questions the book was posing.

Read More Hide me
See all Reviews
View All Categories
Contact Us
Help
Promo Code
Conditions of Use Privacy Policy Full Site
© Copyright 1997 - 2018 Audible, Inc