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The Andromeda Evolution

Written by: Michael Crichton,Daniel H. Wilson
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
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Publisher's Summary

Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name - and spawned a new genre, the technothriller - the threat returns, in a gripping sequel that is terrifyingly realistic and resonant.

The evolution is coming.

In 1967, an extraterrestrial microbe came crashing down to Earth and nearly ended the human race. Accidental exposure to the particle - designated the Andromeda Strain - killed every resident of the town of Piedmont, Arizona, save for an elderly man and an infant boy. Over the next five days, a team of top scientists assigned to Project Wildfire worked valiantly to save the world from an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. In the moments before a catastrophic nuclear detonation, they succeeded.

In the ensuing decades, research on the microparticle continued. And the world thought it was safe....

Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity - until now. A Brazilian terrain-mapping drone has detected a bizarre anomaly of otherworldly matter in the middle of the jungle, and, worse yet, the tell-tale chemical signature of the deadly microparticle.

With this shocking discovery, the next-generation Project Wildfire is activated, and a diverse team of experts hailing from all over the world is dispatched to investigate the potentially apocalyptic threat.

But the microbe is growing - evolving. And if the Wildfire team can’t reach the quarantine zone, enter the anomaly, and figure out how to stop it, this new Andromeda Evolution will annihilate all life as we know it.

©2019 Michael Crichton and Daniel H. Wilson (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about The Andromeda Evolution

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Too far fetched

The original Andromeda Strain was amazing. It is the only book I have ever read in one sitting. The Andromeda Evolution, although interesting with all the scientific info, was far too unbelievable. I found it annoying that every time there was a major road block that the perfect piece of equipment just happened to be at hand. Good performance though.

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Not a bad story

was better than I thought it was going to be. it felt a bit like an typical action movie towards the end but I still enjoyed 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

Science Fiction Thriller

This is a great continuation of The Andromeda Strain story by another author 50 years after the first. It is gripping and exciting with lots of plot twists and turns. It is well worth your entertainment time and money

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Loved the original, was eager to read this

I loved the original Andromeda Strain, so was eager to read this when I saw it. While the “documentary” style narrator isn’t my favourite, I did love the story. Also loved the incorporation of true details like the storm on Saturn and possible methods of space travel. The end resolutions came in a little too neatly for my taste.

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  • Overall
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Brutal

One of the worst books I have ever had whether audio or print

No stars for the story

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

This was certainly not written by Crichton

The narrator did a wonderful job.
Great premise, but relied heavily on one character that I don’t see how would have pulled it all together I don’t want to put up spoilers. Everything was convenient, we didn’t stay anywhere to long. Many pages could have been skipped. Some aspects, but no the whole novel felt like Crichton.

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very slow and dry

I have to give this a very low rating. while the plot finally picked up and had some good elements it was so boring for the first half. in print you could skip pages easily but hard to do that with audio book. Narrator spoke clearly but was a poor choice for such a dry book. I fell asleep many times given the mix of calm smooth, low key voice and dry detailed story. I have enjoyed several Crichton books but cannot recommend this one.

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  • CKDexter
  • 2019-11-19

Reader beware

I really wanted to like this book because The Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite thrillers. However, I am left feeling like this book undeservedly got a free ride on the shirttails of Crichton’s fame. Does the estate of Michael Crichton lack cashflow? This reads like fan fiction—nothing like his work. It’s not bad, it just falls far short of Crichton, in style, story, substance and editing! The original is tremendously refined writing that went through repeated rewrites and hard edits. The results speak for themselves. This sequel needed tougher editing and maybe a rewrite. Mind you, it is not bad, it just withers in its comparison to Crichton. If this had been released without any connection to the earlier novel, it would be less irritating. And to cap it all off, the reader was poorly chosen.

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72 people found this helpful

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  • David C Francis
  • 2019-11-17

Awful

Not the
Real Michael Crichton Really poor representation of his great other works. Very disappointed

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2020-01-12

Does not fulfill its potential

Most of sequels and most novels written by other than original author tends to be much much worse than original work. This book is unfortunately a prime example. The work written 50 years ago has everything that this sequel does not. If you love the original story as I do, then I am afraid you are going to be deeply disappointed. Michael Crichton, you are deeply missed.

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16 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • A Customer
  • 2019-11-14

How I read and enjoyed this techno-thriller filled w hard science, acronyms, military speak, etc


From the kindle sample, I knew this book would most likely be laden with every possible acronym; descriptions & explanations about bleeding-edge technology; military/intelligence jargon, and anything military-related that could approximate flying. Or exploding. If I chose to read the hardback or Kindle version, I’d have had to slow down in order to process information, which might be important but not necessarily crucial to the storyline.

Here’s a secret: I can better process medical/scientific nonfiction and hard science-fiction faster when it’s read to me. I splurged on the audiobook version, narrated by Julia Whelan, upped the speed a bit and I was off on an Andromeda adventure.

Trust me, the Audible version is worth every penny!

The Audiobook version is a solid 4 stars, but I’d have rated it lower had I read the Kindle version—for reasons mentioned by several Goodread reviewers. The characters of the Wildfire team are stereotypical but are fleshed out and mostly likable. I had believability issues w the scientist-villain as an astronaut, not to mention the human-nano-hybrid structure in the Amazon.

Recommend the Audible version.

