Blake

Great Start but clearly world building!

Revisado: 07-15-24

**Received Promotional/audio review copy**

Bottom line up front. Solid book I would by again, and I will buy the next in the series.

First, it is great to see work from AK again! It seems to me that AK is getting back into the swing of writing again, which is great! But it also means that some parts were rougher than others.

Second, There were a few minor typos? Speakos? Later in the book. Nothing that detracted majorly, but I wanted to get that out of the way first. Other than that, Narrating was pretty onpoint and fun to listen to.

Third, Why was it 'rougher' than some of the others? It is my own opinion, but
a) I thought the crude humor/points were kinda forced. It didn't flow the best and more seemed to be put in there because they could be, rather than because they should be.
b) World building is great, but it was a major portion of the book. It seemed like very little actual progress was made. We had a couple of character introductions, a bit of fight scenes, a touch of history for motivation for one character... and the rest was world building / explanation of the system.
c) speaking of explanation of the system, some of it was repetitive. It was explained, then explained again. Always good to explain things, but it seemed overly done in a lot of ways.
d) The start felt slow. Can't explain it more than that.

Fourth: All that being said, I enjoyed the book, and ended up staying up way too late on a work night in order to finish the audible. Somewhere around chapter 30 it really started to grab me and pull me towards the end.

Bottom line, I would buy it again, and I look forward to the next book.

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Sore start

Revisado: 11-12-23

Book has a slow start. The MC frustrates me, but it gets better in books two and three. I am interested in seeing where the series goes from here.

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Narrator almost made it unbearable

Revisado: 09-11-23

I think the story was pretty good, and I intend to read at least the next one, but the narrator just made listening to it nearly unbearable. Maybe the style was the producers intention, but it wasn’t for me. Sounded more like someone reading for their kid than a professional production. The main issue was the voices, the intimation and inflection didn’t sound natural nor believable.

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Unfair/unbalanced

Revisado: 07-30-23

Its not that great. Probably won’t continue on the story from here.

Issue 1) the narrator. I find it impossible to even listen on anything below 1.5 speed because the narrator speaks so slowly and pauses so long between each word/sentence. Even at 1.5 times speed there are absurd pauses throughout. Its almost like padding the time count, you know, like passing word count only for audio books.

Issue 2) Jeff and Mark: the hypocrisy drives me nuts. Anything Jeff does is treated like he is a horrible human being, no one could ever conceive of doing such things, etc., when in reality, not that bad at all other than Mark saying they are. Meanwhile, everything Mark does is saintly, and don’t realize how hypocritical his treatment of Jeff is. It is justified because he is the protagonist of the story.

Issue 3) the author cannot make things “funny” just by saying people laughed at it. I didn’t laugh once in five books. I don’t think I even cracked the beginnings of a smile.

It was a story, I listened at 2.5x speed plus to get through the whole series quicker to try to find something more entertaining.

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So Incredibly Flat

Revisado: 07-19-23

As others have said, it just isn't good. Listening to the dialogue is horrible, and the narration is just bad. Delivery is flat, the 'humor' that is in there is just not funny. And not like in a crude not funny, just a 'I have no idea why anyone would laugh at that' not funny. Dialogue is repetitive and flat. People say things that they would never say, and not in a way they would say it. The narrator doesn't help. I have to have speed on nearly 2x speed just to get rid of the incredibly slow pace of talking, like they are trying to make it last as long as possible.

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I don’t know how it could get worse, but it does.

Revisado: 05-30-23

I will most likely finish what I have already bought, but the series is not getting any better. If you didn’t like the first few books, it won’t change your opinion.

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Still not any better

Revisado: 05-30-23

I will most likely finish what I have already bought, but the series is not getting any better. If you didn’t like the first few books, it won’t change your opinion.

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It isn’t getting better

Revisado: 05-30-23

I will most likely finish what I have already bought, but the series is not getting any better. If you didn’t like the first few books, it won’t change your opinion.

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Flat, like reading a history book.

Revisado: 05-21-23

Exposition is lacking, the entire book is about telling what has been done, now how. Adjectives repeated, characters flat. He did this, then he did that. He was angry. Didn’t they are like brothers. Just lackluster all the way around. I felt like I was reading a history book.

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Good, but worth it? Maybe

Revisado: 06-26-22

It isn’t a bad book, the story is good, narrator is alright, but the price? Especially for later books in the series? Just not worth it. Other books give five times the content with a better story, better narrator at only twice the cost.

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