Colin

Stands out

Revisado: 01-18-25

Amid a sea of mediocrity in the genre, this book stands out with interesting characters, nice pacing, and interconnected storylines that don’t require 19 books to bridge. Already started the next of the trilogy.

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narration was the high point

Revisado: 08-24-23

I’ve read or listened to dozens of Reacher books and this was easily the weakest. Many are fun reads, a few are exciting and keep the reader guessing. This had no tension at all, it was like a comic book movie with massive body count and no character development.
Brick’s narration was the high point of a sadly forgettable read.

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Joel Shepherd's finest

Revisado: 01-18-20

It's not often a book this far into a series is the author's finest work but this is easily Shepherd's best work. While I've certainly enjoyed the previous books they were mostly 4 star efforts; certainly strong enough to keep me listening but not rising to the level of being thought provoking as Rando Splicer was. Where there was previously an adequate level of character development there's now in-depth and thoughtful maturation of characters and their motivations. Combined with one of the most interesting plots of the series it made for a book that I created opportunities in my day for listening.

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Young Adult Fiction

Revisado: 10-03-18

If you came into this book looking for more of Kings of the Wyld you will probably be disappointed. This is young adult fantasy fiction so if that's not your thing, you should probably save your credit. I was on a 26 hour drive so figured YA or not, I'd give it a go; I was pretty disappointed. Plot was very predictable, characters were flimsy and the book just didn't have the "fun factor" that Kings of the Wyld had.

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Part 4 for felt off

Revisado: 08-24-18

While each of the individual books in this series have a different set of characters and story-lines, they are all character and dialogue driven. Each of the previous books I give 4 stars. Part four was basically an entire book devoted to one battle: this person went here, this person did this, this person did that. Sure, some background is given for each of these new and disposable characters but by the end I felt like it could have been 2 or 3 chapters of an entertaining battle but it surely wasn't worth an entire book. There's also a pretty serious lack of science in the space battles that will be bothersome to hard science fans. For example, they have technology to travel faster than light but have to shoot at each other from point blank range? Add in quite a bit of political preaching by these new characters well beyond the entertaining and character building bits of the earlier book and I give book 4 just 2 stars. I enjoyed the series up to this point, not sure I'll go on.

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Work-shopped to Death

Revisado: 08-04-17

After really enjoying Age of Myth (4 stars), and of course all the Riyia books, I was very excited when Age of Swords was released. In the authors foreword Sullivan described the book as his favorite work so I was ready for more well developed, interesting characters, appropriate pacing and descriptive prose. Unfortunately, it seems like this book went through 100 revisions so that no thought of any character went unexplored. It was pretty much the definition of work-shopping a good story to death. A few times makes for a solid backstory, but to interrupt action scenes that took hours of multiple backstories to get to only to throw in more irrelevant backstories is really testing the readers will to finish this book! Again, if it was just once or twice I'd understand but it was constant and a major flaw in what could have been a good book

Add in the complete lack of character growth as they make the same mistakes over and over or ask the same questions in every situation, incredibly predictable plot lines, repetitive and dull conversations that don't advance the plot or the characters, abandonment of some of the most interesting characters and, fatally, a very basic plot that could have been thoroughly explored in 1/4 the length, and this book was definitely a disappointment. Oh, and do I need to mention the unrealistic inventions of one of the characters that somehow invents every bit of technology that took actual humans thousands of years to develop in just a few weeks?

Finally, and I can't believe I'm criticizing Tim Reynolds work as it's normally excellent, but a few of the characters he voices extremely slowly to the point where I was thinking "get on with it!" Of course that was also a function of the poor dialogue as I knew exactly what those characters were about to ramble on about as they had rambled about the same thing many times before. Can't blame Reynolds for that but throw in a halting and slow voice for those characters and it was pretty frustrating.

