chris

A great romance

Revisado: 08-19-20

Mia is agoraphobic, which is completely relatable right now.
Jared is an ex-hockey player taking care of his pregnant sister.
They are next door neighbors in cabins on a lake.
This book hits several of my favorite tropes: man introduced having sex with someone else, sister mistaken for love interest, man is a good father, and woman thinks man is a player. The Canadian setting is very realistic with deer, moose, and loons everywhere.

The two narrators, Charley Ongel and Tor Thom are excellent. They both do believable male and female voices.
I'm looking forward to the next in this series.

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Disappointed

Revisado: 07-20-16

I loved the Stage Dive books, and this one was not to their level for several reasons.

1. The characters are not compelling. I didn't understand or care about Lydia. What drew me to the Stage Dive books was the specificity of the central women. Lydia seemed very generic and uninteresting.

2. Lydia has no friends. The main way the previous books showed us characters' personalities was through snappy dialogue with their friends and side characters. Since Lydia has no friends, we learn little about her personality and don't see her quirks.

3. Dialogue is flat. There's a lot of internal monologue in this book, which leads to telling and not showing. I loved in the Stage Dive books how the story was conveyed through dialogue and how I had to infer what was really going on through what is said. This book is too much in Lydia's head, and since she's not very interesting, it's not a fun place to be.

The Stage Dive books are excellent, especially the second one, Play. I recommend those over this book.

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esto le resultó útil a 16 personas

Not good

Revisado: 12-20-15

The book starts with an ok premise of a drug addict who (accidentally) kills vampires, but when the plot kicks in, it's boring and repetitive. Quinn "investigates" by bullying everyone around her. Nothing she does is intelligent or interesting. The book is a series of jumps from place to place without learning anything about her character. She has no friends, no goals, no redeeming qualities. I don't even know why she's on this hunt. In addition to the boring plot and character, the book is told in the first person and has a pseudo-frame story of her writing it two years after the events. The narration often talks directly to the audience which is maybe supposed to be funny but instead is just annoying.

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Same story told again

Revisado: 12-05-15

Any additional comments?

I was looking forward so hearing some of the smaller adventures that took place before the big story kicks off in Theft of Swords. This book starts off promising with the couple meeting the Viscount and investigating something for Gwen, but the fun chapters with Riyria are alternated with filler chapters from points of view of people at the castle who will be important in later books. Instead of telling new stories, this book adds more backstory to events that were sufficiently covered in the initial series. I much prefer the Riyira short stories since those have new adventures and aren't just a re-hash of event we already know. Disappointed.

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So disappointed

Revisado: 02-18-15

I loved the first book in this series, but this one does not compare. It's just boring. In the first one, there were so many interesting characters to meet and mysteries to explore. This book has none of that. There's not enough plot to fill one book, yet it ends in the middle of the story to make you get the next one. Just sad.

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Loved it!

Revisado: 02-18-15

This book reads just like good Firefly fanfiction. It's about a group of people on a derelict spaceship with mysterious backstories. The main character is fabulous, a space mercenary who loves her guns and armor. And there's a sexy bartender.

The reader is also great. She does the main character with a mild southern accent that emphasizes her origin from a backwater planet.

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Not the best in the series

Revisado: 11-28-14

With the conceit of retelling Jane Austen's diaries, the author walks a line between telling an interesting mystery and being historically accurate. The book seems overly concerned with historical accuracy to the determent of the story. I haven't listened to earlier books in the series, but this installment spends very little time on the character of Jane or her family. Jane is there to follow the plot, which is told to the listener in large infodumps and results in very flat characters. Sections detailing the historical background of minor side characters and footnotes on changes to architecture over time do nothing to add excitement. I found this book boring and do not recommend it. I do recommend the 12th book in the series, Jane and the 12 Days of Christmas. Many of the issues in this book have been corrected by that title.

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Great book, great reader

Revisado: 06-09-14

Although you can read this book on Sanderson's website, why do that when there's a great audio version?

Some listeners may prefer Michael Kramer's reading of Sanderson's works, but James Yaegashi does a great job with this one. I found his voice and intonation similar to Wil Wheaton's reading of Ready Player One. A few errors weren't edited out, but they were not frequent enough to ruin my enjoyment. In fact, Yaegashi really got into the reading, and his characters were nice and varied.

This book was similar in feeling to Elantris, with a pretty straight forward (for Sanderson) plot and a young-adult feeling to the story. Its 24 hour length is enough to get to know the world, characters, and new magic system really well. The worst thing about the book is the title.

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The new narrator is better!

Revisado: 04-30-14

I am also a Michael Kramer fan and thoroughly enjoyed his readings of the first 3 Felix Castor books, but I have to say, I prefer Damian Lynch's performance. His involvement with books 4 and 5 make them the best so far.

The Felix Castor books take place in London primarily, and Damian Lynch can do all of the various nuanced English accents. While I love Michael Kramer's readings (especially Way of Kings), I always felt he gave Felix a too upper-crust accent. While Felix did go to Oxford, he's from Liverpool and is slumming it in his current position.

Damian Lynch's reading of Felix is just right, and he adds authenticity to all of the minor characters by giving each of them their own appropriate accent.

Change is hard, but the change of narrators here is a good thing.

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Middle in the series

Revisado: 04-30-14

I really enjoyed the first Bobby Dollar book, but this one took me a long time to get through. I enjoyed Bobby on Earth, but for this book he goes to Hell, and it's not nearly as much fun. It's the middle in the series, so pretty much a treadmill book. Lots of running around and going nowhere.

The reader did a great job. There aren't a lot of different accents, but each of the characters is distinct.

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