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    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Unavailable
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Unavailable
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Audiobook15 hours

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

    Written by David Shafer

    Narrated by Bernard Setaro Clark

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    One of Time Magazine's Ten Best Books of 2014
    Selected by NPR, Slate, and Kirkus as one of the Best Books of 2014
    Shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Book Award
    Three young adults grapple with the usual thirty-something problems--boredom, authenticity, an omnipotent online oligarchy--in David Shafer's darkly comic debut novel.

    The Committee, an international cabal of industrialists and media barons, is on the verge of privatizing all information. Dear Diary, an idealistic online Underground, stands in the way of that takeover, using radical politics, classic spycraft, and technology that makes Big Data look like dial-up. Into this secret battle stumbles an unlikely trio: Leila Majnoun, a disillusioned non-profit worker; Leo Crane, an unhinged trustafarian; and Mark Deveraux, a phony self-betterment guru who works for the Committee.
    Leo and Mark were best friends in college, but early adulthood has set them on diverging paths. Growing increasingly disdainful of Mark's platitudes, Leo publishes a withering takedown of his ideas online. But the Committee is reading--and erasing--Leo's words. On the other side of the world, Leila's discoveries about the Committee's far-reaching ambitions threaten to ruin those who are closest to her.
    In the spirit of William Gibson and Chuck Palahniuk,Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is both a suspenseful global thriller and an emotionally truthful novel about the struggle to change the world in- and outside your head.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateAug 5, 2014
    ISBN9781478953876
    Unavailable
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

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    Reviews for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

    4/5

    289 ratings38 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this book, although I had no idea what was going on for at least the first half. The three main characters' stories were completed separate at first. My only complaint is that the book ended too soon, just as things were getting interesting.
    • 2/5
      I was pretty interested in this book at the beginning, but towards the middle it got really muddy and I found myself fighting to keep interested. Gave up about 3/5 of the way through. It's too bad, I know a lot of people loved it. Not me.
    • 3/5
      Such a slow start (perhaps the first 100 pages), but then I couldn't put it down.
    • 4/5
      Whiskey Tango Foxtrot seems like two books. It begins as a nuanced character study of people in disparate situations; about halfway through it turns into the paranoid techno thriller announced by the jacket copy (that I didn't read until I'd finished the book). The 'techno thriller' part is effective, but where Shafer shines is in his delineation of character and his descriptive writing. The plot alone in lesser hands would have been hackneyed, but Shafer's prose makes it a joy to read.
    • 4/5
      I received this as an ARC from the publisher and got incredibly busy after I read it, so I apologize for the late start here. The story starts with the establishing of three separate disaffected 30-somethings in seemingly disparate situations. The three become entangled as a mysterious cabal works to gain control of the personal information and communications of the developed world. While the three characters were sufficiently developed and entertaining, I would have enjoyed digging deeper into both the evil tech cabal and the secret organization that contacts our heroes and enlists them in the fight. The ideas about the ethics of the current technology landscape might have hit a little harder without the semi-mystical nature of the "good-guys," but it was ultimately a fun, emotionally satisfying read.
    • 3/5
      This book had a very good start, but several odd final chapters. It's disappointing because he created three very interesting characters, but they weren't strong enough to overcome the silly ending.
    • 4/5
      Shafer the author does an excellent job of portraying young adults pondering their future in a Utopian world. Plus the Author is from Portland, Oregon. Being an Oregonian myself I give him a hats off !David Shafer was born and raised in New York City. Before the millennium he self-exiled and moved to the Pacific Northwest. He has traveled widely. Educated at Harvard and Columbia, he has worked a string of odd jobs. He loves his wife and daughter and son and dog, all of whom live with him in Portland Oregon. He hopes you will enjoy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. It is his first novel. But there will be more. Oh there will be more.
    • 2/5
      Half of a book, no second half written . Stay away. Interesting story, characters slim but ok but it stops in the middle. Finish the story ! How hard can it be? Bad guys win or lose, boy gets girl or not then, "The End " . This book ends at " The Middle".
    • 4/5
      Started out as a really good character build then suddenly developed into a apocalyptic sci-fi thriller then suddenly ended. Mixed feelings about the ending.
    • 4/5
      Brave New World. ..or is it a revealong peek into today's gathering of information. Very good thriller
    • 5/5
      Going in to this book I didn’t have a clue what it was about. I honestly thought that it was a book related to a Tina Fey movie. However, with in the first chapter I was completely hooked and could not stop listening. It’s in sanely interesting and the way the chapters alternate between characters is phenomenal.
    • 3/5
      WTF! the whole book is building up three characters and all their associated millennial issues. Then in the last few chapters they finally connect and an antagonist organization is presented, but no conclusion! it just freaking ends. Literally WTF!!!! LOL
    • 5/5
      Unbelievably good, with fantastic wit and prose. Very well done!
    • 5/5
      Awesome book! I didnt want it to end. I really lived the unique way the author described things/situations.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book! The characters were so quirky and interesting. It took a little while to see how they fit together, and it leaves you with a great longing to find out what happens to them all next, but it's a fun book. I would definately recommend reading it.
    • 5/5
      Fun book. Detailed characters. I'm kind of bias because a lot of the story takes place here in my city of Portland, Oregon, which adds an extra dimension of intrigue, but the story is good. MORE IMPORTANTLY people need to know that this book has absolutely NO RELATION to the movie starring Tina Fey, despite the fact they share a title.
    • 4/5
      Kept my interest but unsatisfying ending. I wish I knew what happened in the end
    • 5/5
      Start this book only if you plan on not sleeping for awhile. I got so wrapped up in these characters, and their story, that I just couldn't put this down.
      Suspenseful, heart-felt and unique, this is just a wonderful book.
      I loved the narrator as well.
    • 2/5
      There is an interesting story in there somewhere but it lost steam for me after the initial character introductions. Skim-heard the rest of the way through and the narrator's faux female voiceover did distract me (although overall he did a good job).