(Posted on Kindle reviews & Goodreads)

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  • Jim N
  • 2020-01-26

Excruciating

A painful listen, dull, clichéd and utterly devoid of the style and pacing that made Michael Crichton's novels (and The Andromeda Strain) so riveting.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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  • Grant Rietze
  • 2019-11-13

terrible narration. halting speech, droning on

I really wanted to listen to this. I couldn't make it through the first chapter.

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13 people found this helpful

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  • Ghost Rider
  • 2019-11-26

Great sequel

I very much enjoyed this sequel to one of my favorite books. It managed to catch the techno aspect of the original while still continuing a very good story. The characters were well written and the story line was interesting while staying very linked to the original book. No spoilers, but the ending was very well done. I'm hoping Daniel Wilson will continue the series. Without a doubt, one of the best audiobooks I've downloaded in quite a while.

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  • Brian
  • 2019-12-02

A Near-Perfect Continuation

The introduction (written as an acknowledgement) of this story had me questioning my deep knowledge of Crichton and the first novel. It’s basically written as a full-on thank you to a bunch of people who helped with the creation and research of the book. It goes on to thank people that “survived the event and provided detail about it” to Wilson along with thanking the late, great Dr. Michael Crichton for “bringing light to the original events of the Wildfire team in The Andromeda Strain. Now, I knew going into this that it was fiction and I knew from years ago that Strain was also fiction – but the way that he wrote it tricked my brain enough to make me think that this could have been a real event. (I believe he even goes on to basically say that we all owe our lives to the teams and that we are all here today due to their work that we wouldn’t have heard of weren’t for his retelling in this book. (insert slow clap… bravo Daniel H. Wilson. Bravo!)

I went into this with some trepidation. I LOVED The Andromeda Strain. It honestly might have been the first or second book I read of Crichton’s. It literally founded my love for bio-thrillers and set up my absolute love for realistic science (Hard Science) in books that I re-found in my reading renaissance in finding R.C. Bray’s narration of The Martian. So, going into Evolution, I knew I had to keep my hopes out of the clouds. That introduction that I described above kind of threw that out the window. Thankfully, this was better than the half-finished book that was co-authored by one of my favorite all-time authors AFTER Crichton (Micro).

Because this was written in full by another author with cues from Crichton’s first novel – this one had a much better flow from begining to end. Wilson was able to take a story that a lot of us know and love and bring it into the 21st century. He was able to throw in geo-political aspect and obviously update the technology to current (and near future) like Crichton always did. Crichton always pushed the boundaries with tech because he had the foresight before many others did. Wilson was able to take some of that and ride it out in Evolution and introduced a little bit of tech himself.

Okay, enough of my love letter to the late Crichton, his novels, and the fact that I was like a little boy on Christmas when I originally heard that this was coming out.

The beginning of this felt a little bit slow, but then remembering back to Crichton’s novels – that’s how they started out as well. Dinosaurs just don’t exist in Jurassic Park, there’s a slow burn to get to the climax. Andromeda Evolution was just like that. Wilson spent the entire first almost half of the book setting everything up. I wasn’t sure what or where it was going but I was along for the ride.

From around the mid-point on, this was an absolute roller coaster. It was full of action and honestly wasn’t easy to predict. A few scenes (especially later in the book) I was able to guess, but it was my love of other Crichton novels that fueled the guesses as much as the writing in it. I had a feeling that something was going to go a certain way and it did (but I was also quite wrong about a few other associations).

The technology used within Andromeda Evolution was believable, just like it was supposed to be. A stunning fifty years has gone by since the events of the last Andromeda outbreak – and it was taking place in modern (or really close to modern) day.

I went into this skeptical. I was worried that I wouldn’t like it, but I’m glad I did. It was the perfect predecessor to the first book and a great continuation of a story that felt right. Sometimes it feels like a money grab to make a sequel – but in this case, the story was well written and explained in such a way that it made sense. I didn’t know I needed another Andromeda book until I finished this one.

I will say, if you didn’t like the first book or aren’t a Crichton fan (but are a Wilson fan), I would probably stay away from this. I believe that Lilyn over at Sci-Fi and Scary didn’t like the first book – so obviously, she probably wouldn’t like the second. But if you are a Crichton fan, loved the first book, or need a great technothriller to read – do not skip this one.

Julia Whelan does a phenomenal job narrating this story. She added such depth and realism to the characters that not all narrators can pull off. Her narration definitely took this from being good to great.

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  • AbbieJean
  • 2020-10-19

Not Michael Crichton-level, but solid

I saw someone else's review say, this story felt like a fan-fiction, and honestly I agree with that. That's not to say it's a bad book...
The writer is a wonderful wordsmith, and the narrator does an excellent job with pacing and inflection; but the story itself is just so *fantastic.* That is to say, it is very much a fantasy. One of the things I like so much about MC writing is that it feels *almost possible,* the way he writes and his level of detail. This story, though, didn't have that same MC spark. Regardless, I definitely finished it. Loveable characters in a story that makes you want to keep going. I appreciated the references to the original book. In its own right, this is a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A solid homage.

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  • Kevin
  • 2020-04-07

Loved the series so far.... one question

This is starting to set up like a series that will go on. Why does it feel like the start of leviathan awakes? That being said, I look forward to how this goes.

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