Bryan

A Girly Book, but not in a good way

Revisado: 11-17-16

Would you try another book from Jennifer Foehner Wells and/or Susanna Burney?

I certainly would not throw good money after bad. If I wanted to read this trash, I'd buy a Harlequin novel instead. The narrator is fine.

What could Jennifer Foehner Wells have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

How about putting a little thought into the concepts? It's called SCIENCE fiction for a reason.

What does Susanna Burney bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She is a good actor with a pleasant voice.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Not really, no.

Any additional comments?

The alien star-faring civilization seeded earth with apelike creatures in the hope that a warrior race would evolve and help them in their war. This is as idiotic a concept as any I have ever read. If your recruitment drive takes millions of years, I'm pretty sure you are going to lose!

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Thank God it was short

Revisado: 10-25-16

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I'm sorry, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone not being very disappointed with this book.

What could Nathan Lowell have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Have something interesting happen.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator delivers his lines like Rod Serling with a gunshot wound to the groin.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Quarter Share?

All of them

Any additional comments?

The premise is a young man joins the crew of an interstellar trading ship. This is a situation bursting with promise! Interesting trade problems with bizarre aliens, pirate attacks, engine failure, plague and mutiny, all just off the top of my head.
Instead the author fills the entire book with the excruciating, minuscule details of buying and selling mundane items. ***YAWN***
How to clean a large copper coffee pot was one of the action highlights of this sorry excuse for a novel.
My Aunt Bertha's garage sales are more exciting than this book!

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

A very fun read, despite badly flawed science

Revisado: 08-26-16

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

The book is action-packed, well paced, has a sense of humor and interesting characters.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Live Free or Die?

The alien traders unexpectedly getting drunk on maple syrup, while hackneyed, was an effective device.

What does Mark Boyett bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Mark Boyett does an excellent job of voice acting. He gives each different character their own speech dialect.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I did laugh out loud a couple of times.

Any additional comments?

This was a fun read, if you are able to ignore the glaring science errors, and implausible plot devices. For example, I calculated that in order to melt the Troy asteroid in 1 year and neglecting all losses, you would need 5 million concentrating mirrors each 1 KILOMETER on a side! Jeez, Ringo, pick up a slide rule!
Also, the conceit that some local IT guy turns out to be a better macro-engineer than a thousands of years old interstellar empire is just insipidly insulting.
A minimal amount of thought, a few minutes with a calculator, and the tiniest respect for the reader's intelligence could have made this book a classic rather than a guilty pleasure.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

novelized 'Dear Diary' maunderings

Revisado: 08-26-16

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

If you want to listen to the protagonist endlessly self-analyze his pathetic insecurities, then this book is for you.

What could Algis Budrys have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The author might have included some science along with his fiction, It's 500 years from now, and the big military technology advance is an air rifle? Also, alien invaders than look exactly like humans is just biologically idiotic.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator read it like an annoying self-absorbed teenager. To be fair though, that is how it was written.

What character would you cut from Falling Torch?

The main one.

Any additional comments?

The events of the book very closely parallel the author's childhood experiences as a Lithuanian refugee. The endless introspective inner dialog is obviously something that belongs in a 'Dear Diary' entry and not as part of a novel. The plot for this book was literally nonexistent. If Budrys needed to work out some issues (he really, really did), may I suggest free writing and then burning the pages instead of making all of us suffer along with him?

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Great Book, Annoying Narration

Revisado: 02-07-16

What made the experience of listening to A Gift from Earth the most enjoyable?

Here is a classic adventure novel from a master of SF. Thoroughly enjoyable, well thought and well paced.

What was one of the most memorable moments of A Gift from Earth?

A trip through the body banks, where political prisoners donate their organs to keep alive the ruling class...

How could the performance have been better?

WHY OH WHY did the narrator give the Matt Keller character a ridiculous California surfer accent!!?? Extremely annoying and detracting from the overall experience.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Any additional comments?

The narrator should keep his funny voices in the box where they belong!

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

gelatinous jingoistic blather

Revisado: 10-09-10

This book consists of a few morsels of science fiction floating in a gelid medium of jingoistic pap. The story follows recruits in the future marine corps, and the narrator grunts out the annoyingly saccharine "esprit" like he's an actual drill instructor. A little of this I could take, but the hours of political diatribes and melodramatic inner soliloquies are downright nauseating. The author actually says "Hoo-Rah" over and over (I think its a marine thing).

I admire the above average understanding of physics, but that's the only positive thing I have to say about this novel. The story is a blatant rip off of Saberhagen's berserkers and Heinlein's starship troopers, without the charm of either.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

a flawed masterwork

Revisado: 03-26-10

The Heechee alien race and artifacts are among the most interesting in science fiction. Inscrutable and fascinating, enticing with riches and threatening with danger, the Gateway asteroid embodies with eloquence mankind's questing nature.
I only wish the novel had focused more exclusively on the Heechee and not on one of the most unlikeable characters in modern fiction. The "Hero" Robinette Broadhead, is given an opportunity any red blooded human would die for: to plumb the galaxy's mysteries in an alien starship.
All he can do with this mighty gift, unfortunately, is drink till he pukes, beat his girlfriend, and sobbingly profess to his shrink that he equates love with having things stuck up his butt. Oh, Dear!

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esto le resultó útil a 9 personas

It's not just long... it's also slow and stupid!

Revisado: 01-23-10

The antagonist is a god-like evil which is devouring the universe simultaneously(?) across trillions of years of history.
Bear attempts to address the raised issues of quantum reality and causality merely by babbling cool-sounding made up words like "enigma-chron" and "lines of fate". This whole book is an "enigma-chron".
The creeping chaos consuming reality fortunately has gravity, soil, cities and a flow of events so that the characters can sojourn there. Maybe it's not so chaotic?
Fortunately for the botched storyline, housecats (yes, frikkin' housecats!) are immune to the chaos's effects, and devour the ultimate malign intelligence which turns out to be a small alien space-rat.
I SWEAR I'M NOT KIDDING!!
Don't waste your money on this one.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

gag

Revisado: 09-11-09

The plot was utterly pointless and meandering. None of the magic or fantastic happenings were ever explained. I also got really tired of the bad movie german accent of the main character.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Bloody Brilliant

Revisado: 06-28-09

Incredibly vivid, poetic, and brilliantly descriptive, Lynch's masterpiece paints a deeply rich and detailed world behind the reader's eyes. Humourous, exciting and visceral, this is one of those books that leaves you begging for more!

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas