Fredrik Pettersen

Great stories mixed with some just good

Revisado: 08-31-23

I enjoyed this collection greatly, but sometimes it felt like the stories petered out rather than finished. However, some of the stories are absolute diamonds.

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Tricky to review

Revisado: 10-15-18

So here's the thing: I really didn't enjoy "Bad Dreams" very much, but by that I mean the story "Bad Dreams". It was messy and not at all up to Newman's usual standard. I can't tell for sure though, because it may also have been the narrator, who I could not stand; his voice was soft and squishy, and I have a suspicion the book might've been much better with another narrator.
But! In a complete surprise, this book is actually comprised of two stories, and the second one, "Bloody Students" was MUCH better, I'd go so far as to say classic Newman, in that it's a great mash-up of the zombie virus-type genre, The Blob, the Thing, and Resident Evil, all set in a British Uni. The fact that the narrator, Joan Walker, was in this case absolutely fantastic didn't hurt either. So... A one or two-star story coupled with a four or five-star story... Like I said, tricky. I'd say it's worth a credit just for "Bloody Students" in the end, but I can't give the whole package more than three stars.

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Huh, that was unexpected.

Revisado: 02-12-17

I've mildly enjoyed the Expanse-series before this one; they've been solid stories in a realistic future, featuring some great characters (Arasavela) and one terrible one - Holden, sadly also the main character, as well as three underutilized ones (the rest of the crew). They've been mostly solid three-star books.

Imagine my surprise when this book opens up the story, gives Naomi a past, Alex a soul and manages to make Amos possibly the most interesting sociopath I've encountered in ages. I also spent most of the book NOT hoping Holden would die, which is a vast improvement over previous installments.

Add an apocalypse, as well as a narrator who's clearly grown into the series, and yeah... 5 stars from me.

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Excellent stand-alone follow-up to "14"

Revisado: 08-08-15

Think Chrichton by way of Scalzi, with the pacing of Dan Brown and setting by Lovecraft.

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Superb world-building, good-ish plot.

Revisado: 06-20-15

Bacigalupi builds a believable near-future, so much so I changed how my pensions are invested. It's some truly awesome futurism. The story in itself is just good, and ironically is a throwback to the hard-boiled stories of yesteryear, and not just because the squabbling over water-rights brings "Chinatown" right into focus, or the MacGuffin might as well have been a Maltese Falcon. Still, highly recommended, and I hope to revisit this world soon, though hopefully only in fiction.

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Terrible narrator made me wince

Revisado: 10-07-13

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I'd recommend it to anyone who had read the previous books, or anyone wanting to jump in (as the death of Caesar makes a good starting point). However, I would NOT recommend this Audible version, as the narrator ruins the book completely.

What didn’t you like about Michael Healy’s performance?

Everything. It was terrible. But let me try to list my main objections:

- Healy has a strange lilt to his voice that is either an accent or terrible reading skills. The upshot is that every full stop, he lifts his voice the way you sometimes do when reading to young children.

- His reading pace hardly ever changes, meaning even in tense, action-packed moments, it's as if he's reading "My dog Spot" to a room of 5-year-olds.

- He doesn't differentiate between characters as far as I could tell, meaning that when one character interrupts another, it gets reeeeally confusing.

- I don't think he's read the book beforehand; Imagine how you'd say the sentence "I think I'd quite like a sandwich and a nice cup of tea". Now imagine Healy saying, in the exact same way "You're a disgrace to Rome!..." (the exclamation point silent), and then continuing, completely obliviously (and still just as ploddingly) "...shouted Octavian and slammed his fist into the table." The disconnect between how Iggulden claimed Octavian said it and how Healy reads it would be funny, if it wasn't ruining my book.

Any additional comments?

I had to finish this book in hard-copy. Worst narration I've experienced since "Rendezvous with Rama".

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The apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

Revisado: 05-16-13

Any additional comments?

If the cat wasn't already out of the bag about Joe Hill's semi-secret parentage, this book would have freed the feline for sure as this could easily have been one of his dad's mid-80s books. "NOS4R2" particularly channels "Christine", with a hint of "IT" (which it even references).

So, if you're a fan of King's, or of Hill's for that matter, whether to pick this up or not is an easy choice.

