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    The Company Man
    The Company Man
    The Company Man
    Audiobook16 hours

    The Company Man

    Written by Robert Jackson Bennett

    Narrated by Richard Poe

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Robert Jackson Bennett's debut novel Mr. Shivers was called "compelling and truly horrifying" (Library Journal), winning him favorable comparisons to Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. The Company Man takes listeners on a wild ride to 1919 Washington state, where a war is brewing between the McNaughton Corporation and its union workers. When the conflict's latest casualty prompts McNaughton security officer Cyril Hayes to investigate, he's soon caught up in worker claims that the corporation's machines have minds of their own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 16, 2011
    ISBN9781449843335
    The Company Man
    Author

    Robert Jackson Bennett

    Robert Jackson Bennett is the author of Foundryside and the Divine Cities trilogy, which was a 2018 Hugo Awards finalist in the Best Series category. The first book in the series, City of Stairs, was also a finalist for the World Fantasy and Locus Awards, and the second, City of Blades, was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards. His previous novels, which include American Elsewhere and Mr. Shivers, have received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence. He lives in Austin with his family.

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    Reviews for The Company Man

    3.5/5

    7 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The Company Man is a steampunk novel with alternate history and science fiction overtures. This makes for a very interesting setting. The book itself is set in Evesden, Washington in the early 20th (1919). Amazing new advancements have come courtesy of the McNaughton Corporation, and have ushered America onto the world stage, as well as making Evesden a hub for businesses and spite from others around the globe. There are basically three main characters that the author interweaves the story among, and they couldn’t be more different in character and what they believe in.Detective Don Garvey is an Evesden Homicide Investigator, who has been told by his bosses, to drop all other case, except for union members who have been dying. What he doesn’t know is that they are all employees of McNaughton who have been privately spying on the union, and that McNaughton’s own employees are plotting devious deeds that will blame the unions themselves for the troubles. Garvey is a divorced father of two little girls, as well as being a former librarian before finally becoming a murder cop. Garvey is good at his job, but is put into difficult situation because he is friends with Cyril Hayes, who has a different way about doing his investigations. Garvey, is also one of the few people who know about Hayes uniqueness, and doesn’t mind. Cyril Hayes is a private contractor, and a scientific oddity who works for McNaughton. It is job to look into trouble within the company and solve them before they spread. Hayes is supposed to be a scalpel, not a shotgun, but as he was looking into another problem, the person jumped and the company is now being sued. Now, he is being kept under wraps and ends up with an assistant (Samantha Fairbanks), and loads of ahead. Cyril is addicted to opium and finds himself in teahouses getting his fix on. Hayes can also feel echoes in people’s minds, and it tells them what they are really thinking about. People call him Princeling, for some reason, which is never really explained. He is a former British Colonel, and son of an ambassador to Pakistan who was given really one chance to change his life; work for McNaughton. Cyril’s uniqueness, in the end, is what drives this story to the ending.Samantha Fairbanks is Hayes new assistant, as well as a person who you can actually enjoy reading about. She’s not a sniffling loony when things go wrong. In fact, she jumps in with both feet and doesn’t take crap from Hayes. She’s English and a former army nurse who has traveled extensively. She is supposed to keep Hayes in line, but ends up doing more in bringing answers to the table, than both Hayes and Garvey combined. The Company Man is one of the creepiest books you will find, with alternative technology that will make even science fiction lovers stand up and take notice. This is Bennett’s second book after Mr. Shivers, which I have not read. The characters aren’t perfect, but in this reality you would expect that they would all have some faults.I did have many qualms about The Company Man as I was reading it, but eventually things do work themselves out, and the ending is as interesting as you will find, but it also left me wanting to know more about Hayes future. My only problem was that one of the main characters doesn’t make it to the end. Call it a sort of betrayal by those this person trusted with his life. Yes, there is a romantic interlude between the characters, but it’s not all hot and bothered like UF and PNR novels.Publishers ARC...book releases 04/11/2011
    • 3/5
      I just finished The Company Man last night. I enjoyed it. I thought the ending left something to be desired but maybe he expects to write a sequel. I finished it relatively quickly. I guess you could say it is a steampunk detective noir novel based in 1919. Michael Berry, who is a SF Chronicle staff writer and reviews science fiction put it amongst the top sf and fantasy of 2011, which is how I happened upon it.
    • 3/5
      This book takes place in an alternative history. It is 1919 and the McNaughton Corp has become the world’s technological leader. With the increased prosperity also comes increased poverty and there are dozens of murders each month in the city. When a man if found floating in a canal, police detective Garvey contacts Cyril Hayes. Cyril is able to form a telepathic link with people and soon believes that McNaughton's machinery is trying to talk to the city's workers.I thought the book started off well, but it lost me with its talk of aliens and other such conspiracies. I thought the characters were interesting, but the plot wore on me after a while. Although this wasn't' a bad read, I think it just wasn't for me. Those who like science fiction, paranormal and urban fantasy will probably enjoy this book.
    • 3/5
      This is a book that is hard to quantify, almost as hard as it was for me to get into, and to be honest I nearly gave up on it several times. It's the story of Cyril Hayes, who can get glimpses of how people think and what they're thinking about after spending some time with them, his policeman friend Garvey and his assistant Samantha Fairbanks. They all live in an alternative America where the McNaughton Corporation builds strange devices that have changed the world. Their guns won the Great War. And near where they started they built Evesden, the city of tomorrow, where every thing lives, both good and bad.Hayes has to investigate some murders, but what he finds will change everything.It just didn't really work for me, I kept hoping that there would be some relief from the darkness, some bright and shining light of hope, but no, it just kept feeding me darkness. I didn't believe some of the relationships and some of the sideline characters blurred into one, making me wonder why the author bothered differentiating these people.It wasn't a bad read but he's not an author I intend to revisit, a later work may catch my eye but I won't be rushing out to find it.