Scott Hammond

Excellent

Revisado: 04-10-25

Serkis' narration is unsurpassed. It's a shame the cover art is polluted by the idiotic Rings of Power series debacle.

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Charming Stories with Outstanding Narration

Revisado: 06-13-24

Although an audible book of this length could only contain a fraction of the rich material collected in the 1001 Nights, all of the tales here are well told with plenty of cultural details. The brilliance of Scheherazade's strategy to preserve her life from night to night comes through clearly as she dovetails plot upon plot. The narrator is excellent and appears to be a complete master of dramatic reading along with a familiarity with the proper name sources. No negatives at all.

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Gangsters on Mars

Revisado: 01-04-24

I liked it all right. The performance was excellent. The story seemed like it belonged in the early 1930's, and by changing just a few details could have been a Contimental Op novel. The sci-fi aspects seemed incidental. Overall I rate it a 3.5 out of 5.

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Tedious

Revisado: 11-21-21

I know this is regarded as a classic of science fiction, but I don't see it. It's slow and pretentious, with altogether too much time spent with the protagonist and his AI analyst. The rest of the text seems to be his memoirs of how he acquired his fortune through the lottery of Hee-chee expeditions into the unknown...but I'm 2/3 through the book, and he's only ever made one trip, and that one was a failure. Very little sci-fi adventure, quite a lot of angst and self-absorbed analysis. Frankly, I got bored waiting for something to happen, or to find out a little more about the ancient Hee-chee civilization. Not for me. This sort of psychological character study was done much better by Alfred Bester in THE STARS MY DESTINATION.

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Good Story, Outstanding Narration

Revisado: 06-25-21

I'm having a great time with these novels. John Lee's narration perfectly captures the characters. The mysteries are interesting and unpredictable. Roberts has fiddled around a bit with the history, but the general listener will probably be unaware of the discrepancies with real events. I highly recommend.

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Best of the Series So Far

Revisado: 05-25-21

I've been reading or listening to the Nero Wolfe books in chronological order over the past few years. It's a shame they're not all on Audible, but that's a subject for another review. First, although the stories can be a little formulaic, that's also part of their charm. The characters are all old friends: Wolfe, Archie, Fritz, Cramer, the brownstone... Every new story welcomes them back.

This time, Stout turned the formula on its head. While that often doesn't work (for example, Sherlock Holmes narrating his own adventure without Watson), Stout pulls this one off excellently. I was so caught up in the story, I made extra time to listen to the narrative outside of my usual audio book routine. It's a great story that keeps the listener guessing. One of Stout's best.

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Much Needed Revision of a Classic Battle

Revisado: 12-26-19

The book is well written and goes a long way toward dispelling the myths that have arisen around the Battle of Midway. It carefully deals with newer research concerning Japanese naval doctrine and the detailed aspects of Japanese carrier operations, but never gets bogged down in tedious detail. It also recounts something of the personalities of the Japanese planners, and while it pulls no punches in describing their dysfunctional attitudes toward the enemy and each other, it tells of many instances of heroism by Japanese sailors, who in many ways became the victims of their own admirals. Highly recommended.

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Classic Ghost Stories

Revisado: 10-24-19

Most of the stories are interesting, the one by Edith Wharton being the best, and the one by Mark Twain being my least favorite, and not really a horror story. There are two narrators who read alternate stories; unfortunately, the female narrator isn't very good. Her delivery is stilted and often awkward, as though she hadn't rehearsed, or even read the story beforehand.

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Back to an Old Friend

Revisado: 06-23-19

I read probably 12 Spenser novels back in the 80's. All of them were excellent. Now I'm returning to this one again, and I like Spenser now just as well as I did then. That's a tribute to Robert B. Parker. I'll listen to more of them.

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Good Story, but Flawed

Revisado: 05-21-19

This is a tough review to write. First, the pros. The style is very good and the story and plotting are well done. In some ways, the characterization of the villain is better realized than the protagonist. The villain, whom the reader doesn't actually meet until 3/4 through the book, is despicable and utterly evil, even though all we really know about him is what's reported by his victims long before we see him. McGee is a little too much like the cliche of the classic private dick...think of Philip Marlowe with less scruples. However, at several points in the story McGee completely surprises the reader, and we see a hidden core of sensitivity and kindness which he covers up with scathing critical rhetoric. And that leads me to the chief con of the book: McGee himself. He's a curmudgeon, the sort of guy everyone in the office tries to avoid because of his tiresome lectures. McGee is the product of his time, the mid 1960's, when America still imagined every problem had a straightforward cause that could be cured by more money, or more government oversight or more moral and political determination. A novel is a bully pulpit, and McDonald isn't the first to sermonize his readers, but with McGee it's too much. By the halfway point of the book I was thinking, "Come on, shut up and get on with the story." I don't want to forget another important pro, the narrator, which was one of the best aspects of this audio book experience. A narrator of lesser talent would have seen me put down the book long before the end. I don't know if I'll read another Travis McGee novel. Maybe.

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