H James Lucas

No real mystery and nothing resembling procedure

Revisado: 01-26-25

The protagonists question the veracity of testimony based on its unnatural language and reliance on cliché, which is ironic given that the testimony is about as believable as anything else in this braindead short story.

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Gives sci-fi a bad name

Revisado: 12-14-24

How this work got published in its original language, let alone translated, is inexplicable and—I can only assume—a giant slap in the face to any writer who has had a competently written story rejected by publishers. ‘Red Dust’ makes moves to be an extraplanetary adventure AND a hardboiled mystery AND a mecha-inflected action tale AND an android’s rights think piece and succeeds on exactly none of these fronts, instead offering a confusing mess of half-formed ideas and genre fiction clichés. The only thing (and I mean ONLY thing) remotely redeeming in this entire story is the coinage of the word ‘Gaussical’. That’s a cool word.

The narration is cleanly engineered but otherwise unimpressive (Vazquez manages to mispronounce more than a couple of words, most surprisingly ‘misshapen’).

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Excellent narration can’t make up for lack of PDF

Revisado: 10-15-24

Mr Parker shows his usual gift for self‐deprecating‐nerd levity. Regular viewers of his (laudable) YouTube channel might be frustrated that an apparent majority of ‘Love Triangle’ retreads content from his videos, but anyone else should find plenty of good stories here.

The author’s performance as the narrator of the audiobook version is excellent, but the lack of accompanying PDF is a baffling and devastating deficiency.

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A hodgepodge of forecasts

Revisado: 01-23-22

The listeners naturally drawn to a political‐forecast book like ‘The Next Civil War’ are likely to be frustrated by Mr. Marche’s failure to drill down far enough to find new insights. This catch‐all covers enough topics—rogue militias, flood protection, presidential security, wars of public opinion, and on and on—that few readers won’t find something unfamiliar, but it’ll likely be too little to justify the investment in time.

Listeners are likely to be equally frustrated by the book’s cowardly conclusion. The first four chapters are spent arguing that a collapse of the U.S. is inevitable and that the best we can do is get serious about building mechanisms by which it might dissolve as peacefully and non‐destructively as possible. The last chapter is spent looking at a few precedents for and difficulties inherent in dissolution (while saying very little about what a robust approach might actually look like). The conclusion then undermines any sense of urgency with some happy words about how good it is that the U.S. exists and how Mr Marche, kindly Canadian, hopes it won’t need to end after all—pretty much the same mindset that all the preceding pages attribute to the wearing of rose‐colored glasses.

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Potent narration of a lifeless short story

Revisado: 10-22-18

Jim Donaldson delivers a remarkably lively and compelling audio performance of a short story that proves hollow save for a contemptible little pellet of xenophobia at its heart.

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Music overload and other production issues

Revisado: 07-20-18

Ella Enchanted is a title I remember fondly from my childhood, but this audio version is a trying experience. The narrator was about 16 at the time of recording but sounds much younger—too young for fifteen-year-old Ella. The pitch of her voice is so high that it can make listening challenging with even a little ambient noise. More problematic than the narrator's timbre, though, is the frequent overlay of music. Where a better audio book may include a little music at chapter breaks, this one plays music while the narrator is reading, often starting jarringly in the middle of a scene and conveying a mood that doesn't quite match. The only time the music works well is when a whimsical melody signifies the presence of a particular fairy. That there is so much other music that doesn't enhance the story suggests that the producers didn't have faith that Ms Levine's tale could hold young listeners' attentions.

Final note: There are a couple very long gaps in the audio (perhaps where cassette-tape breaks used to be?). If you're listening to this title and think your app crashed or your volume got muted, just be patient for 15 or 20 seconds.

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Excellent performance buoys weak story

Revisado: 12-17-17

Ms Dawson turns in a truly top tier performance here. Mr Weir, on the other hand, is in a classic sophomore slump.

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a crime against the English language

Revisado: 09-27-16

The only crime in this novel worth investigating is the one the author has committed against the English language. Nicholas Sparks and Dan Brown look like modern-day Melvilles when viewed alongside this R.S. Belcher fellow.

Readers who have even loose standards with regards to prose are advised to stay far, far away from this stinking pile of refuse.

Readers with absolutely no standards whatsoever are advised to consult a different review.

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Come on down for misogynistic amateur hour!

Revisado: 05-04-16

I'm abandoning this awkward snarl of a novel after about 2 hours, so if the last half of the book is focused on awesome women hackers who save the day, please let me know. But from where I'm sitting—about 20% of the way in—I find a disappointing mix of ambitious women who are distant and shrill and kindly women who toil in kitchens making ethnic food to feed their (male) neighbors. It's awkward and detracts heavily from the ominous threat of cyber attack and Mr Mather's actually-kinda-smart sniping at Manhattan culture.

The prose itself is also pretty bad: The dialogue is clunky. The author relies way too heavily on rapid cutting between two topics to show that his protagonist is distracted. And seemingly every descriptor is duplicated (the internet connection is slow AND it takes forever for pages to load!).

I could probably overlook one type of deficiency or the other, but the combination of the two is causing me to draw a line here and move on to the next title in my queue.

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Recycled pulp tricked-out with 1950s futurism

Revisado: 05-08-15

It's impressive how few modifications were required to transport the quintessential hard-boiled detective to an intergalactic landscape. This book has aged with so little grace that it has passed all the way through awkwardness and become merely "quaint" (and perhaps a bit charming).

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