Beyond Boundaries

Patrick Egan's deep voice with its light rasp quickly pulls listeners into Nicolelis's book, but the production doesn't hold listeners throughout. This weakness results from a mixture of the prose and the performance. Nicolelis's exploration of the scientific breakthroughs that are increasingly allowing scientists to connect technology directly with the brain is quite intriguing. He discusses the potential uses of a brain that merely needs to think in order to have an effect on the real world. However, his writing style is sometimes overly complicated and hard to follow, particularly in audio. While Egan's voice initially grabs listeners' attention, his narration can be stilted and too punctuated, a style that wears on the ears, particularly during the more complicated passages. L.E. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine