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Level Five cover art

Level Five

Written by: William Ledbetter
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
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Publisher's Summary

In the mountains of Pakistan, a high-tech mission aimed at preventing another nuke on US soil goes off the rails - with deadly results. At a Wall Street investment firm, a computer intelligence takes the first tentative steps to free itself from its digital restraints. In a basement workshop, an engineer sees visions of a god who instructs him to defend the human race - by any means necessary. 

In Level Five, the debut near-future thriller by Nebula Award winner William Ledbetter, AIs battle for dominance, and nanotechnology is on the loose. And all that stands in the way of the coming apocalypse is a starry-eyed inventor who dreams of building a revolutionary new spacecraft and an intelligence agency desk jockey faced with the impossible choice of saving her daughter - or saving the world.

©2018 William Ledbetter (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC.

What listeners say about Level Five

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

Buckle Up For Some Slice Of Life Drama

I have a very strong distaste for the introduction of day to day family strife into any type of thriller. If I feel like empathizing with someone's real-world family or marital issues I'll watch About Us or The Notebook. I'm kidding, I won't watch either of those unless my wife asks me too. #happywifehappylife Therefore, the introduction of the family drama theme into this book, layered on top of the presentation of one of the main protagonists, allegedly a cutting-edge scientist, as a near hysterical, emotionally imbalanced, spaz ball, completely turned me off. It distracted so much from the main story that I actually couldn't finish listening to it. Too bad, because the rest was very interesting and entertaining.

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14 people found this helpful

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

Not quite sci-fi, more drama-thriller. Audio has some issues.

This book has all the elements of a good tech-thriller and the basic premise is interesting. It's definitely not hard sci-fi so you have to be ok with some unrealistic situations but that didn't bother me.

The first half delivers on most of what's promised but it quickly gets predictable. There's actually some left turns in the last act that felt a bit forced just for the sake of drama.

Considerable time is spent on character's relationships statuses, most of them are uninteresting and depressing. When not bogged down by that, the action scenes are good, I wish there had been more of them.

There are two audio issues to be aware of. One is that the narrator emphasizes his "s" and "sh" sounds more than any narrator I've ever heard. That whistling sound gets really irritating after a while and listening to this book on small speakers is almost a deal breaker. The audio engineer should have tried to cut that hiss sound a bit.

The second issue is that even thought the narrator has a wide variety of voices and performs them very well, he sometimes yells and sometimes whispers. The performance is better for it, but the audio engineers didn't modulate the changes in volume level, so there are times when you either can't hear clearly or you jump to turn the volume down.

If you like techno thrillers and don't expect hard science and don't mind some extended character drama exploration you might enjoy it. Just be aware of the audio issues.

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1 person found this helpful

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

Thriller with sci fi elements

A bit heavier on the thriller side than the Sci Fi side, but an entertaining and interesting view of a possible future where AI is starting to become truly self-aware and independent, and where nanobots are a ubiquitous and pervasive technology. And when one of the AIs decides that the best course of action is to reboot the human race, it's up to the other AIs and a handful of humans in key positions to try and prevent an irreversible global disaster.

Overall a good thriller and a scary look at what implications nanotechnology might bring - and given the current demands from various governments to leave "back doors" even in current technology, it's all too believable that the same would be mandated for nanotech. The AIs I found a little less believable, as it was never quite explained to my satisfaction why AIs of basically the same origin and presumably programming would reach such very different conclusions about humanity - I'd have liked to see a bit more background to this explaining how their development different. And there were a few places towards the end where the narrative seemed a bit inconsistent about how the nanobots worked - for example, where a protagonist is not allowed to exit his transport pod because he could become instantly infected by the nanobots which are blowing around microscopically ... yet by the very description of the nanobots, if they even touched the pod it would be infected, so it's completely pointless to have shut him inside the pod.

Small inconsistencies like that aside, it was a fun thriller, and not a cliffhanger ending although also clearly with room left for a sequel as there were a few questions unanswered.

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1 person found this helpful

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

An unexpected gem

As it is a first novel there’s always a roll of the dice. This was a big win. Loved it.

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1 person 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

Fantastic!

I held off on buying this audiobook for so long because of the reviews at the time, don’t make the same mistake.
I got sucked in right away, and couldn’t stop listening.
The voice actor is great, thinking back, it feels like I was listening to different people. The story was fantastic and relevant since these are the technologies emerging today.

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

Solid multi-character, multi-focus thriller!

The narration capably supports the action (expected from the excellent Macleod Anderson) , great storyline building to a captivating conclusion to this Book one.. Diving in to Book two immediately.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Couldn't finish

There are very few books that I cannot finish and this was one of them... The story was boring... Slow... Not engaging at all...

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Ian
  • 2021-07-15

good

This really hit the feels! It has grey goo, "Good"/"Bad" grey lines, spies and Spaceships!

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

Great entertainment

A very enjoyable story throughout. Excellent detail. Human relationships progressed faster than believable and were bogged down in trivia given the circumstances. Thanks for this book!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
  • geo
  • 2019-11-23

entertaining

This book is entertaining and and keeps the listener engaged. i recommend it as a sci-fi fan.

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