Kristin Bauer

One of the most confusing & disturbing books

Revisado: 03-31-25

I don’t think even on 1.2 speed I can take it anymore. This is the last book in this series and I so badly wanted to complete it but it’s too painful.

The performance is excellent. Could not be better! No problem there.

Here is what I have learned in 30 hours of listening: these are the craziest zealots to have ever walked the earth. No exaggeration. I could not have even conceived of a people this mentally ill. They make Nazis look like Boy Scouts.

Beyond that I have zero idea what is happening.

I’ve been taking notes to try and keep track of the ENDLESS characters and storylines. (Wikipedia lists THIRTY THREE MAJOR CHARACTERS, and too many to count minor characters but looks like about 60!). I’ve also been pushing pause and looking up endless terms like moulah, imam, greens bands …which by the way no one on earth has ever heard of so I can have no idea what faction green bands represent.

It seems with each book Clavel gets more and more and more complex.

This book describes so much insanity in every paragraph that it’s mind numbing, literally. If you played a drinking game where every time someone said, “as god wants” when they did anything they want (usually rape or murder), you’d be in the ICU in 4 pages. I don’t doubt that this book is really really really really well researched (God Knows!) so I’m fairly sure these people are the craziest people who’ve ever walked the earth.

But do I want to spend another 20 hours to finish this thing just to say I did it when half the time I’m checking my notes to try and trace which story line I’m in and all the time I’m phenomenally disturbed?

I also learned one other thing in all fairness - the women are the most alluring and seductive to men in the world. There is nothing more that they live for than to please a man, and men cannot resist them, understandably. They also love sex it seems, with each other too. “Psycho men and hot women” could have been an alternative title.

The women are also extremely brain washed by their cult and none of them have ever been allowed to share their true thoughts or feelings so everything is covert. They handle men adroitly.

As I type …I’m actually wondering about a story line that went no where …I think?? What happened to The French husband who was a spy (maybe) and his wife, and she was having an affair with …who again??

Bottom line is - I really only can care about a couple of the pilots and their wives and I do hope they get out. But I’d rather look online and get a synopsis than sit through 20 more hours of sociopathy. It’s an entire country of the most disturbed men I could have ever imagined. If it weren’t in fact true, I would think it was unrealistic! No one could be that stupid and crazy! And the same sick leader is still in charge today!!

I’ve read a huge amount of WW2 books, and those were not as disturbing! That says a lot!!

The Iranians are one step more sick as they think their horrific acts are God!! They reference God EVERY SINGLE. SENTENCE!

I would have much rather read a book about a few airline pilots caught in this disaster and their efforts to get out. A good editor could have cut 50% of this book, and helped simplify or focus it so one could follow it. Shogun and Tai Pan were the last books that really did this well. Gai Jin began to wander and sprawl with no one to root for. King Rat did a bit better again as it focused on some men we got to know. Noble House I read too long ago to recap and I could not bear that performer of the audible, sadly. (All but that performer have been incredible in this series!)

I can’t recommend this book, as you may have gleaned, and it’s such a shame as fiction can be a great way to get a glimpse in to other times and places! This is not just a glimpse, it’s an entire year at university. today the torture scene of
The Russian spy was so brutal I had to fast forward after 15 minutes as the sheer joy with which the Iranians tortured him and how much they loved Inflicting extreme unimaginable pain, keeping him at the edge of death for as long as they could manage, when a truth serum would have worked better - was worse than any people in history.

I read a series of books on the most notorious serial killers and this was on par or actually more disturbing - again because it was as cruel but the fanaticism and 100% belief that this was all Gods desire makes these people more frightening.

So swim at your own risk and take notes and have a dictionary handy and good luck!

PS - I just googled “how does whirlwind end” and in reading about the characters fates - I have no idea who they even are! Who’s Armstrong?? Yeah…if you’re 30 HOURS in and have no idea who (one of 33) a main character is…yeah…Nope.

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Incredible account

Revisado: 03-23-25

Highly recommend this front row seat to what really happened in WW2.

No one but Winston was there from before the start to the very end.

If it weren’t for he “we’d all be speaking German” as they say.

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Couldn’t continue performance is terrible

Revisado: 01-28-25

Wow, that was bad. I’ve (read and) listened to 3 previous in this shogun series (read and watched shogun) and loved them all. This performer is well, just bad.
It’s really not good.
I am shocked more listeners didn’t comment on this and also got through it!