Mr. Sullivan mentions in the foreword that he reads reader reviews. While I'm sure I will be down-voted by many for the unfavorable review, I really hope that Mr. Sullivan or his editors see this and let him get back to the raw style of storytelling that suits him best. A great story needs to have edges and surprises, not every thought needs to be backstoried and not every character needs to go through ten examples of their current paradigm before they blossom into the character they will be.

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esto le resultó útil a 58 personas

Work-shopped to Death

Revisado: 08-04-17

After really enjoying Age of Myth (4 stars), and of course all the Riyia books, I was very excited when Age of Swords was released. In the authors foreword Sullivan described the book as his favorite work so I was ready for more well developed, interesting characters, appropriate pacing and descriptive prose. Unfortunately, it seems like this book went through 100 revisions so that no thought of any character went unexplored. It was pretty much the definition of work-shopping a good story to death. A few times makes for a solid backstory, but to interrupt action scenes that took hours of multiple backstories to get to only to throw in more irrelevant backstories is really testing the readers will to finish this book! Again, if it was just once or twice I'd understand but it was constant and a major flaw in what could have been a good book

Add in the complete lack of character growth as they make the same mistakes over and over or ask the same questions in every situation, incredibly predictable plot lines, repetitive and dull conversations that don't advance the plot or the characters, abandonment of some of the most interesting characters and, fatally, a very basic plot that could have been thoroughly explored in 1/4 the length, and this book was definitely a disappointment. Oh, and do I need to mention the unrealistic inventions of one of the characters that somehow invents every bit of technology that took actual humans thousands of years to develop in just a few weeks?

Finally, and I can't believe I'm criticizing Tim Reynolds work as it's normally excellent, but a few of the characters he voices extremely slowly to the point where I was thinking "get on with it!" Of course that was also a function of the poor dialogue as I knew exactly what those characters were about to ramble on about as they had rambled about the same thing many times before. Can't blame Reynolds for that but throw in a halting and slow voice for those characters and it was pretty frustrating.

Mr. Sullivan mentions in the foreword that he reads reader reviews. While I'm sure I will be down-voted by many for the unfavorable review, I really hope that Mr. Sullivan or his editors see this and let him get back to the raw style of storytelling that suits him best. A great story needs to have edges and surprises, not every thought needs to be backstoried and not every character needs to go through ten examples of their current paradigm before they blossom into the character they will be.

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Lots of development but...

Revisado: 05-01-17

I quite enjoyed Spellmonger for it's interesting characters, developed plot and John Lee's excellent narration. I found it interesting that Mancour spent a lot of time with back stories and inside the mind of the main character yet ignored any explanation of the magical system that's used in the Spellmonger universe. Magic just is, there's no explanation other than of the substance that magnifies it's power.
The writer also chooses to go into a lot of detail regarding the build up to action much more so than the details of the action itself. If you enjoy hearing about battle details this probably isn't the book for you as it's much more about the main character coming up with unique solutions to problems.

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Great but hard to swallow

Revisado: 12-28-16

Well written, good character development and an excellent narrator; what this booked lacked to become a 5 star listen was a glimmer of hope! Well, that and the secondary characters feel pretty flimsy. I'm not one to need my books to have a storybook endings but some hint of a possible future would go a long way to making it feel like this story has somewhere to go.

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Not The Rook

Revisado: 09-12-16

Where The Rook left the reader wondering what was coming next, Stiletto just leaves you wondering if anyone thought to edit this book! I swear there's a story in here somewhere but the book wanders all over the place without truly following any particular story and leaving out key elements only to spring them on the reader later as "gotcha" style twists. On at least a dozen occasions while listening I asked myself what this book was about and genuinely could not come up with an answer better than a further exploration of this fantasy world. I ended up quite disappointed by this book as the universe created in The Rook is really interesting but this convoluted story leaves a lot to be desired. In fairness, Stiletto eventually gets to a conclusion but feels bloated and meandering in comparison to The Rook.

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