Sol-86 Academy Special Edition: Core Awakening

I’ll admit, I side-eyed the premise at first—*another* academy story? But *Core Awakening* disarms you immediately with its refusal to play it straight. The opening scene, where a Quartus exec delivers a motivational speech to an empty auditorium (because the students are all dead), had me rewinding to catch every layer of absurdity. Goodin’s writing excels in these moments: the dialogue is packed with corporate jargon repurposed as dystopian gospel ("*Synergy isn’t a buzzword; it’s a survival metric*"), and the ghosts’ commentary cuts through it like a scalpel. The narration is where this audiobook *sings*. Schooner’s performance as the Quartus reps is chillingly smooth, all polished vowels and rehearsed empathy, while Herrera’s ghosts sound like they’re phoning it in from the afterlife’s break room. The production team deserves credit for the audio design—subtle static creeping into ghostly asides, the way Quartus announcements bleed into the mix like an unskippable ad. My only gripe? The pacing stumbles in the middle during a protracted hacking sequence that leans too hard on tech babble (even for satire). And while the ending lands emotionally, the final twist feels slightly rushed, like Goodin had one too many espresso shots before writing it. Still, for fans of *The Hitchhiker’s Guide* meets *Severance*, this is a must-listen—just don’t blame me if you start hearing HR emails in a sinister new light.