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Europe in Autumn
Europe in Autumn
Europe in Autumn
Audiobook12 hours

Europe in Autumn

Written by Dave Hutchinson

Narrated by Graham Rowat

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Rudi is a cook in a Krakow restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career - part spy, part people-smuggler - begins. Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line, a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-Europe railway line, goes wrong, he is arrested and beaten, and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue. With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him. With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws itself, Europe in Autumn is a science fiction thriller like no other.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 13, 2017
ISBN9781501981869
Europe in Autumn
Author

Dave Hutchinson

DAVE HUTCHINSON was born in Sheffield in 1960 and read American Studies at the University of Nottingham before becoming a journalist. He’s the author of five collections of short stories and four novels. His novella The Push was nominated for the BSFA Award in 2010, and his novels Europe in Autumn and Europe at Midnight were nominated for the BSFA, Arthur C Clarke, and John W Campbell Memorial Awards in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Europe at Midnight was also shortlisted for a Kitschie Award in 2016. He now writes full-time, and lives in North London.

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Reviews for Europe in Autumn

Rating: 3.7500000606060606 out of 5 stars
4/5

132 ratings10 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good book. Missing “pages” fixed by deleting and downloading again.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This was a mess. The setting could hardly be more interesting - a spy story set in fragmented Europe in alternative-reality near future. However, it is just so poorly written that I barely made it until the end. I didn't like the structure and the pacing in this novel. The worst was that the new characters kept being introduced until the very end which made for a very tiring read. There was not much character development either. If it hadn't been for the big plot twist towards the end of the book, I'd have rated this 1 star.
    I also felt there was a lot of negative stereotyping in this book, mainly regarding the "Eastern Europeans" and a slight tone of misogyny for those few parts where female characters were even involved. It makes me think the author does not know very much about the geographical parts he is describing (or their inhabitants).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book, a sort of espionage / sci-fi mash up set in a not too far off future. For me it was a place that was recognizable, yet there were differences, some large, some subtle. The central character is well drawn, and I liked him a lot. There are many secondary characters, also well fleshed out. The action takes place in a realistic setting, those in it behaving in all too human ways. It's an interesting story that kept me gripped, but towards the end something is revealed that changes what the reader thinks is going on. I was a little disappointed by it, as I had up to that point, been enjoying it simply as a futuristic tale of espionage. I'm definitely going to seek out the other books in the series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a very good example of a book, the start of a series, that is satisfying despite a conspicuous lack of quality. The writing is non-literary; that is the writer sees himself as a reporter more than an artist of any kind. We are put in a Forsythian Europe of no nonsense men who just tough it out. Men who know only facts and plans. And this is a world of meticulous planning. And codifying. And yet.It all works quite perfectly. The writing style, despite (or maybe because) of its poverty keeps the plot in the now. And unfashionably, the story actually more or less makes sense. Even with some detail lopped off where it might be useful when the big conceit appears, the reader remains sated.I am reminded of many books and styles - Neal Stephenson, Christopher Priest, Nick Harkaway, China Mieville - although the lack of writing kind of enhances the story. This is the one time the motorway burger does the job.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rating: 4.5* enthralled starsThe Publisher Says: Europe in Autumn is a thriller of espionage and the future which reads like the love child of John le Carre and Franz Kafka.Rudi is a cook in a Krakow restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career - part spy, part people-smuggler - begins. Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line, a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-Europe railway line, goes wrong, he is arrested, beaten and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue. With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him. With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws, Rudi begins to realise that underneath his daily round of plot and counter plot, behind the conflicting territories, another entirely different reality might be pulling the strings...My Review: If book 2 is out, I'm orderin' it for myself for Xmas.This isn't a uniformly kinetic book. The characters, by whatever names their current legends require, (oh, and "legend" here is a term of art) are shown thinking, strategizing, reflecting on their world and its insanities as much as they're shown whizzing around with cool spy stuff and lots of ways to blow people up and steal their money.My favorite piece of spyware in the book is a towel that rolls out into a computer. WANT. NOW.Rudi, by various names, does many reprehensible things and feels...remorse is too strong...as if he's failed when he has to resort to reprehensibility to get what he's been sent after. He meets and re-meets many folks from his pasts. He is a darn good, fun hero-on-the-border-of-antihero-ness, and I want to see him in book 2, Europe at Midnight.And now I'm going to do something really, really mean: At the end of the book, Rudi makes a complete worldview-changing discovery that is, at least for me, unexpected to the point of jaw-dropping. It makes some oddly rough, even poorly fitting, facts make absolute sense.I really, really liked this book. I hope there's no let-down coming!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This story goes everywhere. Into the past, present and and future of many new and old places in Europe and places in of another 'hidden' Europe'. We learn lots about cooking. And there is spy craft usingd new gadgets and old tricks. We see what do to if something unexpected turns up in your left luggage locker. It all just about hangs together. But to what end?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting world, but the characterisation. The first half read like a series of short stories. The second half was a bit more connected.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A delicious near-future espionage thriller set in a (maybe?) alternate-history eastern Europe. Alan Furst meets Ian McDonald. Recommended. Gets a little uneven towards the end.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brilliant, set in a near future Europe that is utterly different from now without being distopian or post apocalyptic. The ending takes an unexpected turn and is clearly setting up for the sequel but the rest of the book is fantastic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In a near-future Europe, where big government has weakened and corroded, micro-states have emerged all over the place and a secret order of couriers transports information, goods and even people across the new frontiers. Our protagonist, an Estonian who starts the book in Poland, becomes enmeshed in this shadowy political and social system and then tries to get out.It ticked an awful lot of my personal boxes - in my day job I have advised a number of wannabe independent states, and I've been very involved with the freedom of movement questions slightly satirised here. There's even an off-screen character called Whyte who is obsessed with maps, numbers and imaginary places. So I can't claim to be terribly objective about it.I do feel that it has a great take on the erosion of identity, both personal and national, in a possible future Europe; it has reflections of Borges, of The Crying of Lot 49, and an neat shift of narrative point of view from about half-way through. Slight marks off, admittedly, for hidden forces behind it all whose means and motivation are not clearly established, and for a couple of other slips ("Hindenberg" should really be "Hindenburg", I winced at "Facist", and there seems no spelling difference between what are implied to be different versions of the name "Tonu").