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    Misspent Youth
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    Misspent Youth
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    Misspent Youth
    Audiobook12 hours

    Misspent Youth

    Written by Peter F. Hamilton

    Narrated by Steven Crossley

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    2040: After decades of research, scientists of the European Union believe that they have at last conquered humankind's most pernicious foe: old age. For the first time, technology holds out the promise of not merely slowing the aging process but actually reversing it.



    The first subject for treatment is seventy-eight-year-old philanthropist Jeff Baker. After eighteen months in a rejuvenation tank, Jeff emerges looking like a twenty-year-old. And the change is more than skin deep. From his hair cells down to his DNA, Jeff is twenty-with a breadth of life experience. But while possessing the wisdom of a septuagenarian at age twenty is one thing, raging testosterone is another, as Jeff soon discovers. Suddenly his oldest friends seem, well, old. Jeff's trophy wife looks better than she ever did. His teenage son, Tim, is more like a younger brother. And Tim's nubile girlfriend is a conquest too tempting to resist.



    Jeff's rejuvenated libido wreaks havoc on the lives of his friends and family, straining his relationship with Tim to the breaking point. It's as if youth is a drug and Jeff is wasted on it. But if so, it's an addiction he has no interest in kicking.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Audio
    Release dateJan 5, 2016
    ISBN9781515970927
    Unavailable
    Misspent Youth
    Author

    Peter F. Hamilton

    Peter F. Hamilton was born in Rutland in 1960 and still lives nearby. He began writing in 1987, and sold his first short story to Fear magazine in 1988. He has written many bestselling novels, including the Greg Mandel series, the Night's Dawn trilogy, the Commonwealth Saga, the Void trilogy, short-story collections and several standalone novels including Fallen Dragon and Great North Road.

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    Reviews for Misspent Youth

    3/5

    156 ratings13 reviews

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    • 3/5
      It was a pretty quick read which was good as I didn't really enjoy it all that much.A great part of the book dealt with European integration issues that just didn't seem to go anywhere. I also found the characters pretty shallow.
    • 3/5
      This is one of those novels that need to be read without any expectations. Knowing that this is the start of the Commonwealth novels, it is hard not to expect another masterpiece - or at least something that connects. The connection that exist is here of course but it is really closer to a prologue than to a full novel; there are glimpses of the technologies to come but it is too early, too undefined. In some cases you can see them only because you know how it all evolved, what comes next in the saga. It is not a space opera novel as the rest of the saga; without the coming saga it is only marginally science fiction - yes, there are SF elements but at the heart of it is the story of a family. Tolstoy once said: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". And this novel is yer another proof of that old line - because the Bakers were not really interesting until they got unhappy. The irony of course is that what made them so miserable is what was supposed to make them happy. Jeff Baker becomes the first man to be rejuvenated - and returns to his house to live his life again. The process is very involved and expensive and the only reason he is the first to get the treatment is because of decisions made by him in the past - releasing his crystals with no patents to the world allowing information to be saved in enormous amounts and allows the data society to begin. But once Jeff is back, things go all wrong. Both Jeff and his son have issues connecting, love triangles start getting built (and Hamilton does not shy away from writing a lot of sex scenes) and old secrets start getting revealed. Just when you think you know what had happened, something shifts and we learn yet another old secret that changes everything. The misspent youth of the title stands for all the youths that are lost here - the two that Jeff gets to have and the one of his son. They all make their decisions (even the old man that is supposed to know better) which they need to live with. Or not. The end of the story is heartbreaking and puts all the choices in perspective, showing the lives led in vain. It is not a great story and without the looming saga coming after it, it is dated - it is set so close to the current time that it get dates very fast. That usually do not bother me but... as much as I was trying to read with no expectations, they sneaked in. It is not a mandatory reading even if you love the Commonwealth novels - but if you have nothing else to do, there are worse way to spend a few days.
    • 3/5
      Misspent Youth was reminiscent of Hamilton's first book which was somewhat of an adolescent love story. Not rating it very high because it took a lot of will power to keep reading the book. One does not think this was the fault of the book and infarct the story line is what kept me coming back to see what would happen next. Very interesting book that adds some history to Hamilton's world.
    • 2/5
      A bit light and, to be honest, I got bored halfway through. Kept reading hoping that it would get better and also because I do enjoy the little side bits that Peter Hamilton throws in about the state of the world (politics, society, technology) along the way. However, not anywhere near as good as his other books.
    • 1/5
      An absolute piece of crap considering this came from Hamilton. This book is nothing more than a testosterone filled journey of someone rejuvenated and then sleeps with everyone he meets. Very very disappointing.
    • 3/5
      (Reviewed March 11, 2009)I don't usually read near-future SF, as I find it dates very quickly and becomes irrelevant almost immediately, like a report on global warming. I made an exception here, however, because Hamilton has done an unusual thing in setting up a new universe several hundred years prior to its main plot crux. I thought this was an interesting idea, to see the future technologies in their infancy, in their first stages before they become perfect and ubiquitous.Unfortunately, while this is all fascinating technically, the plot and the characters are pretty awful. The main character, Tim, is just about the whiniest, most humourless little shit I've ever had the displeasure of encountering. I'd briefly skimmed over the blurb for this book, and misinterpreted the plot. I thought Tim was going to die and then come back to life through rejuvenation. I thought Hamilton was purposefully making Tim an unpleasent shit so his new persona could be juxtaposed with his old one. No such luck, unfortunately. Most of the plot is Tim's pervert dad having sex with every woman and child he can get his dick into. The sex is pretty gross, and the politics almost as bad (my goodness does Hamilton hate the European Union, what unabashed vitriol!), but...in the end it hooked me, and I'm still not sure why. Hamilton's books are like that. They're kinda disgusting and puritanical, but by god do they keep you reading.And I gotta give him props for that.
    • 3/5
      If you like to read a lot of sex scenes and hate the European Union, you'll love this book. Unfortunately I don't fit the profile. I prefer a bit more world building even in near future settings. I really never got a sense of why things were happening as to the European subplot. To me everything but the Jeff/Annabelle/Tim triangle was lacking. I also felt it hard to connect to any of the characters.
    • 2/5
      An interesting premise with.uninspired execution. I wanted to read what life might be like for the first person made young again, but the actual story was banal and predictable.

