E. Benson

No Good Clues about "Gaming"

Revisado: 03-11-19

Audible has failed to identify the sub-type of SciFi this audio book contains. It is a Gamer story. It will join the junk pile of audio books that I have which were also misidentified -- even with careful review. Audible can remedy this.

About Advent: I have no doubt from the gamer's reviews here that it is a pleasure for gamers to listen to. That is fine. The performance is good and the story is well constructed. However, I do not enjoy gaming nor several other SciFi sub-types. No where, that I can find, is the word game, gamer, game play anywhere in the Audible review or the recorded preview. Yes, the term RPG and LitRPG appear and all reviewers assume that this is a cool substitute for Game or Gamer. (RPG was first used about 2008 and is not a very common term).

I need to be able to filter out gaming and the few other SciFi categories (complex political intrigue, soapy romance, endless military violence, etc). This is my personal preference - then again, I am the purchaser of the recording!

Audible should consider extending their rating list to include a selected group of categories - ones that a reviewer can check similar to a checklist. Yes, I know that is data-intensive and the Audible IT people may not like a running tally on categories. Here is a small snippet from a Wikipedia article on SciFi subtypes:

Afrofuturism
Alien invasion
Anthropological science fiction
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Biopunk
Black science fiction
Christian science fiction
Comic science fiction
Cyberpunk derivatives
.... many more

This is a large list - Audible could pick, say, 15 categories (including Gamer or RPG) and let the readers and reviewers categorize the recordings. The OTHER option is simply for Audible to step up and categorize the books themselves. Simply putting the recordings up for sale with a vague description, such as Advent, does not work. Audible, go look at eBay and see how you can select subcategories from the filters on the left side of the sales page.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Way Beyond Expiration Date

Revisado: 07-26-18

I need to learn not to trust the Audible "release date" which shows this old tome as 2013. The actual release date of the book, found if you look hard enough, is 2003. This is well before the current knowledge of human variants (Denisovan for example).

I would suggest that Great Courses pull this dated book and bring it up to date.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 17 personas

Please, more science - less academic politics

Revisado: 06-08-18

I really appreciate the science in Bryan Sykes books and admire greatly his work in genetics. The books I've listened to so far are about 1/4 science and 3/4 oneupmanship of Sykes over his fellow geneticists /or/ wanderings far from the topic. There should be more than enough genetic science and migration history to fill a large tome.

Please, create an abridged version that gets to and stays with the topic. Better, a compendium of Sykes' books that are all trimmed of emotional fat.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Please, Sir, I Want Some More

Revisado: 06-20-17

What made the experience of listening to Paradise the most enjoyable?

All three E.F. books (to date) are of equal superb quality so this applies across the board. They have gone to the top of my favorites in my audio library.

Craig Alanson has a real talent for balancing dry humor, more dry humor, visual imagery, well grounded science, and character development. The interaction of the characters with Skippy-the-Magnificent are a mix of stunning, roll on the floor humor and real insight into what being human means.

Please Mr. Alanson: more.

What does R.C. Bray bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

R.C. Bray is Mr. vocal stretch when he has a dialog between Skippy the beer can and Joe Bishop - stuffy, academic A.I. with a Yale accent vs. a simple army sergeant from Maine. Just great!

Any additional comments?

I think that Podium Publishing finally woke up to how bad a very, very long preview of the next book has on the listening experience. The preview was discontinued at Paradise, book 3.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Allergic to bad science - No more Event Group

Revisado: 06-19-17

Is there anything you would change about this book?

David Golemon has great writing skills: Wording, plot development, irony, humor - all of it! Mr. Golemon really needs to hire a science editor. Maybe redo the 472 science errors in the books.I was hoping that, based on other reviews, that this little problem would have been corrected back about Book 3. Really: 13 thousand year old petrified wood. I thought 10 million years would be the bare minimum.For Overlord, I only needed to listen to the first page to be disappointed, again. 700 million years ago, the tallest tree was a blob of algae. Nothing on land yet. Finding one of these science crashes is totally distracting and often invalidates the plot.

What was most disappointing about David L. Golemon’s story?

For the whole series: Tritium crystals. :(

Which character – as performed by Richard Poe – was your favorite?

Oh - all of them. Richard Poe is great.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Lovecraft smothered in bad production

Revisado: 07-24-14

Any additional comments?

Never trust an audiobook with electronic music in the background. The original story by Lovecraft is only 10 minutes long but, with the introduction, weird starting and ending music and detailed credits, it is dragged out to a whopping 14 minutes.Rough analogy: you order a 'small dinner salad' and you get a small dinner salad topped with pineapple chunks, whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, and liver chunks. yecch!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona