Haakon B. Dahl

Miserable idiot narrator

Revisado: 02-07-25

I hope this was an automatic voice. It’s that bad. Could not catch the take at all, the narration was so jarring.

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Poorly Written; Greatly Narrated

Revisado: 10-07-22

Yes, I said Greatly.
This book is awful, but still better than the two which follow. Confessions, I am only a quarter of the way through the third book, and that's as far as it will go.
The protagonist is an unreconstructed Larry Sue, the world is exposition dumps, the dialogue is childish with helpful descriptions of what a character just said, so that you get the point. Excuse me, that's what the dialogue is for. This author has no respect for the reader.
The author has a serious polemic axe to grind, and it's not even well done. I can take socialist utopia nonsense if it's encased in good writing and so forth. This is just childish.
It's a crying shame -- the premise is interesting, but the characters are not, the societies are not, the story is not, and God knows this book is not.
Steve Gibson recommended this on the Security Now podcast. Well, those guys lean a little anyway. The fact that Grover Gardner narrated it sealed the deal for me to try it out. I could listen to Gardner narrate a phone book, but not this book.
The next two books are free, but they DO NOT GET BETTER. They get worse.
Re-read something you like instead of stepping into this mess.

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Before 1984, there was this.

Revisado: 09-24-21

“We” is one of the earlier dystopias, and predates many of the horrors of the Soviet communism. Orwell acknowledges a debt to Zamyatin. The story is turgid at times, and “suffers” from some of the Russian literary tropes of its time. Still, it is a worthwhile listen, even if frustrating at times.
I confess my ignorance (O Benefactor!) and only found this book through searching Audible for books narrated by the incomparable Grover Gardner.
This is an important book, a hundred years old now, and I forgive the work its flaws in light of its age. I should like to benefit from the same grace, after all.
Five stars, for Grover Gardner and of course for a pioneering anti-totalitarian Zamyatin. His courage merits our respect.

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Marxist Word Salad

Revisado: 08-02-21

Too bad the author did not engage the topic suggested by the title. This is a poorly disguised criticism of what marxists call capitalism. I stopped listening about halfway through, when after ninety minutes of throat-clearing and then a couple hours of propping up a field full of straw men, he sets about torching the straw men.
Bullshit Jobs is a great topic, and somebody should write a book about it. This is not that book.

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Worth it!

Revisado: 03-15-21

An American, I have deployed twice to Afghanistan. We were surrounded by the remnants and ruins of the evil Soviet invasion, and worked to demonstrate the difference. Yet one man is more or less like another, and the Russians who preceded us learned lessons that we would have to learn as well, and Afghans of various convictions were still the home team whereas we, like the Soviets, were just visiting.
This book treats all involved fairly, and despite being somewhat out of date (2009) in 2021, it remains a valuable building block for an understanding of the (relatively) deep history of current events.
Robertson Dean narrates with an even and accessible style. A bit dry, but it’s not a romance. The narration is well-suited to the work, and the writing is worth your time.
The book brings to life much of what was only rust and dust to those of us living the aftermath (again) in real-time.
In India I was struck by how many times I heard “this was built by the British before they left”. In Afghanistan the refrain is “this was destroyed by the Russians before they left”. The USSR thoroughly destroyed Afghanistan in a way that bears a wicked fruit to this day. Their armies were composed of saints and devils, like any army. Their misguidance was worse than ours, yet at the same time, we should have learned from their experience many things that it seems we had to absorb the hard way, if it all. And the “war” continues.
I have Afghan friends now living in America, and I have American friends who died in Afghanistan. This book has been valuable to me in opening up the story of those who went before us, regardless of ideology, of alignment, of station in life and so on and so forth.
“5 of 5. Recommend”
Pardon me, I should have focused more on the book. Please allow my tale to illustrate the value I took from this book and its narration.

