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  • Head On (Narrated by Wil Wheaton)

  • By: John Scalzi
  • Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
  • Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (227 ratings)

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Head On (Narrated by Wil Wheaton)

By: John Scalzi
Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
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Publisher's Summary

"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Cannell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty - most of them in someone else's body." (USA Today)

John Scalzi returns with Head On, the stand-alone follow-up to the New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it.

Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are called in to uncover the truth - and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

©2018 John Scalzi (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Head On (Narrated by Wil Wheaton)

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

Fun

Fun book, keeps you listening and intrigued however the story is not as strong as the first.

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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

LOVED IT!

The author listened to how annoying the first book was with "he said" "i said" ect aaaalll the time and this book was so much better! It was such an easy read (listen), it had me laughing out loud on many occasions too! I want more now!!
Not that the other book was terrible or anything but this book was an improvment and I loved it!!

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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

great story - want more stories

Awesome follow on from Locked In. Would love more stories of the FBI Hayden Division.

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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

So good. So consistently good.

John Scalzi is just fun. He can write anything. I love how underneath his fast paced and humorous stories there are classic sci-fi and, therefore, sociological and philosophical themes. So smart but, at the same time, so accessible.

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2 people found this helpful

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

Crime detection meets Sci Fi

Another great read from John Scalzi. There are very few in the Sci Fi world who can combine crime detection and Science Fiction successfully. The only others I can think of are Isaac Asimov and Peter F Hamilton.This follows on from "Lock in" nicely - but can be read as a stand alone. The author runs with a pretty far -fetched premise but makes it very believable. As per usual, Wil Wheaton does a sterling job with narration and characters. John Scalzi writes consistently goo sci fi and this does not disappoint.

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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

Great Fun

Lots of humour, good snark and an intriguing mystery. The narrator does a wonderful job although for me now the main protagonist will always be male!

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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

Love this universe

This is the second book which features Chris Shane, an FBI agent who suffers from Haden’s, a disease which keeps its sufferers completely immobile or ‘locked in’. To allow Hadens to interact with able bodied humans, a network is placed in their brain and they then communicate via a couple of options, the most common using a robot-like body called a Threep.

This book has Shane and his partner, Leslie Vann, investigating a death during a new sport invented for Hadens called Hilketa. Hilketa reads like a mixture between American football and a Roman Gladiator battle. The game involves one team protecting the Goat (a player supposedly chosen at random) whilst the opposition tries to rip off the Goat's head to use as a ball (which will subsequently be punted through goal posts to score). The title, therefore, becomes pretty clever -- keep your head on to win, face the danger head on etc.

Although still a police procedural at heart, there’s probably more action scenes in this installment, especially more featuring Threeps. There’s scenes featuring Tank Threeps which are Hulk-like ramming robots created especially for the purposes of Hilketa. There’s inert Threeps coming to life (I found this particularly creepy actually) and the opposite situation, ie Hadens leaving an empty shell of a Threep after they’ve committed a crime. I won’t, however, go into the whole sex model Threeps which feature (LOL!).

Actually, I will go into the sex models slightly... They do strengthen the whole argument I’ve read on the internet regarding several characters, including Shane, never having their gender and/or sexuality really specified (pretty much every character has a non-gender specific name - Leslie, Chris, Taylor etc). A lot of readers say it’s a bit of a social experiment as to how you ‘see’ the characters but, as I listened to Wil Wheaton’s narration via Audible, I must admit I probably failed some sort of feminist test and think of Chris as male.

Talking of Wheaton, his narration again is superb. He has great comic timing. I literally laughed out loud at Shane and Vann’s witty back and forth banter. (Vann’s cranky old lady act will never get old.) There’s also some very funny scenes involving a cat. (This reminded me a lot of Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog, so if you’re a fan of that book, I suggest you grab this one and give it a go.)

I must admit some of the passages explaining the politics and money and business interests surrounding the game got a little boring and, dare I say, a little American. Not enough to annoy me though.

I do recommend that you read Lock In before you attempt Head On. Although the mystery/crime plots are completely separate, I think you’d need to read the first book in the series to fully appreciate and understand Head On.

This is an instant 5 out of 5 favourite and I hope Scalzi comes back to this universe soon. In the meantime, I will give some of his other books a go.

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

Good story Wil was a bit all over the place

Not a bad performance but the accents were a bit all over the place in sections.

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

A sequel that doesn't disappoint!

I found "Lock In" to be intriguing and thought-provoking on many levels and was looking forward to "Head On".

Agents Shane and Van return to investigate the mysterious sudden death of a player during a "Hilketa" match; a violent gladiatorial sport developed to be played by Haden athletes operating specially designed threeps. The investigation takes many twists and turns as layers of corruption, prejudice and greed are uncovered.

The novel is a sequel but also stands on its own - while I'd recommend reading "Lock In" first, the main themes are all explained and recapped in "Head On".

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