Venomous Lumpsucker
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Venomous Lumpsucker Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Ned Beauman (Author), John Hastings (Narrator), Sceptre (Publisher)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 1,362 ratings
Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy
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***Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award***

*SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE YEAR*

The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet. Because it might have just gone extinct. Nobody knows. And nobody really cares, either. Except for two people.

Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish is gone for good, and biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes. They don't trust each other an inch, but they're left with no choice but to team up in search of the lumpsucker. And as they journey across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe - a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the Baltic Sea; the lethal hinterlands of a totalitarian state - they're drawn into a conspiracy far bigger than one ugly little fish.

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  1. Listening Length
    10 hours and 35 minutes
  2. Author
    Ned Beauman
  3. Narrator
    John Hastings
  4. Audible release date
    July 14, 2022
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Sceptre
  7. ASIN
    B09VM6YG13
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 10 hours and 35 minutes
Author Ned Beauman
Narrator John Hastings
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date July 14, 2022
Publisher Sceptre
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B09VM6YG13
Best Sellers Rank #216,909 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#2,405 in Humorous Fiction & Satire
#9,226 in Humorous Fiction
#14,797 in Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
1,362 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Neurasthenic
5.0 out of 5 stars What a brilliant, depressing, hilarious book!
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2022
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I have no idea how I learned about this book. It must have been reviewed in some magazine I read but I can't remember which. Anyway, good thing I ordered it. The book is essentially a thriller set in a dystopian near-future where ecosystems are collapsing. There is blissfully little exposition; we discover the state of the world through the experiences of the book's main characters, and the situation is grim. All our main characters are involved in some way with the "extinction industry", a brilliantly and depressingly realistically envisioned group of firms that exist to manipulate and/or profit from a regulatory framework created around mass extinction. Beauman's inspiration seems to be the industry around the creation and trading of carbon credits, and he's clearly well read on the abuses of that system, and creative in thinking about how gruesome equivalent abuses would be when species are at stake.

The end of the book is not quite as good as what has come before. A couple of characters have nearly magical technical skills, and this is used to resolve numerous challenging situations through a lazy sort of deus ex machina. But otherwise the book is smart, creative, and both funny and sad. An easy five stars.
13 people found this helpful
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Vegan Gal
4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding worldbuilding; satisfying finish
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2023
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Not the easiest book to read - there's a bunch of exposition and the author likes loooong paragraphs. But terrific worldbuilding, full of fantastic ideas, and a strong (and somewhat optimistic) ending. Highly recommended!
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Margaret Luna
3.0 out of 5 stars This book is exhausting
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2023
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Pros: Good world-building, it feels real. Premise is very interesting & relevant.
Cons: Characters are one-dimensional & only interesting for the first few pages where we meet them.
Sooooooooooooooooooooo much exposition! Two lines of dialogue followed by four pages of text. I mean. I skipped whole chunks & didn't miss much. This feels like it should be an essay, not a story.
Where did I hear about this book??? I wish I could remember so I could tell them to stop promoting this pretentious, over-written slog.
You've got better things to do with your time; read something else
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Dale Kutnick
5.0 out of 5 stars A rapid-fire, poignant journey into a potential future
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2023
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I thoroughly enjoyed Mr Beauman’s novel; it was a captivating adventure story sprinkled with numerous philosophical dilemmas that homo sapiens is just beginning to explore in detail. The “understory” about animals, anthropocene decline, consciousness, cyberbiocene futures, etc. . .made for a compelling read. And did I mention that that book was well-written, with a nice amalgam of sci-fi, bioscience, psychology, humanistic challenges, etc.
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Bort
4.0 out of 5 stars Got good at the end
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2023
This book was interesting and very unique, but it needed to be a lot shorter. Lots of new ideas here - particularly about where the world is going with mass extinctions and what it could mean for political powers and the economy - and the characters were good (but also hard to relate to because the world is so different.) The writing wasn't bad necessarily, but the mid section dragged for me big time.

I can understand why this book received the recognition it did. I read a lot of scifi and other than maybe a Kim Stanely Robinson book, I haven't really come across a story that had such unique ideas about the future. It wasn't some far off wack-a-doo setting - most things were very much rooted in a reality where money is still king and saving (or not saving) species is a new way to make (or lose) giant amounts of money. There wasn't even really some far out technology (except for a few clever things here and there.) The imagination really was in how will the world respond when the animals really start to go, and who stands to gain from that.

So it started out really strong. Learning cool things about interesting animals. The two main characters are on opposite sides of the coin and their relationship leads to some unexpected conversations. I actually found the least likeable character to more relatable or understandable. But then in the middle of the book it just felt boring. There are jumps in the timeline. Passages that feel more like a future-encyclopedia of stuff that feels made up. And there wasn't a lot of reason to keep reading other than the main mystery (trying to find these dang fish) which really didn't matter much to me (at a certain point it almost felt like they'd forgotten about that.)

The end though! Kind of comes out of nowhere, but it's action packed and full of twists. I'm not sure the story leading up to it had earned the ending, but it's really the only part I found fun, well written, and completely unexpected. I wish there had been more of that in the whole story.

I don't think I could recommend this one, but when I did enjoy reading it I enjoyed it a lot.
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Chris Bish
5.0 out of 5 stars Wild book. Put your seatbelt on!
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2022
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Ned Beauman’s imagination is at the cosmic level. His depiction of our corrupt society is perfect. Not even the real threat of extinction to humans changes the greed index. Beauman’s description of our world as it nears the end of humans is compelling, real and amazingly, funny.
7 people found this helpful
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Truck Music
5.0 out of 5 stars Not your conventional sci-fi
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2023
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It seemed a little disjointed and the characters were a bit odd but like many recipes, once all the ingredients are combined the result can be quite tasty. So it was with Venomous Lumpsucker. I was pleasantly surprised at how it all pulled together.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Manda Scott
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, funny, sharp and prescient
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 18, 2024
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This book won the 2023 Arthur C Clarke award, what more do I need to say? It’s brilliantly written, sharp, shockingly funny - spit-your-tea-across-the-keyboard funny in unexpected ways and unexpected places. But mostly it’s an excoriating examination of a near future where capitalism has continued to run riot and the venal, self-serving hypocrisy has reached a climax of impossibility. In essence, the Venomous Lumpsucker of the title is threatened with extinction. Companies that render endangered species extinct have a (small, but significant) hit to their profits. But the markets have intervened to create a DNA bank which promises that they’re not *actually* extinct. So that’s fine. Go ahead and mine the last possible habitat, because they’re ’safe’ - until someone destroys the DNA bank. It was a fiction anyway, but it’s theoretical existence was providing a fig leaf for a lot of profiteering and now that leaf has been stripped away, some very powerful people are going to be pretty angry. Particularly if there’s a fairly low-level cog in the wheel who can be blamed for all kinds of things. Mark Halyard is the entirely morally ambiguous (actually, I’m being kind, he’s a self-serving idiot who made a daft gamble that has gone wrong and is desperate to stay out of prison). As lead character’s go, he pulls us either side of the line between pitying him and despising him. Rather more clear cut is his partner-in-uncrime, Karin Resaint who only cares about finding the Venomous Lumpsucker - said to be one of the most intelligent More-than-Human (i term them this, nobody in the book does) species. These two don’t have much in common, but they want to find the last living Lumpsuckers and their quest is going to take them to the edges of Network Sea-States and, ultimately, to an ASI that knows a lot more about what’s going on than any of the meat-packets wandering around thinking they’re in charge.

I wouldn’t normally write a review of something so obviously dystopian. I loathe dystopias: generally speaking they’re lazy attempts to project the worst of human behaviour along predictable time lines with the fluffy moral excuse that if we knew how bad things were going to be, we’d change trajectory. This is quite plainly not true and the absolute definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result. So let’s not write more lazy fiction. But Venomous Lumpsucker is not lazy at all, and Beaman’s understanding of the various converging forces of capital, genetic engineering, libertarian fantasy politics and AI makes this essential - and highly enjoyable - reading.
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WILLIAM
5.0 out of 5 stars Future Times made legible
Reviewed in Germany on October 20, 2023
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Amazing story, great backdrop time/settings, interesting characters.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating read
Reviewed in Australia on August 23, 2022
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Very well written characters, each sufficiently well drawn to hold my attention to the end. Loved the humour, the irony and the sarcasm. Loved the whole plot. Highly recommended
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Peer Sylvester
4.0 out of 5 stars Zynisch und Abgefahren
Reviewed in Germany on October 8, 2023
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Venemous Lumpsucker spielt in der nahen Zukunft, 2 Grad Ziel wurde nicht erreicht, vieles geht zugrunde, auch aufgrund von neuen Schimmeln und Krankheiten. Um das Aussterben von Arten zu verhindern hat sich ein eigener Wirtschaftszweig um das Erhalten und Aussterben lassen von Arten gebildet. Das ist alles nicht unrealistisch, bisweilen zynisch und vor allem tiefschwarz. Und wird politisch sensibleren Gemütern auf der neoliberalen/konservativen Seite vermutlich eher negativ aufstoßen, auch wenn das dargestellte Szenario eine klar überzeichnete Satire ist.

Ned Beauman wird gerne mit Stephenson verglichen und ich sehe hier warum (es ist das erste Buch, das ich von ihm lese): Die Geschichte ist abgefahren, aber irgendwo realistisch und im ironischen Tonfall werden lange Erklärungen geliefert, die einen Gutteil des Reizes ausmachen. Und die Geschichte sind verdammt originell! Außerdem haben Geschichte und World Building ein angemessenes Tempo. Gelegentlich bleibt das Lachen im Halse stecken (wobei es sowieso weniger Slapstick und mehr Satire ist, die gelegentlich in Zynismus umschlägt). Stephenson schreibt aber deutlich bessere Charaktere, die in diesem Buch bleiben eher flach. Und die Geschichte selbst ist eher eine Farce: Die Protagonisten reisen hierhin und dorthin und ihnen passieren Dinge, die die Story am Laufen halten. Man merkt, dass es eher Vehikel ist, um die coolen Dinge beschreiben zu können. Aber zumindest hat mich das Buch neugierig auf die anderen Bücher des Autoren gemacht - man liest so wenig wirklich originelles!
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Corchito
4.0 out of 5 stars The book's fantastic, but the Kindle version definitely isn't
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2023
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I really enjoyed this book. It reminds me of Douglas Adams - not in terms of the writing style, but in its preoccupations with ludicrous bureaucracy, unintended conseqences and environmental issues.

The Kindle version is pretty poor though. Several typos and formatting errors, starting from the first page. I also encountered one issue around page 84 where going to the next page actually sends you BACK several pages. And there's another one around page 100 where going to the next page sends you straight to the end of the book. The only way round this is to use "go to" and type in the number of the next page manually.
5 people found this helpful
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