-He doesn’t do different voices so the military guy, the business man and his woman all sound exactly the same. (That’s the chapter that I last listened to and did me in)

-his accents are not good, especially American. I think, but am not sure, that he is trying to do an American accent with the characters mentioned?? Instead what happens is like a super bright Golly Gee!! Delivery on EVERY SINGLE LINE. “Look at all the people!!! Where are they all going!!!” When she had an internal thought. EVERY SINGLE LINE is like a parody of I’m not sure what. It’s just not good acting.

- his English, Scottish, Irish and America accents all bleed in to each other. I suspect with his “Golly Gee!!!” he’s trying to do American??

- his delivery - the acting - is not there. It’s just not there.

It’s very rare that I dislike a reader so much that I can’t continue.

The previous readers in this series were so so so good that I listened to Tai Pan twice.

Why on earth they would they not hire one of those fabulous performers again??

I can’t tell you how the story is as I could not discern it (and I read it too long ago).

I Guess I’ll just skip to the next in the series(?).

Bummer

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Not my fav Dickens!

Revisado: 01-24-25

Great performer!

The story…has problems.

David Copperfield is wonderful! Nicolas Nickelby is enjoyable and filled with humor.

Oliver is formulaic, all characters are either extremely evil or extremely way too good. The evil: (omg, if the Jews dialogue said “my dear” one more time…my teeth were on edge! He said my dear every single line! It became like finger nails on a Chalk board. ) are almost cartoon like they’re so evil. Not that these people don’t exist but people in the street hit Oliver, people he passes curse at him…EVERYONE is mean to him. It just starts to feel like a farce.

All dickens books are the same - super duper evil people torturing a child that is goodness personified for a very long time. Until a very very Good Samaritan FINALLY comes along and gives the poor chap a nice life.

In Oliver- the good do come along and are so so so good they are simpering. There was one hour long scene where Harry tells rose he loves her. I have no idea how many times I groaned and rolled my eyes.

The phone was wet it was so unbelievably. sappy. There is no way anyone ever lived who was that ….well, sort of self deprecating to such a clinical degree that they truly should have gotten professional mental help. And it goes on for about an hour? And who even knows what the hell they were talking about as they said nothing but I think, “I’m not good enough for you” “no I’m not good enough for you””I can’t allow you to love such a lowly person as I”….endlessly. However that is only what I think was going on. It was so dragged out and flowery I really can’t say but that after an hour I jumped to the next chapter.

There is no way people were like that and the earth turned.

I started skipping whole chapters and missed nothing of the story. I also had to listen in 1.2 speed after a while.

The book is called Oliver Twist but he also does this weird thing where he has long chapters that are just about other random characters that have nothing to do with Oliver or the main story lines and then he just goes back to the story.

It’s a strange book but the performer is so good and it’s such a known book that I’m going to struggle through until the end but it ain’t easy.

No where near as good as the other two I mentioned.

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It was good

Revisado: 12-06-24

The performance is staggeringly great!

The story is good.

However, some parts did just not interest me as much as others. The shishi sonojoi stuff was very hard to care about. They just seemed incredibly shallow and obsessed with killing and dying. Yawn. Really basic characters with zero redeeming qualities. The emperor and the shogun, Yoshi, were barely in the story so there were just no Asian characters of note, at all. Certainly no one to care about. The other challenge was that the performer had to do the Japanese voices and he did them exceedingly well! But he had to speak their dialogue in English of course, even when they would have spoken to each other in Japanese, and so he had to do their voices in broken English, I mean, Engrish. He had to do this to distinguish their voices with a nod to the fact that they were Japanese. But this is challenging to listen to for very long, especially when this story line is dull and one note, well two notes - kill and die. (To be fair one of them also obsessed on rape too.) And they were a huge part of the story. We didn’t have a Dirk Struen to love - no strong central character - there were many English characters and mainly two Japanese idiots. So not as much of a strong pull in the story from any character. It was more …broad.

Angelique’s rape added a complication certainly and I was rooting for her, even though I thought it far fetched she could wake up and open the door when they knocked, and also talk to them, but that she’d then sleep through a rape! The author should have made her passed out period, never acknowledgeing anyone. If someone at your door wakes you, rape would! And that she also enjoyed the rape was …at best very far fetched.

It was still an interesting listen as the time period is fascinating. The performer was so good it was incredible to hear him do so many voices!!

The book is good enough. Not as much of a ride as Tai Pan ( or Shogun of course). Tai Pan pulled us through! I loved so many of the players! This book just meanders and step by step we are moved through, chapter by chapter, well enough. Often I had a hard time keeping track of who was who because they hadn’t made an impression frankly.

No one really to love. Like able yes.

So, good enough.

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Had to return it

Revisado: 09-29-24

My god this is dull.
A couple hours in and I just couldn’t take the endless laborious descriptions. Let me help out: the dog is unusual and the repair man is a creep.
There I did it in one sentence instead of two hours.
This is my second try at Koontz. I think I’ve got it now.
The reader is excellent.

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I returned it

Revisado: 09-18-24

I could not for the life of me get in to this book.
Firstly, it does not begin until book 2. Literally. Book one is introducing all the characters that will be in the story once it begins. That’s challenging, as we’re just studying for a history exam-Mary sue is the one who does laundry and is single and lives on baker street. Joe blow is the guy with the tupe who beats his wife?? Or is that magnus on 43rd??

We have no story to connect them to. It’s just a laundry list of profiles.

Then we meet Pund. He’s our detective. And we have a crime. IN BOOK TWO! Now unless you’ve been taking notes on book one, whoever those people were is long gone. Maybe if you read the book every day in print and could have dog eared some pages it would help. However I’m mainly listening on Sundays while I paint. So by the following Sunday …forget about it-as it was not engaging enough, beyond Pund, to care.

And Pund is dying.

Sigh.

So the only character we know or care about and is the main detective - we are about to go through his demise, while we solve a murder we don’t care about yet, with a bunch of suspects that we don’t care about or recall particularly.

Usually the suspects are introduced in context to the story/crime. I’m not sure why he chose to have an exam before the story begins.

Anthony is a very structured well thought out grammatically correct writer. I appreciate those things!

This one may have been more academically mapped out than served the momentum.

Other reviewers thought his trope as the story unfolds to be brilliant and others were underwhelmed.

I suspected I’d be in the latter category as I was already not wanting to have a front row seat to a dying man who I really liked, especially since I knew or liked no one else in the book.

I was sad to say goodbye to Pund upon returning the book. I may have been more sad to stick with a book with a tricky not payoff and also watch him die.

Apparently there is some sort of story within a story trope that happens.

I will never know.

The performer is INCREDIBLE!

He was almost enough to keep listening just to hear him!! Just wow.

So anyway, listen at your own peril and enjoy the reader!

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It’s sweet

Revisado: 08-31-24

Nice to hear a classic that does not disappoint.
Tim curry makes it!
It’s not an edge of the seat kind of book but it’s a nice listen.

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Wait why’d he kill him?

Revisado: 08-25-24

I find Anthony’s books very well done. Very well thought out and meticulously written.

I also find…that I am not invested. Maybe that’s often the case with murder mysteries?? In order for us not to know who did it until the big reveal, it has to be complex? So complex we can’t solve it and also so complex by the end we really are not dying to know how it all went down?

I have no idea why he killed him. And I’m not even really interested enough to play it back and try and see if I can find out where anthony explains why.

I think we really need to be rooting for someone. And I’m not sure we are here. I don’t know. I’m just not drawn in.

(Just a Side note - I felt there were things like this in the finale like, in the suicide note the dentist says “see you on the other side” but really meant the other side of the justice system. That’s thin. But I think this happens in all murder mysteries)

look, they’re well done.

The performer is one of the best! He’s a marvel! I think he’s my fav part about this book. I love listening to him.

I suppose since they’re well executed - and so so so so many books are not!! I may continue.

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Best book I ever read, reader miscast

Revisado: 08-15-24

Do yourself a favor and read this book! Don’t listen!
This was possibly the most well written book I’ve ever read, maybe only second to East of Eden.

This audible version does NOT do it justice. The reader is a very good actress however, she is terribly miscast. For one, the author was English with English parents! and grew up in Africa!-she did not sound American!!
It’s a crying shame and a very missed opportunity to not have at the least an English actress!
How can one get a feel of Africa at that time listening to a gal from the states???
Terribly bizarre and unfortunate.
It was so off I had to stop listening to my favorite book of all time and I’ll go back to read it again instead.

What were they thinking?!?

Hard pass on this audible version.

But please read the book!

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