Tim

Short, sweet, and fluffy

Revisado: 06-20-24

A cute little story that doesn’t drag things out and is quite steamy in the last chapter or two. I quite enjoyed it.

My only minor gripe is that the shifter setting seemed entirely ancillary. It was neat world building, don’t get me wrong, still liked it. But for 98% of the book, you could replace being a shifter with being a bodybuilder and the plot wouldn’t change. But again, that’s basically a nitpick.

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Quite the journey

Revisado: 03-04-23

I went into this story after having read a couple reviews, so I was prepared for the entire story to be a frustrating slow burn of mutual pining. If I hadn’t been prepared for this, I might have found the story really annoying, but knowing this made me very much enjoy it. The narrator has different voices for each character and they’re all amazing, though sometimes it’s hard to tell when the main character is speaking or just thinking.

The premise of the story is fascinating, and the world building is great. It’s a unique combination of medieval fantasy and a modern D&D adventure, with the characters using modern phrases and jokes and referencing traditional RPG roles, while also dealing with literally being in a medieval setting. Additionally, there’s multiple queer couplings that are just normal to all the characters, at least one prominent non-binary character that’s also just normal, and the consequences of things like trauma and recovery from terrible times are explored and well thought out. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “fluff”, but it’s lovely how everything works out. I recommend at least a once through.

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Great story, terrible editing

Revisado: 03-26-22

This book is an amazing rollercoaster of emotion. I’ve never been a fan of the “stream of consciousness” writing style, and this book has it in spades. But it somehow kept me hooked regardless. The story’s POV bounces between the two lead characters, who have noticeably different feels to them: Kyle with his overly dramatic purple prose and Brad with his earnest dumb jock energy. And both go in depth into their emotional damage and their terrible family life. It’s a lot of up and down and shouting at them to stop being stupid and then shouting at everyone opposing them, and it’s so good.

Which makes it such a shame that this audio book’s editing is ABYSMAL. The narrator’s performance is good, great even in some of the scenes. But whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a cavern instead of a sound studio. And there are chunks of the book that are of a noticeably different sound quality to the rest of it. The story has three chapters, one for each third of the story, but the audio book has 8 “chapters” marked out with no rhyme or reason for the divisions they chose. The first chapter of the book sounds like it was over-edited, with all the breaths cut out of the narrator’s performance, so the whole story was slamming into you with no pauses for breath. But then later in the book, the editing is nearly nonexistent, with clear breaks where the narrator was presumably turning a page or something because the break didn’t mean the scene was over, like it would have in a good audio book. It’s a crapshoot trying to figure out if some place is a good spot to pause, or if you’re just pausing on the narrator turning a page midway through a sentence.

And the crown jewel of this crappy editing is when an entire paragraph of text was REPEATED — as in, the performance was exactly the same, and the same events played out twice in a row when it made no sense for such a thing to happen. This event actually made me stop playback and redownload the book to make sure I didn’t just have a corrupted version or something. NOPE, it’s EDITED like that! Apparently no-one did a quality pass on this thing! And it was particularly jarring because the author *deliberately* does a stylistic repetition moment in the third act, and the effect of it was marred because I was distracted wondering if the editing had screwed up again.

And it’s such a shame because the story is good and the characters are engaging (if a little stupid sometimes, but they are teenagers). And by the end of it you’re desperately hugging the boys, telling them it’ll be okay.

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Amazing take on the Iliad

Revisado: 02-17-22

It’s hilarious how many other reviews on this book are of people who clearly did not listen to the whole thing. The first half of the book is of Achilles and Patroclus growing up together, and the second half is full of all the descriptions of wars, blood, wartime politics and the retelling of the Iliad that so many seem to think this is advertised as.

If you know anything about the mythology, you’ll know the plot beats, but that doesn’t matter because it’s the details where the new story is, the reasons as to how everything happens the way it does. And the ending bit, after all the dust has settled, tore my heart to shreds.

My only star off on the performance is because it’s sometimes not easy to know where Patroclus’s spoken dialog ends and his thoughts begin, and visa versa. The narrator has great voices for the other characters, so you always know when they’re speaking.

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Loved the ride overall

Revisado: 08-19-21

All in all this was a fun way to spend a long car ride.

