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The Book of M  By  cover art

The Book of M

By: Peng Shepherd
Narrated by: James Fouhey,Emily Woo Zeller
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Publisher's summary

Set in a dangerous near-future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears - an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife, Max, have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day, Max’s shadow disappears, too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.

©2018 Peng Shepherd (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Featured Article: Listen Like the World Is Ending with These Apocalyptic Audiobooks


Apocalyptic audiobooks all have one big thing in common: each is set in a world that is ending or just on the brink of collapse. Outside of that, apocalyptic and postapocalyptic stories take on all sorts of topics, twisting and turning into so many different genres and directions. Whether you love sci-fi adventures or prefer character-driven stories that reflect on real-world issues, this collection of listens has something for everyone.

What listeners say about The Book of M

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It was ok

it started out really well in the beggining but then it took a hard left and ended on mediocre. I was pretty disappointed at the ending but i can see how she thought it would be a good twist...it just wasnt. Some parts of the story were just kind of flimsy. Not to push other books under one book but a good one is The paths between worlds, its more....concise. I just wish we could have a community on here where you can message other listeners about books and so on. Anway this book was ok it felt like the last hundred 3 hours or so just dragged on for some unknown reason. .....meh

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70 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Unique but not sci-fi

The audio voices bothered me, but I kept at it for the unique story. I was hoping for a strong sci-fi finish, but it ended up drifting to fantasy and mythology very quickly.

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38 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Good but a bit wacky

If you’re looking for something like Station Eleven this book isn’t a bad option. It’s not as good but I also couldn’t put it down. Cool ideas but ultimately it was a bit... much. Amazing narrator.

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29 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

The book of mediocrity

The story started out with promise, post-apocalyptic hope bubbled in my heart. Then came the middle where character development crumbled and a main player Max, became a simpering, overplayed weak female caricature. Why couldn't she be stronger? Who knows because page after page was dedicated to her relentingless pining for her husband. The vocal performance of Max nearly brought me to abandon the book, read the character, don't act the character, Zeller made Max almost unbearable with her overplayed obsequience. The last act was an improvement although I was fearful of a harlequin ending, still a bit of overdone melancholy. Performance was riddled grammatical errors and mispronunciations, the former perhaps from the book, the latter from poor production. Lots of promise but it fell flat in many areas.

Oh, and it's pronounced Lake Pon-chA-train, yes there is an ar in there but it's silent and certainly not pronounced Pon-chEr-train.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

5 zillion stars to this epic story!

This book deserves ALL the stars!! ALL!! It’s brilliant, beautifully written, and one of the most hopeful post-apocalyptic books I’ve ever read. The Book of M is by far my favorite read so far of 2018. Whenever I think of my favorite all time epic books in this genre (The Stand, The Passage, and Swan Song) The Book of M will now and forever more be in my list.

I’m not sure how to even tell anyone what this book is about. It’s a story about how most people lose their shadow and with it, little by little, all of their memories, until they don’t even remember that they need to eat. Also with the loss of their shadow comes the ability to do magical things, like putting wings onto the head of a deer. But for each magical act, more memories are lost until there is nothing left of the original person.

We follow the journey of Max who after two years has finally lost her shadow and run away, Ory her husband who travels the countryside looking for her, Naz who was an Olympic archer in the time before, and the Amnesiac who lost all of his memories due to an accident before The Forgetting.

I seriously had major chills all up and down my spine as I read the last few pages of The Book of M. My heart!! I am sure I won’t be able to get this book out of my head for a long while and have already caught myself looking for my shadow several times!

Peng Shepherd is a new author that I will be watching out for. If her first novel is this amazing, I can’t imagine how incredible her next ones will be!!

I did a reread by Audible and it was even better this time around!

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Big buildup to not so great ending

Interesting story but took a long time to get to a somewhat underwhelming end. Narration is quite good. Worth a listen.

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Bittersweet

The author does an amazing job! The performance was captivating. The actual story left me feeling a bit disappointed, but overall was a good listen.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
  • AJ
  • 01-25-19

ehhhh

I struggled at some parts and almost googled to see how it ended. The story is a little incredulous, but the book is well written.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Extraordinary and not to be missed

Post apocalypse meets speculative fantasy. Unexpected, delightful, violent at times,anxiety inducing, hopeful., imaginative, and gut wrenching. Just read it! You will not be sorry.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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  • TR
  • 11-06-18

Worst story ever

this had to be the worst book I've ever read. The story itself made no sense whatsoever but I needed to find out what could be behind such a strange thing. I kept listening to the book thinking it has to get better, it has to get better, but it didn't. The story was so hard to fathom that there had to be something more to it but it wasn't. Don't waste your time. There's nothing good about this book. However, I will say that the narration was appealing. I think that was the only thing that kept me listening to this book.

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5 people found this helpful