m_mkope

Lovely world building

Revisado: 08-24-24

Martha Wells is one of my favorite world builders. In all of her worlds - realms of a space faring, distant future, of shape shifting dragons, etc. - I feel at home. The Witch King feels like Earth's North Africa, a place I've never been, in a time I've never experienced, but it feels as if I have, and I'm faintly nostalgic for it.

The opening chapter threw me, and I had to listen to it several times before it 'took'. Listening to the past and present sequences in parallel was interesting. Strangely enough, I vibes more with the past sequences, where Kai was more in touch with his true demon nature.

I have to admit, I didn't fall in love with the narration. It wasn't bad at all, but it would have been much better if it didn't sound rushed. Martha's words deserve to be savored and appreciated. I wish I had the time to follow my own advice and read the text.

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4.5 of 5

Revisado: 07-09-24

Good story, though not as engrossing as Dogs of War. The listener is forced to spend far toouch time listening to Honey, whose motto appears to be, "Why get to the point when I can drop a novella on you instead?" This is exacerbated by the strange cadence of Laurence Bouvard. Her motto appears to be, "Why voice a single sentence when I can throw a weird pause in and end up with two or even three sentences?" Honey's soliloquies are bad enough by themselves (they are taxing even to read), but when those random pauses populate the speech I want to give up. In fact, I did give up and listened to four old favorites before I became determined to finish the last two hours of Bear Head.

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Did not expect to like this

Revisado: 07-01-24

I'm a Tchaikovsky fan, but I don't expect to be delighted by everything he writes. The description of Dogs of War made me hesitate on its purchase for nearly a year. Maybe I was, in fact, not ready to appreciate it before. However, I found it to be grossing - as in missing sleep engrossing. The plot was well-paced, the character development intriguing yet credible, the writing nearly poetic, and the voice performances top notch.

Headed to the next one soon.

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Different, but enjoyable

Revisado: 05-30-24

More detective noir than the space romp of others in the series. It's still Murderbot, in the end, so it's all good.

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Delightful collection

Revisado: 05-20-24

Different authors, different stories, different writing styles, all lovely. There were some stories I liked more than others, and another listener will have a different preference order, but none were deal breakers. I am particularly partial to the Ann Leslie story, maybe because I'm fond of octopodes. Ending with Scalzi's story was perfect.

Overall, the collection took me on quite a ride. I will have to indulge again soon.

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Something a bit different from Morgan

Revisado: 05-13-24

I love Richard K. Morgan's writing in general; grammar, plot pacing, etc. I also like Simon Vance's performance of Morgan novels. I also like novels with flawed characters because it's relatable: everyone I've ever met or heard of has had deep flaws, and that's okay. However, in Market Forces, it's hard to find a character with enough positive traits that even begin to mitigate the flaws.

The novel is about corporate gladiators, but in the end, this listener didn't care who lived or died.

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Slow start, but worth the wait

Revisado: 04-29-24

*Minor spoiler follows*

starting immediately after the first novel, The Space Between Worlds, I expected similar pacing and story arcs, so II stopped listening a few chapters into this one. I disliked all the characters and, this story being told in the first person, I was always in the head of a character that made me uncomfortable. Always. In. The. Head. In other words, there was too large of an internal monologue to action ratio. And - *spoiler alert* - Mr. Scales is not always a faithful narrator.

The voice performer was good at staying in character and keeping voices distinct. The smooth delivery was what allowed me to return to the novel for what turned out to be a gripping listen with a most satisfying second half. It was only the first quarter of the book that dragged, in retrospect.

Easy to recommend this title.

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Surprise treat

Revisado: 04-07-24

I don't generally get into military science fiction, and I thoroughly disliked the one other novel I read by Scott Sigler ("Infected"). However, I was intrigued by this book's synopsis, encouraged that Ray Porter provided the voice acting, and had forgotten about "Infected". Good thing those events led me to give "The Crypt: Shakedown" a read/listen.

The writing flowed well enough to keep me interested in the first chapters, although there were no likeable characters introduced. The audience gradually gets to see a few somewhat redeeming traits within these deeply flawed characters. The problems on our favorite not-very-combat-capable warship include: cowardice pervading the command, incompetence in the science department, a key character unaware of their psychosis, another key character who is aware of their homicidal psychosis but thinks the problem is they are misunderstood, and an officer in a critical role often incapacitated by addiction. The list goes on, but well-adjusted rule-followers don't usually end up on this ship, so there is a lot of interesting material to work with here.

Despite looking for excuses to stop listening, I was drawn in by the voice acting (thank you, Ray) and by what I thought was the writing. A good performance can mask a lot of writing flaws, so I was hesitant to pick up the text even when I was hooked. I'm glad I did. The writing is smooth. Ray Porter doesn't breathe life into Scott Sigler's work so much as he translates it perfectly into another medium. I found myself trying to squeeze time into my schedule for quick reads.

I think I'll go through it again.

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Highly entertaining

Revisado: 03-14-24

Highly recommend. Love the world(s) building. Even though there is a running commentary on the evils of classism and power-hungry warlords and techno dictators, the monsters aren't always who they appear to be. The characters' respective personalities are consistent in their different manifestations, even if they do not always appear to be so initially. The perspective is a little different than what I'm used to; it's told from the point of view of a hood rat/failed sex worker/gangster's moll who continues to fail, often successfully.

Excellent performance. The characters have distinct voices, which is always a good thing. It was slightly annoying, however, for a prominent character, a man named 'Jean', to have his name pronounced as one would 'Gene', even though he is from the Côte d'Ivoire. Everyone I've met from the Côte d'Ivoire always insisted upon French names and/or pronunciations of words even though they were speaking English. (That was even more annoying.) However, the English pronunciation of the name may have been the author 's intent. After all, the country is called the 'Ivory Coast' in the text and not the 'Côte d'Ivoire'. That's being nit-picks on my part and it isn't noticeable if you're not switching between the text and audio versions.

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Nice story; reading would be better

Revisado: 02-03-24

Love Chuck Wendig's work. However, I can't fathom why his work and those by some of my other favorite authors are read by Xe Sands. Not only do I loathe the sound of her voice, but the extreme vocal fry makes it difficult for me to understand what she is saying so I have to listen even harder. The other voice talent are fine, but their performances do not mitigate the audio crime committed by Sands. I have to stop 1/3 of the way through to find time to read this work.

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