HijaDelSol

Couldn’t finish

Revisado: 11-25-24

In fact, I barely started! The author has no grasp of how to write believable dialogue; sentences filled with exposition are way longer and more complex than how people normally speak. Plus, the performer reads them in a near monotone that only emphasizes the problems. I like the plot concept - maybe these flaws could be overlooked in the print version.

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Disappointing

Revisado: 10-27-24

Full disclosure: I didn’t finish it. The performance was okay, but I was expecting to hear about women whose lives took some sort of big turn when they reached middle age or older.

Instead, this book seemed to be mainly about women who just managed to live a long time doing what they always loved. Again, I did go into this with certain expectations of inspiration for navigating my older years, but while Mother Theresa is definitely inspiring, relatable she is not…

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Bonkers plot & characterizations

Revisado: 07-10-24

I really liked the first couple of books in this series, but there were so many crazy beats in this one that I found myself alternating between cringing and cracking up. The premise of going “undercover” in a mental health facility is wacky to start with, but throw in the mob and an inexplicable love-at-first sight plot point, and I’m really losing respect for the lead character and the author. Hopefully the next one will get back on track - and at least Richard Armitage will be narrating again! Hugh Dancy was great too, but RA does a better job with female voices and just general tone IMO.

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TERRIBLE Narrators!

Revisado: 06-21-24

The stories range the gamut from hot to ridiculous, but even the bad ones could have been tolerable with better readers. As other reviewers have said, “robotic” and “monotonous” are not sexy, and in some cases the intonation makes it seem like they don’t even understand what they’re reading. Too bad.

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Slice of tragic history

Revisado: 05-03-24

This fact-based story set during the creation of the state of Israel gives a heartbreaking perspective on the Palestinian side of events as they unfolded in Jaffa. The writing isn’t great - the overall narrative structure and much of the exposition can be pretty clunky. However, the narration by Amin El-Gamal, who reads the Subhi part, is perfect and it’s great that they got Arabic speakers to pronounce everything correctly. Overall it was a worthwhile listen and, even if only half of it is “true”, makes it easy to sympathize with the Palestinians as a dispossessed and displaced people. (NB: For a Jewish/Zionist perspective, I remember Exodus by Leon Uris being very moving.)

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Don’t get it

Revisado: 01-24-24

I made it to the end, but I just don’t understand the hype. It certainly wasn’t interesting enough for me to even track down the filmed version. Narration was fine, but I often found myself realizing that I’d completely tuned out the story and had the reader droning on as background in my headphones for nearly entire chapters. And mostly it didn’t seem like I had missed much… Maybe I’ll go back and read some positive reviews just to figure out what I’m not getting!

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Wanted to love it, but...

Revisado: 01-15-24

So I was just looking through my library and realized I never even finished this book! Why? Because I wasn't engaged enough to follow Katherine's life to the bitter end.

I'm normally all over this type of historical fiction, but at 22.5 hours this one is just... too much. To be fair, all the individual scenes are extremely well-written, with enough detail to visualize exactly what's going on - clothing, sound effects, scenery - and dialogue that explains everything in context. However, this is also what causes the narrative to drag on, and on. The effect was that I switched over to some other better-paced story and completely forgot to finish this one.

The narration by Rosalyn Landor has a very clipped, formal cadence and enunciation that took a bit for me to get used to, and for me she does only an adequate job of differentiating the voices of the characters. These qualities just contributed to my overall feeling of low-level irritation while listening to "The True Queen".

I'm going to try to finish it anyway, but I doubt I'll be following up with the other five wives.

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It was fine...

Revisado: 11-21-23

I've listened to a ton of procedurals over the last few years, and this one isn't bad. There's a decent twist, and I appreciate that there weren't really any lurid descriptions of horrific murder (except for one non-human), which does get tiresome after a while (although now that I think about it, we weren't given a good reason for that description either...). There were some flashback scenes that never completely got cleared up, and things were ultimately wrapped up really quickly - too quickly, even. In addition, I didn't get much sense of the lead character's personality in this one, and while Angus King's narration was fine (love me a Scottish accent!) maybe he could have done more to make DCI Logan come alive a bit more? Anyway, it was all... fine... just not 5 stars.

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Clunky

Revisado: 11-02-23

I wanted to like this book, despite the warnings that it was mostly about bullfighting; I thought that might end up being an apt analogy for some larger message. And I do think that’s what Michener was going for, but ugh!

The narrative strain of trying to tell “history” in present tense first person - inventing 900-year-old texts that were somehow thoroughly discovered and translated, for example - was often just painful. And don’t expect this to be any sort of comprehensive history of Mexico, either, especially given that he chose to invent key peoples (the Altomecs) and people (General Gurza) rather than have his characters interact realistically with true historical figures.

And speaking of characters, most of them were too on-the-nose, only there to serve the plot or exposition rather than reveal anything deeply human with any subtlety. Even the struggles of the first-person narrator to come to terms with his bicultural identity were dealt with in only the most superficial ways.

Back in my youth I truly loved a couple of Michener’s books - specifically The Drifters and The Source - and I’m still going to give Iberia a try, but that will probably be the end of my affair with this author.

The performer, BTW, was not my fave either, with a “newsreel” type of delivery that others have mentioned. It didn’t put me off totally, but I more enjoyed the parts of the book I read on paper than the parts I listened to, probably due to this.

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Narration - ugh!!

Revisado: 10-14-23

I haven't even finished this book yet - the story is engaging enough that I'm willing to hear it out - but the narration is so annoying that I can't go on without saying something (and I'm not one to complain much about narrators).

First, the accents are all over the place: English, Irish, American - they all sound more or less the same in their inconsistency. This, added to the lack of performance ability (or the bad direction), makes it really difficult to tell the characters apart much of the time; the internal dialogue, for example, of the American archivist and the Irish inspector sound exactly the same. Finally, the pronunciation: Regardless of which accent, she reads many words as if she's never heard them before, e.g. "exasperated" instead of "exacerbated", and "imPUYdent" instead of "IMpudent".
Ugh! Sorry, but I will be actively avoiding Ms. Drummey's narration from now on.

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