My only qualms with it are that sometimes the narration doesn’t differentiate enough between speaking characters in large groups, so some of the early conversations were difficult to follow. And a lot of the drama stems from a severe lack of communication between parties and characters being idiots (which, given they’re 17, I guess is reasonable)(I don’t know how many times I yelled at my stereo for Simon to just go to the freaking authorities in the opening chapter alone).

Other than that, it was a fun ride in trying to figure out the central mystery person, and listening in on all the fun had during the school year.

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Amazing, as supplemental material

Revisado: 01-29-20

I adore this book, but I don't know if I can really recommend it to someone who is looking for a stand-alone book to read. This book is basically a retelling of the story of the Bright Sessions podcast/audio drama, but from the point of view of the Caleb and Adam. If you've listened to that, you'll likely love this. If you haven't, then my recommendation comes with caveats.

Firstly, The Bright Sessions are a great (and free) podcast I'd recommend listening to. I listened to the first season (nine ~20 min episodes) before starting in on this book, and kinda alternated between the podcast's second season and the book as it went. Caleb's therapy sessions in the podcast are often reiterated in this book, but mostly in summaries while adding a bunch of detail about what's going through Caleb's head. The various concepts and plot points introduced late in the book were already familiar from the podcast, but I imagine they would have been pretty out of left field if you were only reading the book. The ending of the book is quite frankly insulting with how much it just kind of gives up in the last half-hour without really wrapping up the plot it seemingly introduced, but I wasn't angry because I know I still have two more seasons of the podcast to listen to (wherein Caleb is set to make more appearances, given the titles of the episodes), so I know there's still time to bring the story some closure. That's the thing, though, this book feels like it was written for fans of the podcast. It feels like perhaps the author wanted to do a stand-alone treatment of the story, and was succeeding in doing so early on, but once the characters started cross-interacting in the audio drama, it was kind of impossible to continue doing that.

As for the performance, it was alright. I love that Briggon Snow reprises the role of Caleb, as it connects the two mediums together well. Both narrators are amazing at portraying the emotions running rampant through this book. They're amazing performers. But the audio quality is a bit lacking, like you're hearing them through a good Skype connection. And it was often difficult to tell whether the point of view character was saying some things out loud or simply thinking those things, and you had to wait until another character's response to try and figure it out via context. Caleb's chapters in particular have some amazing flowery descriptions of what Caleb is feeling, which tend to drag out dialogs between characters (made particularly obvious during the reiterated therapy sessions, especially seeing how natural those sounded in the podcast).

So yeah, if you haven't already listened through the complete audio drama, my recommendation comes with the caveat that you listen to the podcast before or while you listen/read this. If it helps, chapter 15 of this book happens at the same time as episode 102 of the podcast, ch 21 at the same time as ep 105, ch 27 before ep 107, ch 33 just before ep 202, ch 38 & 39 at the same time as ep 207, ch 41 at the same time as ep 215, and ch 49 at the same time as ep 218. And, like I said, the book just kinda stops, so the remaining two seasons of the podcast should hopefully resolve the story properly (I haven't listened to them yet at time of writing).

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Just finished relistening to this for the 6th time

Revisado: 01-18-20

I think this story was written for me, and I love it so much.

This story takes place in an alternate history (alternate present?) 2020 election cycle. Instead of what actually happened in 2016, the US elected a Democrat woman out of Texas named Ellen Clairmont, who has a small half-latino family of young adults who make up the protagonists for our story. In addition, the US Senate has a few different members, and the British Royal Family has different current family who make up the remainder of our cast. Basically enough changes so that our story is made up of fictional characters, but the rest of the world is as we know it, making for an interesting setting.

Casey McQuiston has definitely done her research. As a follower of American politics myself, the political references and mentions are topical and on-point. As an Anglophile myself, the British references and dialects are on-point. As a bit of a history nerd, the historical references they make are on-point and surprisingly accurate. As a gay dude myself, the romance plot is amazing. Like I said, I think this was written for me. The characters are witty, likable, and self-aware, and I love them all. I wish there was a sequel so I could spend more time with them all, but at the same time the story wraps up so nicely, I don't know what else could be done.