      This book is only 13 years old, but some of its ideas are already outdated. For instance, the author imagines a world where digital piracy has crippled creative industry to such a degree that new entertainment media can only be funded through product placement and embedded advertising. In the real world the scenario he imagines would be technologically possible, but it has not happened. In the time since this book has been written it has been demonstrated that many people will pay for things even when they could easily pirate them. Crowdfunding through services like Kickstarter and Patreon have shown some will even pay for things which don't yet exist and might never get made.
    • 2/5
      A story about a completely reprehensible person and his mostly reprehensible family and friends in a near future England where government control and surveillance has gone too far. Rich people gone wrong should really be the title of this one, but it didn't make for great reading. The author actually warns us that some of the proof readers didn't like the characters - I should have listened! Nothing wrong with the plot, writing or speculation on how tech will progress, I just hated the characters.
    • 2/5
      Not his best work. Interesting premise on the beginning of a new era of revitalization drugs, that becomes rather cliche. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen and it never did.
    • 3/5
      This is probably, not considering The Web: Lightstorm, Hamilton's most obscure and least respected work despite it being the first novel in his recent Commonwealth Saga. I myself read all the other Hamilton first.In some ways, this novel returns to the beginning of Hamilton's career and the Greg Mandel books which made his reputation. Like those, it is set in the near-future and in Hamilton's hometown of Rutland, England. However, the usual detailed combat sequences, the crime, and the espionage usually in his books don't show up here though the book does end with some riots.While he has said that some characters from later Commonwealth books show up here very briefly, I must have blinked because I missed them. Some technologies central to the series do show up here.Those technologies are tied to the life of the novel's protagonist Jeff Baker. In his younger days, he invented the solid-state crystal method of storing huge amounts of information and, incidentally, helping to destroy large sections of the entertainment industry via piracy. Respected for his abilities as a physicist and loved for not patenting this invention, Baker is chosen to be the first subject of the European Union's massive science project to rejuvenate the human body. And it's just in time too because, in the year 2036, the health of 77 year old Baker is failing.He gets that rejuvenation and much of the rest of the novel is the playing out of those two old laments: "Youth is wasted on the young" and "If I only had it to do over again." Well, Baker's biological clock is set to his early twenties, and he, now handsome, famous, and rich, uses the opportunity as many a man would: to bed as many women as possible and live out his sexual fantasies. The consequences for his marriage to an ex-model and his relationship with his teenage son are not good.Despite large amounts of sex, Hamilton usually isn't very explicit in describing the various encounters, only their preludes, the descriptions of his characters' bodies and clothes. And the concerns about family are a fitting opening to the Commonwealth Saga. Those books are full of family dynasties, and readers of the Void trilogy know that one of its heroes, Eduard, laments most the loss of a grandchild.Like most near future science fiction, this one has dated some already. The entertainment industry, so far, hasn't collapsed from piracy and disregard for copyright whereas in Hamilton's book "pre10" entertainment is all that's really available. Still, some of the political and social problems in this novel's world are still with us - the tax load needed to sustain pensions in European countries, the consequences for Europe's elderly as the continent goes through a demographic contraction, and the resentment of some countries' populations at Brussels' negation of national sovereignty.Like everybody else, this is not my favorite Hamilton book, but it is enjoyable considered on its own terms.
    • 1/5
      Jeff Baker, founder of the datasphere, is the first person to be chosen for a new and highly expensive rejuvenation treatment, which completely reverses the aging process in almost every way. 78 years old, and after the treatment he looks, feels and effectively is, 20 again. He just has more memories. Misspent Youth follows the effect his has on him, his wife and son, and society at large.This book is a great concept, has a lot of potential, and in the hands of Peter F. Hamilton, one of my favourite SF authors, I had high hopes. These hopes were dashed on the cold hard rock of reality. Not wanting to put it too badly, but this book is dire. It’s all about sex. I kid you not. I like sex, I like occasionally reading about it, but it’s on practically every page here. Basic plot. Jeff Baker, pensioner, gets rejuvenated so he’s young again, gets really randy and just has sex all the time. All the potential, wasted. This book hasn’t been thought through, concepts haven’t been developed hardly at all. It’s just bad. Reading customer reviews on Amazon, and 19 out of 20 of them completely agree with my assessment. Lets just hope Hamilton can get back on form with his next book.
    • 4/5
      This was just a so-so sci-fi novel. Low on science, high on character building and some hint of the misguided European socialism gone to its inevitable awful conclusion. This novel was a preamble to Hamilton’s novels Judas Unchained and Pandora’s Star. Misspent Youth was written after those other novels, but it’s timeline happens about 300 years or so before Pandora’s Star. I’ve yet to read those other two novels, but I suspect I should have read them in published order and not based on timeline. While this novel was ok and I doubt that this gave away any secrets that will ruin the other novels, I think this was meant to be more of a enhancement to the back story of those other novels and not a setup to them. This novel stands alone, but I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more had I read this one later.