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Worth it -- Should have been shorter

Revisado: 07-07-20

This is a good book, but struggles to serve two masters. It is positioned as a consumer book, but wearing a pretentious academic coat. If the scholarly patois added something, it would be a bonus. As it is, however, it just makes a potentially gripping horror non-fiction into a double-length slog.
I don't mind long books, and I don't mind difficult ones -- but they need to pay their own freight, or else what's the length and the difficulty for?
I like this book, I'm glad I bought it, and I DO recommend it if the title intrigues you. Clear your schedule, though.

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Well-supported, Compassionate, and Damning

Revisado: 02-10-19

An eye-opening book. If you have grown suspicious that medicating two-year-olds for supposed bi-polar disorder is wrong, and that the boom in mental illness is not what it's reported to be, then you have felt the skeleton of an ugly, primitive beast. Author Robert Whitaker puts the flesh on those bones, and reveals the whole shaggy shambling monster for what it is. Via the mental health racket, we are a society at war with itself, doing great damage and claiming great victories.

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Five more stars for Grover Gardner

Revisado: 03-18-18

Interim review. So happy to find this after an hour of sampling books recorded in a nasal fry, which seems to be the new default mode.
EDIT: I confess that it has been some time since I last listened to this. However, I only submitted an "interim review" and I owe an update.
I adored this book. I am glad I bought it, and if you have read my other reviews, you will know that I regard Grover Gardner as the best narrator in the business. Perhaps I should not dwell upon the quality of narration as distinct from the book, but as in other audiobooks, I find that Gardner's narration adds to the value of the work, rather than merely converting it from the written format to the audible. I now actively search for audiobooks narrated by Gardner -- the man could bring you real meaning from a phonebook. So 5/5 Narration for everything he narrates, including this engaging work.
The book itself, even at some remove (not having listened recently) is a winner. This book has inspired me to listen to more audiobooks about the various so-called "Indian wars" of the American southwest, and to appreciate the stories of those souls perched halfway between sitting and jumping, as it were, on that frontier. This book, which you currently contemplate buying, has opened up a rich vein of interest for me.
I grew up in a city in that southwestern desert, and many of the places in the book are familiar to me, while others I remember from roadsigns or from maps. As with any place in the United States, there is history right beneath your feet. For the American southwest, this audiobook is a magnificent guide to many of the places, the people, and the larger stories within historical reach, yet often overlooked. The Indians, the Whites, and the Mexicans (as you please) are presented in a refreshing style, with the comfortable narration clearly conveying the nuance of the writing.
Even if you look at this as a three-sided thing, no side is misrepresented. Those who were captured were truly captured. Those who chose to stay with their captors truly chose to stay. Those who returned never completely returned. The human lifespan is only so long, our youthful experiences are indeed formative, and let the chips fall where they may.

This is a good book, and the narration is well worth your dollars. Zesch is an author I will buy again without question, and of course, Gardner is already a narrator whose reading justifies a taking a chance on books you might not otherwise select. Audible already offers a more-than-fair refund policy, and I would add to it for this book if I could. You will enjoy this book, or I will refund the price of this review.
5/5
(Note: most of my reviews are overwhelmingly positive -- I don't usually review books I didn't like. I now have hundreds of audiobooks through Audible, but I have submitted no more than a dozen reviews. So please take these high marks as my highest praise.)

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Well worth the money and the time!

Revisado: 12-29-17

Just to get this out-of-the-way, I have a few minor quibbles about the writing and the narration in this audiobook. But these things are very minor. I reserve five stars for things that really blew me away.
This book is well worth the money and the time. This is an enjoyable and informative look at a disease that we have all heard of an epidemic that perhaps we may remember dimly from all the family stories, but about which I have never known much, and I'll bet that you don't know much either. Spoiler alert: you could still get this disease.

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Perfect for its purpose, as advertised.

Revisado: 05-17-17

I have rated this book and its performance so highly because it performs exactly as promised. This book is not going to be a classic, and its performance is not going to win any awards. The book itself is workmanlike and sturdy, just as the performance is. This book is all about setting up a machine for designing plots, and -- as the author makes clear -- this is not a book on writing. This is a book more about the business of writing, specifically as it applies to the writer going about business.
You could hardly ask for a more purpose-focused book on the whatnot of writing, as opposed to the actual writing itself.

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