      Too boy-adventure for me.
    • 2/5
      I always give audio books an hour before I decide of its worth it. I know this one was supposed to be good, but it just couldn't keep my attention. The narrator wasn't bad, but wasn't enough to carry the book.
    • 1/5
      It’s half a book. It builds up and then just ends in the middle of the story. It’s well written and good character development, but just abruptly stops at a cliffhanger. It’s a book, not an episode of a show on Netflix. WTF is an apt title for the experience of this book.
    • 3/5
      Strange book. I can image how they Mage a movie of it. I did finish it so it held my interest.
    • 2/5
      The action part of the story was pretty good. The technology was overly simplistic and anyone with an understanding of technology will find it frustrating - especially as the writer and to give up part way through and switches to essentially magic. The ending was bad, just plain bad. It's obvious the writer wanted to leave open the option of sequels, but you do that by having background story lines that continue while concluding the focus of the individual book. Not so here. Nothing was concluded.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Mr Schafer,
      Please write another book!
      Your characters got under my skin, became so real I am not certain I've not met them.
      This visceral story took over my life for five days. The amount of things I did (instead of real work) as an excuse to slip my headphones on and keep listening is obscene. What a great read!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The plot took a little while to develop, but once it did, the characters came together in a way that reflected the theme of the story. Good narration and a unique plot. Overall, worth the time invested in listening.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This was one of those odd cases where I think the novel was very clever, with an intricate, well thought out plot, but I just couldn’t make myself like it.There are three separate plot lines revolving around a young Persian-American woman working for an NGO in Burma, a young man who has just lost his job working for a childcare setting in Portland, Oregon, and an author of a self-help manual who is working the promotional chat show circuit. There is no apparent connection between them … except that they might be subject to scrutiny by a secret ‘shadow government’. From there it trundles on as a conspiracy thriller.I think my difficulties with this book arose from the narrative tone – the plot was potentially strong, but it just didn’t hang together as a book. I wonder whether the author was too concerned with how it might be filmed.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable & accomplished debut. It was as if T. C. Boyle, William Gibson, and Carl Hiassen decided to collaborate on a humorous, character driven, bleeding edge, sci-fi tinged conspiracy thriller. It was fascinating, well plotted, the character development was out of this world (the characters' vividly rendered inner monologues were very reminiscent of Boyle), and it was peppered with laugh-out-loud-funny one liners. I'm okay with the ambiguous conclusion but I'm also hoping for a sequel. The author's bio says "there will be more. Oh yes, there WILL be more." Yes, please.
    • 4/5
      This story is about a megalomaniac who intends to intercept and record every piece of information transmitted and eventually hold this information hostage if it suited him. There are, however, (and of course), those who wish to stop him and they recruit a young woman who happened across one of the huge server farms in the jungles of Burma (who has a genius sister) and the writer of a self-help book that was being wooed to be the Storywriter-in-Chief for the Committee. The story was rather slow in building and the author's voice came through periodically as rants. The story ended abruptly and I hope this doesn't mean a sequel is coming.
    • 3/5
      This book was maddening. The first half was great, the 2nd drug on a bit and then....poof. The author takes a current tech trend (Big Data) to an extreme, pitting a good side against a bad side for what amounts to world domination. There are Gen Xers, evil business people, drugs, an international charity, monolithic computing power, sex, strange processes, and Lord knows what else involved. The writing is excellent, the dialogue great, and the story interesting. What's not to like?

      Well, when you're reading a physical (hardback) book and the pages remaining are dwindling to the point where there are just a few left, and you know that what's been laid out in the story could take another, oh, couple hundred pages to come to some sort of conclusion, and it just peters out.... that's what not to like.

      When I review books, I look at writing, dialogue, plot, character development, and conclusion, and WTF was great on all counts except for the conclusion. You know how a movie may end abruptly, but you actually kind of know what's going to happen because it's been baked into the plot? Well, that doesn't happen here. It ends and it's anyone's guess that happens to the guy who could save humanity. Or not.

      Loved the writing, loved the technology stuff (both real and imagined), but WTF?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I had a few people recommend this book to me, raving about it, but I'm not so sure I'd pass on the same way.I liked that start well enough, Leila seemed to be written well and have an interesting story -- a lady working for a nonprofit health organization struggling to get a foothold in Burma seemed ripe with possibilities. But when the reader is thrust into the fairly shallow and scattered straits of Leo's head on a bike ride into his job at a day care I ran aground.The first paragraph of Leo's story, the first sentence, just slopped out, for me. "Turning his head to look at the Fremont Bridge sparkling in the sharp light of the November morning, Leo felt his chin rasp across the collars of his two woolen shirts and his canvas work coat." I just think I'm not a big fan of third person subjective, especially when it seems like we get only one (fairly boring) dimension of a character.When I emerged into the Mark Deveraux chapter I felt like I could breath again and the narrative jolted to life a little for me, the prose seemed to flow a little better, but I did worry that a third of the book would be spent with a character I just didn't believe.The conspiracy at the heart of the book coalesces, it doesn't race, and that's kind of enjoyable. But I just found myself getting frustrated by some clunky dialogue and lengthy descriptions and the fact that much of the story hinged on Leo just didn't work for me.