James Lloyd Plowman

Want to hear more

Revisado: 02-09-24

Mild Spoiler Warning

Having listened to the Backyard Starship series, I can say this serves as an excellent backdrop to it. My only complaint is that there are some inconsistencies between this book and the main series that kind of bug me. In this book, the main character Mark encounters a member of an alien species called a Ligurite, but in the main series, it was stated to his grandson, Van, that Mark had never encountered that species in his career - This could possibly be explained by the relevant memory of such encounters being locked in the brains of his AI companions, with other such previously locked information being unlocked throughout the series, but it’s still annoying. In addition, the bonus story at the end of the book, Stars and Steel, name drops a character who, if he really had been alive at the time, would be much older than he is implied in the current timeline of the main series, even with the age-retarding effects of the in-series universe’s form of FTL travel. Again, not outside the realm of possibility, but still somewhat annoying for the inconsistency. Otherwise, I am eager to listen to the next one

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Funny ASF

Revisado: 04-03-23

Basically the story of that one guy who tries not to be a jerk when all of the other masters of the mystic martial arts are big jerks. And the chicken can be pretty funny in his own right.

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This needs to be a TV show!

Revisado: 07-01-22

The title is no exaggeration. I haven’t even finished the first book in it’s entirety, but in the words of the protagonist, it’s bad ass. The only thing is that it reads in something of an episodic fashion, with the hero jumping from one subplot to the next with little warning, and at times it feels like there’s holes in the narrative where some additional filler wouldn’t have hurt. Also, be prepared for a lot of human-alien interaction jokes. Still, the fact that the guy is pretty much broke for the first part of the book and has to deal with space bureaucracy on top of still trying to get the job done is really ironically funny. That being said, you could possibly make a whole first season out of this first book alone, with it maybe being something on par with Firefly or something like that in terms of potential basassness. Maybe not spend too much money on hiring big name Hollywood actors though so you can put more money into stunts and special effects

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More of this pls!

Revisado: 05-22-22

Definitely a Gaunt’s Ghosts book. Goes back to the early days of the Regiment where they end up dealing with some crazy feth. I won’t go too deep into it, but it feels like there are one or two points where it seems inconsistent with the older books, but otherwise it’s action-packed. Also, there’s a subplot to the story that deals with explaining the nature of the Ghosts’ tattoos and how Tanith’s culture is interconnected with other worlds in the Sabbat Worlds that was interesting as well. If they’re setting up for a second Ghost Dossier book to follow up on this, I’m in.

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Cain Strikes Again!

Revisado: 01-18-22

Genestealers vs Orks, with Cain and Jurgen caught in the middle as per usual! What more could you ask for?

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Binary Versions Debate

Revisado: 09-15-21

I listened to the version of this story in the ‘Burden of Loyalty’ anthology, and really it seems like a toss up between the two. On the one hand, this, as far as I can tell was the original version, and the voice acting and sound effects had a gravitas that the anthology version was missing. On the other hand hand, Jonathan Keeble on his own is unarguably within the top five of the best narrators that Black Library works with, and he could carry an entire book on the strength of his voice alone. Also, I think I prefer some of his variations on certain characters over those in the audio drama, especially in the way he makes the Mechanicum characters sound so inhuman without resorting to sound effects. Even so, either version of this story works well.

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Some issues fixed, some new ones to resolve

Revisado: 03-25-21

I like how they went back and added additional monologues into the audiobook - I imagine these were in the original book but didn’t make first cut for some reason. The narrator’s outtake that the original version of the audiobook had left in has been removed, but there’s a new problem in that starting somewhere between chapters six and seven the actual audiobook chapters desynchronize with where they’re supposed to be in the book, so you’ve got a chapter starting in the middle of a sentence instead of the narrator saying ‘Chapter whatever’. Also, the point where Inquisitor Veil’s monologue overlaps with another person’s monologue is still present. All in all, better, but they’ve added a problem that wasn’t there before, so still have a ways to go.

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Worth the credit for it!

Revisado: 03-10-21

Absolutely has that odd ‘Old World’ sense of style from the first Genevieve novel, Drachenfels, and is shared with Gotrek and Felix. My only complaint is that the title is misleading in that it said it’s a Genevieve novel, and yet Genevieve herself is treated as merely a background character, with only a couple minor scenes between her and Detlef Sierch. I’m not saying that she had to be in every scene in the book, but it would’ve done just as well as a stand-alone title on its own merit without her making a guest appearance. Other than that, the book was awesome

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A good story

Revisado: 02-07-21

Not sure if it’s on the same level as the Avenging Son, though. The main villain behind the scenes seemed so stereotypically over the top, and it was difficult to feel comfortable with all the horrible things the Sisters of Battle were doing to their prisoners in the name of the Emperor. Still, there were some interesting moments, particularly the part at the end where the general and the historian decide to go off script and have a chat about his ‘daughter’ - a small twist, but I liked it. All in all, lots of bloody action scenes if you’re into that sort of thing, but a good story all the same

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Better than the original version

Revisado: 12-20-20

For those of you who didn’t buy it the first time around, Black Library put out another version of this months ago narrated by a different reader. Though Mark Elstob is a fine narrator when he’s in his element, the man simply couldn’t do Space Marines, and his rendition of Roboute Guilliman, who is described as having a ‘beautiful’ voice, falls flat on its face. My guess is that the backlash from the first version was so bad that BL conceded and brought in John Banks for an emergency re-reading, and are probably going to have him reading the rest of the series too. I won’t say that this new version is completely worth having to buy a second time, but it is a marked improvement over the original, somehow even managing to cut the reading time down a couple hours. Definitely worth reconsideration.

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