Kindle Customer

A Terrific Book with Fantastic Narration

Revisado: 07-20-21

I have enjoyed all of Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, but particularly love this book. The characters are not only brought to life by Ms. Chambers' writing, but voiced to absolute perfection by Rachel Dulude. The world-building is so well done that I wish it were real, and Ms. Dulude's narration makes the characters even more real. Her voicing of Ouloo and Tupo is some of the best I've listened to, bar none -- the exasperated mother with the adorable almost-teen made me laugh in total sympathy!

All in all the combination of terrific writing -- and from a young author with such a great future ahead of her -- and equally great narration is my favorite kind of SF series to find. I look forward to this pair of author and narrator to provide us with many happy hours lost in a different universe for many years to come!

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Some of the best narration ever!

Revisado: 07-01-21

Project Hail Mary is a terrific book, which is brought to life and improved upon almost indescribably well by Ray Porter's truly inspired narration. I already commented on the book itself on Amazon, so this is strictly a review of the Audible version.

I have a short list of narrators who I enjoy a great deal, and Ray Porter was already on that list -- but with this book, he's now climbed to an unchallenged first place. I've listened to a LOT of audio books -- as a knitter, they're the best way to read a story and still be able to keep my hands and eyes busy elsewhere -- and I can say without reservation that Ray Porter's talents are unparalleled. He gives unique voice to a wider variety of men and women, with widely differing personalities and accents, than I would have thought possible by a single narrator. He truly brings the story to life in a way I would never have believed possible. Honestly, I could continue to heap glowing phrases on him for a full page without repeating myself, but I will sum it up by just saying:

This is a once-in-a-generation book with a once-in-a-generation narrator. Do yourself a favor if you haven't read it yet and run, don't walk, to your favorite online bookstore and get this book in your preferred format. I HIGHLY recommend the Audible version; Ray Porter has done the best job I've ever heard from a narrator!

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A magical, painful, amazing story

Revisado: 02-01-20

James Taylor has lived a life that most of us in his generation can only imagine, both the good times and the bad. He became the storyteller, through his songs, of my life, and this audiobook of his first 21 years is a vivid look at what made him who he is and what put the magic into his music. It was a delight to listen to, and the music moments and fragments of lyrics were woven in seamlessly. I hope he continues the story!

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An old favorite mangled by an awful narrator!

Revisado: 10-02-17

This book and the other 2 in its series are old favorites of mine, so I was looking forward to listening while I knitted, I was totally disappointed. I have several favorite narrators and have run across a couple who are boring, but this narrator is just plain terrible. The voices he uses for characters change with every book in this 3-book series. His volume goes up and down unpredictably. He leaves words out. He misreads what's on the page. He reads some characters like they need throat surgery, the voice is so hoarse and hard to understand. The way he pronounces the words in the languages created by the author of some of the characters are actively painful. And the way he reads female characters is embarrassing! Seriously, Audible, don't use this narrator again. I'd give him negative 5 stars if I could. I'm certainly never going to make the mistake of buying a book narrated by him again!

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Great book, tormented by an awful narrator!

Revisado: 05-21-17

I really enjoyed this book -- the whole alternate history of the possibilities in WWII had nuclear bombs been developed in time to use them on Germany was fascinating, and the scientific basis made it all the more believable. The characters were interesting and really came to life for me, weren't at all one-dimensional -- and finding out that the author knew many of them personally (and was his main character's son-in-law in real life) explained why. Yes, the author went into a lot of detail about the development of nuclear fuel for the weapons, but since that was the historic turning point the entire story was based upon, and since the author also knows his nuclear science well, it was, IMO, hugely important to be explained in full. While I enjoy a good space opera or even an occasional action-filled alternate history, I also enjoy learning from the SF I read.

This book has a solid factual basis since the story was based on an intimate knowledge of the history involved, with just a few key details changed to provide the alternate possibilities explored -- one method of uranium separation chosen vs. another, when the reality was the reverse. I can understand that some folks, who prefer more action in their SF, might find it a dry and dusty story, but to me it seemed all the more realistic because of of the factual development; decisions were made in the book that, in hindsight, should have been made in reality. Also, WWII wasn't an event to be easily simplified, and the author didn't even try to; he just changed one of two pivotal events that changed the entire possible course of the war, and then explored how the changed history might have turned out. All in all, it was my second-favorite alternate history of WWII (my favorite being Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear).

What I did NOT enjoy was the narrator. Not only was he dry and pedantic to the point of being soporific, but he kept misreading words and, in a couple places, entire phrases. He'd turn a word into a totally different word, changing the author's entire meaning. I'd gotten the Kindle version originally and then, wanting to also pay attention to my knitting while I was reading, got the audio book, so I did have the original text to compare the narration to. The narrator's regular misreading was really annoying and got more frequent as the book went on.

Additionally, why on earth would a narrator be chosen for a book containing so many foreign names, accents, and phrases in French and German who did not have even a SLIGHT understanding of pronunciation in either of those two languages? I don't know how to properly pronounce German, but if his French pronunciation was any indication, it was probably equally horrific. His attempts at French were so painful I found myself properly pronouncing the French phrases just to try to clear the anguish of his butchered attempts from my memory! He didn't do much better on the accents when people were speaking English, even native English speakers. He gave Richard Feynman such a ridiculously exaggerated Bronx accent that he sounded like a Mafia wannabe instead of a brilliant scientist! His attempts at accented English were also inconsistent, coming and going apparently as the mood struck him. Who made the mistake of choosing this narrator for this book, anyway?

Yes, this review is more about the narration than the story. The TL:DR version is: Loved the book, hated the narration! So anyone who's genuinely interested in a thoughtful, entirely plausible alternate history of nuclear weaponry in WWII, I recommend you read the book and leave the narration alone! I will be making sure never to listen to another book misread by this man, especially one that could have been so well done!

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Fantastic!

Revisado: 02-25-17

I don't know how John Scalzi's people were able to get Zachary Quinto to read this novella, but Quinto is genuinely someone I would listen to read the phone book! The story is terrific, which is to be expected from Scalzi, but Quinto turns it into nearly an out-of-body experience to listen to it. I hope he's willing to do more narration in the future in between wildly successful films!

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Great narration of a fun story

Revisado: 02-23-17

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to, and the wonderful narration really helped.
The narrator was incredible, bringing the various characters to life through wonderfully diverse and believable voices. I hadn't heard him before, but he's now in my top 5 Audible narrators for characterization ability. I'll definitely be listening to more books he reads.

Our hero is a rather diffident young man, floating through life, who agrees to play the Game. Earth has recently been accepted into a galaxy-wide civilization that resolves conflict and keeps things flowing smoothly by a very old, very complex MMORPG that has actual real-life consequences, as our hero discovers quickly. We learn about it with him, which means that the first couple of chapters were rather frustrating, until the reader begins to get a sense of what is involved, and our hero grows and progresses in the Game. And the story is surprisingly addictive once he gets more fully immersed. Overall, I enjoyed the book a great deal, but took away one star for it not being a complete story but ending instead at a natural break in the hero's character arc. Not a cliffhanger, which is unforgivable from an author, but it just stops as our hero is heading off to the Academy to learn how to use his abilities in the Game more effectively. He's also getting tangled up in politics, so we shall see what happens in book 2.

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