Read Time: 2 Minutes
Max Barry’s Discordia is a satirical and rather fast-paced audiobook novella that blends dark humour, social commentary, and science fiction into a whirlwind of absurdity. Barry delivers a story that is both ridiculous and alarmingly relevant. With a resurgence of nazi supporters making news headlines of late, including some in the White House, Discordia hits the mark on a few points.
The story follows Diego, a day labourer and occasional car thief who finds himself in an utterly bizarre situation. While digging out tree roots for his current employer in an attempt to “accidentally” kill the tree, Diego uncovers a box with cryptic warning of “He Lies” carved into its surface. After opening the box, he unwittingly kicks off a chain of events that sees aliens dropping in and trying to claim earth for their own ideas.
A sort of interdimensional conflict between various alien ideologies and political disinformation has people taking sides across the globe. It’s an interesting take on political polarisation, misinformation, and the ease with which people can be manipulated in the modern world.
If you imagine if all political parties only ran on single-issue platforms of extreme positions like white supremacy, feminism, climate change, religious zealotry, human extinction in the name of saving the planet or as simple as only wanting in convert to the metric system. Take any issue and reduce complex governance to simplistic slogan and vague promises.
The characters were a little one-dimensional for the most part, relying on stereotypes for a lot of the personas. Diego, for example, falls into the typical trope of migrant worker picking up odd jobs and running with a gang. It fits though with the overall theme where everyone seems to be a caricature – the used-car-like salesman of Carter, the murderous nun, the German nazi, for example all feel intentionally cartoonish.
The narration by Andrew Call was excellent and no issues with production. Being an “Audible Original”, so produced specifically for Audible, I didn’t expect anything less as their quality control for their own works has always been top-notch.
Overall, this was a fun if somewhat forgettable listen. I don’t think I’ll go back for a second time, but it was a fun listen. I have enjoyed other books by Max Barry, which is now just occurring to me that I’ve not ever listened to any of them as audiobooks! I’ve only ever read them on my Kindle, so I’ll be looking to add some of this back catalogue to my wishlist.
At the time of writing, Discordia is available as part of “Audible Plus” so you can listen for free as part of your subscription. If you like a bit of dark humour, absurdist fiction, and bit of social commentary then this might be your next listen.