The narrator is great. He has an amazing ability to properly represent both the British English accent for the UK cast and Mexican Spanish for when some of the characters speak Spanish. You could usually tell who was speaking between the lead characters, though once or twice it sounds like he gets his voices mixed up. It's that and the fact that Audible must require its narrators to fully narrate every heading to every email and text message in its entirety that drops the performance by one star for me. I really don't think they needed to say "HRH Prince Dickhead Poop Emoji" before EVERY text message Harry sends Alex.

One final thing, and this is a bit of a SPOILER, I initially didn't believe what happens in this story with regards to Texas's voting could be real, just a thing McQuiston made up for the sake of the story... until I listened to an interview recently about how Texas could possibly turn purple for 2020, and all the stuff that's happening down there in regards to politics. So, McQuiston gets even more points in my book for this.

Highly recommend. Time to go listen to this again.

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Good premise, lacking execution, as Bear would say

Revisado: 01-17-20

I wanted to love this book. It has some great parts, and a great setup. It has some believable characters, and a heart wrenching situation. It's one of the stories where if the characters all just communicated properly, the majority of the problems in the story wouldn't have happened, but it's understandable why the characters might not be entirely forthcoming all the time. It was going pretty well right up until about the 2/3rds mark, when the author starts fumbling the story at the start of the third act.

In a story primarily about who knows what and when, a character uses information she absolutely has no means of knowing to get the protagonist to do something. The fact that she knows this info is pointed out, as if it'll factor big time into the remainder of the story (and it should, an explanation is needed), but the plot point is promptly forgotten. And this is NEVER RESOLVED. This is what broke my suspension of disbelief.

It was a snowballing effect after that: Why is our protagonist so stupid and bullheaded sometimes? Why does he spend so much time on random tangents describing fantasies or feelings he has (seriously, and editor could have cut out 200 pages of this and the book would have been better for it). Why are all the other characters starting to act like robots, all talking and acting in unison? Why did the next door neighbor suddenly a comic relief character when she was merely mentioned offhandedly for the first 2/3rds of the book? Why is the book now reiterating the whole plot a FOURTH TIME just to get to the bits that are different?!

I wanted to love this book. It has hilarious moments, like with the kid's questions and interactions. It has heartfelt struggles, with the two boys dealing with the mom leaving, and the support structure around them. But it falls apart at the end. I don't know if the writer put this book down out of writer's block for a few years or something, but it feels like someone else, some lesser writer, some ascended fanfiction writer, wrote the last third of the book. The twist leading into the third act could have been wonderful, could have shown how much the protagonist has grown, but instead it flounders and the whole thing comes slowly crashing down.

Meanwhile, the narration was a blessing and a curse. He spoke too quickly, rushing past when things were happening, but making Bear's constant tangents thankfully end more quickly. He gave each character a voice, but some of the voices, especially for Anna and Jonah, were more mocking imitations of voices than how people actually talked. You could easily and clearly tell the difference between internal monologue, dialog, and whitty between dialog comments Bear was making in his head, but sometimes that meant you also couldn't hear what was said, because he said it low and fast. Whoever edited the narration did it poorly, as it sounds like they put cross fades near edits, causing words at ends of sentences to be faded out abruptly, seemingly missing words, but you actually didn't miss anything. Overall the narration was great, but the little niggling things just add to the annoyances I had with the story.

All that said, I'd suggest listening to it once, to see what could have been had the ending been competently done, but I don't think I'll be picking up the sequels at this point.

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They changed the story and now it sucks

Revisado: 09-21-18

This is not Ender's Game. This is a radio play adaptation that's an amalgamation of both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow (and possibly other extended Enderverse titles I haven't and won't read). DO NOT listen to this if it's your first time with the Ender's Game story. There's a lot of information that's lost in translation, not the least of which is everything happening in Ender's head, and a lot of plot that's poorly told in comparison to the original novel.

The performances are great. The actors are passionate and engaging. The voices of the major characters are distinct and recognizable, though some of Ender's squeaky-voiced friends can be difficult to differentiate. There are well-done sound effects, and the dialog has been modified to call out things happening when they're not obvious. If you've listened to the 20th anniversary Ender's Game audiobook, a lot of actors reprise their roles. Graff's amazing actor is from that book is in this one.

