Drizzte

Flat writing and cringe narration

Revisado: 07-07-24

The set up seems to have potential, but the writing of the characters is so profoundly boring that I couldn’t manage to give a crap about any of them. And the American regional accents are unforgivable. Maybe the other ones are too, I’m not an authority on those.

I listen to sci fi almost exclusively and the more epic the better. I almost always finish whatever I start, no matter how long it is but I was spending so much time rolling my eyes or hoping the next bit would finally be better, I finally gave up after 15 hours of trying. Maybe scifi has come a long way since this came out and it just hasn’t aged well?

Anyway, not for me.

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Exactly what’s on the tin.

Revisado: 07-04-24

Very thinly plotted adolescent male fantasy. Boys (and man-boys) behaving badly with personality-free girls/women who tolerate them with indulgent sighs. All hail! Consequence-free lives for Men! (With a side of anti-globalism). To be clear…it’s also how the man-boys treat other man-boys. We’re all going to be aholes to each other because that’s just how we’re built. I love you, man. [bro-hug].

I got this because I started the Void Trilogy and was utterly lost so I wanted to go back to the beginning. The internet said that the tech for the series was established in this book but it was not essential to the subsequent story. I should have listened.

I hope he has stepped up his game in subsequent volumes.

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Great story & greater characters

Revisado: 07-04-23

This series continues to nail the balance between plot, character and big ideas.

Characters are allowed to develop over the course of books in a way that feels organic and believable— never feeling like someone has had a personality transplant or taken actions for inexplicable reasons.

Big ideas and large societal forces are wrestled with in a way that never feels like the author(s) grabbing a character’s mic and monologueing for 3 pages.

Well paced and the plot is always going somewhere in a way that feels cohesive but with just enough surprise to keep it interesting.

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Better ideas than writing, as expected

Revisado: 07-14-21

This was fine, I liked it. But as with most of Phillip K Dick, the actual writing is not the best and characters are not that vivid, ESPECIALLY the women.

Interesting ideas are entertained, but not really given full form. Still, I’m glad to have read the original, if only as a point of reference.

Most of the time I prefer the book over the movie/TV adaptations, but that has never been the case with a Dick story, and this was no exception. This is another instance of good raw material that is further developed and more compellingly told by a screen writer / director.

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Read for plot not people

Revisado: 05-23-16

Cool world, but the writing of the relationship is HORRIBLE...& is a big focus in this 2nd book of the series. It was hard to wade through, but there are enough plot questions that I will probably read the next one after taking some time away to recover from the repetitive, corny dialogue. To be fair, I am an adult, so maybe it wouldn't be an issue for a 12 year old reader. But other youth fiction has written young love in a way that didn't make me want to barf, so it's not too much to ask for.

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Read, don't listen

Revisado: 03-30-16

The American accents are unforgivable. The story is meh in the telling--the dynamic between the new pseudo-Watson and pseudo-Holmes feeling a bit unbelievable in the reading of it--an annoying experience. This is mitigated somewhat by the twist toward the end. However I do often find twists to be cheap gimmicks, and can't make up my mind about this one....bookclub , where are you when I need you?!?

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People do stuff. And dragons.

Revisado: 03-08-16

It's a story and it will go in your ear holes and drive away silence, but the story and the writing don't have much to recommend them beyond that.

The world is blandly imagined and the characters are thinly drawn. The plot has little narrative tension and problems are inevitably resolved by some deus ex machina-esque random intervention. The characters are cardboard cutouts being marched through a series of events that unfold with little sense of the context in which they are happening.

For me, fantasy is about world-building...if I'm expected to keep returning to the world for 3 or 13 books, the world the author creates needs to be an interesting place to be. There is so much fantasy fiction out there which has really engaging characters in unique and imaginative worlds, there are better ways to spend 10 hours. It will be a long time (if ever) before I bother with the next book.

But if you are out of options this is fine.

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Standout performance

Revisado: 02-05-16

The story is very good but it is Beohmer's reading that makes it great. Characters' are voiced distinctly and convincingly, even the women, without sounding at all silly.

I'm going to be sorry when I reach the end of the published series.

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Audio format doesn't do favors

Revisado: 09-30-15

Great answers to great questions written in a funny and engaging tone.

I enjoyed but have to say this is one that would have been better in print than audio. There are a lot of mathy-bits that just didn't stick in my brain when they came in through my ear-holes. It would have been easier to grasp coming in through my eye-holes.

But that's me...it was worth a listen.

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Non-fiction for the fiction lover

Revisado: 09-18-15

The subject was very interesting so I recommend on that alone. The writing form is sort of half way between a novel and a non-fiction history. This makes the really interesting history more palatable for those that don't care for non-fiction but may feel like there is a lack of rigor for non-fiction folks who like their facts to line up and trace back to reliable sources. Larson is no David McCoullough. I may have enjoyed more if he has just picked Team Novel or Team NonFiction and stuck with it.

For example, I did find it a little jarring to go from a novelistic description of the thoughts and feelings of specific people at specific moments (clearly speculation) to incongruously specific statements about people arriving "at 7:30 pm at Bla Bla station at 123 Main Street". Random facty bits thrown in to lend historical credibility broke the novelistic flow of people experiencing events in their time.

Narration is fine...neither stands out nor detracts from the book.

I listened to this on the ride home from a long weekend in Chicago. I spent a lot of time on architecture tours so many of the names and places were fresh in my mind. It was an interesting book that evoked what it must have been like in the city during the period. I do wonder if the printed book had some pictures of the fair and the people that I was missing, but I googled the places and people on my phone as I listened so I had all the photos I needed.

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