Oh, and I was surprised to find that this Audio-version actually contains an epilogue (hidden in the audio-book production-credits) not found in my e-book version - and it's also very well read by Kate "Janeway" Mulgrew, so if you're wondering which version to get, Audio is it.

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One of the great Sci-Fi novels of the age

Revisado: 03-30-13

Any additional comments?

This is one of the Great Science Fiction novels of the last few years - and yeah, I'm aware that me calling it Sci-Fi would annoy the author, but if it walks like a duck...

The story is set in two undisclosed futures; the 'present' of our main character Snowman, as he struggles to navigate the perils of a post-apocalyptic (a plaguealypse, this time) America, while caring for a tribe of genetically engineered post-humans; and also Snowman's past (and our near-future), where mankind is spinning ever faster towards a gene-tech driven singularity, while trying its hardest to ignore the impending ecocalypse. Snowman, then known as Jimmy, details his relationships with the two eponymous characters, Oryx and Crake, who will both have their parts to play in the catastrophe to come...

The themes themselves won't be new to any regular Sci-Fi readers; I sometimes get the feeling Atwood, like many authors who don't "do" sci-fi (Cormac McCarthy, Colson Whitehead), imagines their 'speculative fiction' is breaking new ground when they're actually on a well-worn track, both in terms of story and themes. But who cares when it's this well written?

The narration was ... well, it was good; it wasn't a detriment to the story in any way, but I sometimes felt it was overly morose. I guess that's not a criticism, just a preference; but for me, it didn't quite live up to the prose, and I found my hard-copy sessions (I always do a read-listen-read relay) more pleasurable. It could be that often the story's the thing for me, but with this particular book, the prose is an end in itself.

So yes, a whole-hearted recommendation from me - as a measure of this, I can say that I started the next novel set in this universe ("The Year of the Flood") literally the minute I had finished this - although i do recommend also going hard-copy/Kindle to get the most out of it. At any rate: Get it!

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Deliciously offbeat and wicked

Revisado: 03-27-13

Any additional comments?

I like a book that keeps me guessing, and 'Gone Girl' certainly did that... In many ways, it's the 'Scream' of crime-writing. A familiar setting, the woman who goes missing and the husband who everyone thinks did it... The difference here is that everyone, from the suspect to the cops to the witnesses have all read the same detective novels, and watched the same true crime-shows, that we have; they are all too well aware of the tropes and clichés of the script they find themselves enacting, and yet they seem unable to break out of it.

The narrators did a great job of conveying the characters they portrayed, the husband in the present reacting to his wife's disappearance and the ensuing suspicions; and the wife coming to us from beyond the grave as it were, in the form of her diary entries.

I recommend this whole-heartedly for any fan of the genre - it breaks with convention in ways that some will love and some will hate, but whatever your reaction, at least you'll have experienced something new; and that in itself is worth the price of admission.

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Took me by surprise with its sheer awesomeness.

Revisado: 10-14-12

Where does The Blade Itself rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This would rank in the top ten.

What other book might you compare The Blade Itself to and why?

It's similar to George R.R. Martin, though the world itself contains more magic. The characters and their moral opacity is very similar though. It also has some of R Scott Bakker in it, in that it presents a group of heroes and a society that we as readers are supposed to think are, well, idiotic and posturing macho prigs and pigs. The charaterizations are faaar deeper than Bakker's, though, and it's much less grim.This book is the start of a (finished) trilogy, and you won't understand the scope of Abercrombie's brilliance until you've read to the end of third book, but trust me, this series is far more subtle than it seems at first glance.

What about Steven Pacey’s performance did you like?

Honestly, everything. He was so good I will actively search out books he reads in the future. Every single character had a disctinct voice, without ever descending into parody (a common failing amongst performers who do 'voices'). The only thing that ever bothered me was his weird way of pronouncing the word grimace, but after three books I'm now on board, and will change the way I say it in the future, instead of grousing :-D

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

It is surprisingly funny, especially the internal monologue of the torturer Glokta.

Any additional comments?

Great writing, some of the best fight-scenes I've read, but also very deep characterizations and a deeper and more philosophical arc over the series than one usually expects from a fantasy series, and also deeply funny - if you have any love for Fantasy at all, buy it now, you won't be disappointed!

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