To the team of Graff and Anderson, they add a third character, a psychologist, whose sole purpose is to provide an in-narrative reason for narration of things we cannot see, and "guessing" at what's going on in Ender's head (to make up for the lack of the first-person narration). This is fine, if a bit awkward sometimes, and a bit repetitive more than sometimes. The medium needed it and Card wrote what amounts to play-by-play narration pretty well, with back and fourths between the characters, providing us with insight into Graff's thinking which was only hinted at in the original book proper. It does raise questions as to how they can see everything in environments where they really shouldn't have the monitoring equipment to do so, but no matter.

The major problem I have is what Card did to the original story. He made some pretty major changes in the second half of the story, and I'm not okay with them. [SPOILER WARNING AHEAD]

This performance adds in parts of extended universe stories he has wrote since the original Ender's Game. And I'm not a fan of the extended universe at all. I hated what Ender's Shadow did to the original Ender's Game, basically taking a story where "Ender is the last hope for humanity" and changing it to "Ender is the second-to-last hope for humanity". And Card has taken that retconning and sprinkled it all throughout this story, increasingly in the latter half of the production. In addition (and what enraged me enough to write this review), he's rearranged a lot of the story events in the latter half of the script, and changed how major plot beats play out. Like the Dragon Army vs Salamander Army battle, where he changed Ender from an outraged active participant making a mistake that forwards the plot, to a reluctant passive participant that is forced against his will to make the same mistake for the sake of the plot. And this is not a good change, and the reasoning for it is ludicrous, and it poisons the rest of the Battle School arc. And the plot changes only get more numerous and head-scratching from there. The famous twist of the original storyline is basically spelled out over several chapters in advance. Ender makes such weird leaps of logic, using information he shouldn't know, because Rakham has been demoted to little more than an ancillary character introduced three chapters too late; it's like Ender was reading ahead in the script.

And worst of all, I don't think the word "Bugger" was ever uttered in this production. They use every other slang word in the book, but not the most common word for the alien race. Always the "Formacs" only.

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Bad editing mars this half-of-a-story.

Revisado: 11-02-17

Barely into the book, I was so distracted by the narrator's obvious cut-and-paste performance I almost quit listening. It felt like they went though and sliced out any and all silences in the performance, and simply cut and paste any corrections in without caring about audio levels or mic quality or tone-of-voice differences. And then there were several obvious places where they forgot to cut out the narrator's obvious corrections and restarts of sentences. It's like they completely rushed the editing of this audio book and it suffers for it.

Fortunately, the reading does get better about 10-15 chapters in, presumably because the editor got bored with making the book move at light speed for whatever reason, and finally let the narrator breathe a little more. I just wish they hadn't screwed up the beginning several chapters so much. The narrator himself is decent, though because of the weird cut-and-paste editing, he has obvious changes in tone mid-sentence a lot.

The book itself is good, once you get through the open few chapters of dancing around the subject of witchcraft given away on the front cover. It has an intriguing premise and a believable cast of characters. It sometimes felt a little like the book was telling me how the protagonist felt more than showing me, but I enjoyed it, especially once I got to around chapter 20, when the plot finally got moving. The chapters are short, which feels like a detriment, cutting the action apart so often, sometimes to just continue the scene in the next chapter right where the previous left off. One chapter literally cut off mid-conversation just for a cheap cliffhanger that was immediately backpedaled at the start of the next chapter! And the descriptions are thick with flowery descriptions, which works well for a bunch of scenes where showing instead of telling adds a lot to the story, but bothered me immensely when I was watching the "time remaining" tick down, which leads me to the book's biggest pitfall...

There's no ending! It just kind of STOPS at some point, with absolutely nothing resolved and every single plot thread left hanging. It feels like the author took a much longer book and just chopped it in two or three parts and released the first part as a "complete book", when it's most certainly not. There's still rising action taking place in the final few chapters, still build up for the big overarching thread in the penultimate chapter, and then the book just stops! It's not even a cliffhanger ending! It's just a normal chapter that finishes it off, and then the Audible guy says he hoped I enjoyed the production. That's not how you end a book!

My recommendation is to maybe wait for the next book(s) to arrive before reading this one, because this is HALF a story. And maybe by then, they'll get a competent editor to fix this performance too.

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