andrew

A nice little space opera

Revisado: 03-27-23

This story is a fun little space opera. It has some nice world building, characters that have at least some depth to them and is fairly well written. If a sequel were written I would read it.

The narration is decent quality neither flat monotone nor over the top hammy, Although the narrator does mispronounce some more esoteric words and in some places the editing is not the best. 3-4 times the editor messed up the splicing so the narrator repeats the last 15-20 seconds of the book. That knocked off a point of the performance.

The only story element that may put off some readers/listeners is that the MC comes from a culture that is basically Georgian era England in space with reversed gender roles. Example, the male MC complains that his mother keeps trying to marry him off to improve his family's social and political connections. She also forced him out of a STEM major into estate planning.

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It feels like half a book

Revisado: 10-24-20

This feels like half of a book. There is a plot but we only ever see it from the point of view of the MC who doesn't actually know much about what is going on until the very end of the story. Even then there seems to be a lot of gaps in his knowledge of events.

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Mandolorain without Jedi or the Force

Revisado: 09-29-20

The main character is very reminiscent of Boba Fett from the Star Wars expanded universe. A laconic, armored bounty hunter feared throughout known space for his ability to track down his quarry while wearing a distinctive and archaic set of armor complete with jetpack. The Universe itself is also reminiscent of the Star Wars universe only without the mysticism of the Force or Jedi. The story is well written and action packed while still showing the main character as a fallible person with human emotions.

Ray Porter's narration is excellent as usual, my only complaint is one character is has a very thick Japanese accent that is almost incomprehensible. When reading the book it's probably not too bad although you might have to reread his lines to understand them but for an audio book that is an issue. However that character is only on for a short period of time so the book is still enjoyable.

Bottom line, if you enjoyed the Mandolorian show or the Star Wars Expanded Universe book Tales of the Bounty Hunters you will probably enjoy this.

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Voices of a couple of characters ruined it

Revisado: 07-10-18

This book is a decent SciFi parody covering the wacky adventures of a genre-savvy captain kirk expy. What ruined this for me was the voices of a couple of the alien characters. The voice actor really got into it with the slobbering or wheezing noises that the characters were making, which was funny for the first couple of minuets. After that you just have the sound of someone slobbering into your ear. Totally killed this book for me.

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i have mixed feelings about this book

Revisado: 07-16-17

i purchased the next book in this series at the same time i purchased this one, if i hadn't done that i would probably not get it after listening to this one. i still plan on listening to the sequel though.

the performer did a good job most of the time. he put inflection into his voice and showed emotion without being too over the top. i didn't like the fact that the voices of the two main characters were so similar, i had a difficult time telling them apart. also when the performer did accents it was sometimes difficult to understand what the characters were saying.

Sometimes this audio book comes across as a decent adventure novel, other times it comes across as a game of dungeons and dragons played by immature high school geeks.

the two main characters are supposed to be a combat veteran turned EMT and a programmer (author never says what kind of programmer) that are in their late 20s. when they are talking to each other, fighting monsters, or planning the dungeon raid i can sort of believe that. when they are talking to the two females in the group or about females in general they come across as high school teenagers. for example the subject of cat-girls comes up way to often. the first time was funny, none of the others were.

the female characters in the story are worse. they are only kind of fleshed out and only seem to exist in the story as love interests for the two main characters. they do have their own backstories and personalities. one of them is a shallow reflection of a star trek vulcan (including the pointy ears) the other one comes across as a tsundere straight out of an anime. at the end of the book they are capable of defending themselves, they just start as helpless damsels in distress needing to be rescued by the two heroes, and then follow the main characters for the rest of the book because reasons? i am not even going to go into random comments about there being more women then men in the world the book is set in even though most of the characters they interact with are men.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Great book, wrong narrator

Revisado: 06-03-17

I first listened to The Thief as a book on tape (yes cassette tape, I am that old) preformed by Jeff Woodman when i was in middle school. Mr Woodman gave a much better performance than Mr West has. Mr West has a slow, monotone, deadpan voice during most of the narration that gives the story the feel of an uninterested and uninteresting person recounting a series of events in a business setting, only injecting feeling and emotion into the performance during character dialog. This style of narration glosses over much of the humor, sarcasm, and wit that really brings this book to life and makes Eugenides such an interesting and enjoyable character.

Its not that Mr West is a bad narrator, i am sure that someone who had never encountered Mr Woodman's performance would find this to be an acceptable audio book. i just remember this audio book being so much more than just acceptable.

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esto le resultó útil a 28 personas

An old friend

Revisado: 03-09-17

I first read this book (and most of the rest of the series) when i was in middle school and the attitudes of its characters had a large hand in shaping my own attitudes and morals. listening to it now i find memories of my 12 year old self in the story. This is an excellent book and series for older elementary or middle school students. There is enough action to be entertaining, enough humor to be funny and enough Judaeo-Christian moral instruction to show a kid how to be a good person with out being too preachy or heavy handed.

The heavy handedness comes in with the voice acting. Brian Jacques makes a very good narrator but many of the actors are over the top in both personality and volume when voicing the characters. Many times i found myself adjusting the volume up to here the narration and then way down so the yelling characters didn't hurt my ears.

Bottom line, this is a great audio book for a elementary or middle school kid to listen to from speakers. Most adults will cringe at the hammy over acting and the volume jumps will make you flinch, especially if you are using headphones.

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