cricket

beautiful, engaging, and thought-provoking

Revisado: 12-15-17

I have to start out by again being absolutely stunned by Noah Michael Levine's narration. I really missed out by reading book 2 instead of listening to it. My only complaint was that Lonnie's little brother sounded too much like Shannon's beau. Erin DeWard's narration was also pretty fantastic and definitely more impressive this time.

I listened to Dead Time nearly a year and a half after having read Lost Time, and I'm certain I would have gotten more out of this installment had I read the books back to back. It was a little tough for me to get into the groove in the beginning - I think it would have been easier for me had we started with Diego instead of Shannon.

Overall I have fewer complaints. There were a few things that I felt should have been dealt with more thoroughly, but honestly, that would be nit-picking and, at this stage of publication, are not worth making a stink about.

This is a beautiful series, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to experience it. However, I am fearful that there are big pieces missing from my memory of the overall story and that I might not get enough refreshers to ever actually understand how all these pieces fit as I'm not usually one to re-read books. I feel lucky I didn't need to remember where Tego or Iz or anyone from Diego's universe's mountain left off this time around... because I'm drawing a big huge blank regarding nearly anything from book 1 that wasn't linked directly into book 2 somehow.

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eloquent scenes, plot needs improvement

Revisado: 11-12-17

Pickering is an incredibly eloquent writer. The prose is just beautiful. The same strong and reliable voice that drew me in for Hood was present in Whiskey/Legends. There are some neat parallels to Hood, too. Thematically the series is tied together well.

The weaknesses in Whiskey/Legends are also similar to Hood, though. Politically the landscape is difficult to make sense of. I needed more of a refresher to book 1, in part because the political structures/groups confused me from the beginning and made even less sense to me in book 2. Decades have passed and there simply isn't enough time given to the big picture since the plot revolves around the big picture. There continues to be plot devices where it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief, and these types of plot holes really irked me throughout my listen - enough to impact my enjoyment of the story.

The narrator is a really great fit for the story. No one in Boston had the telltale Boston accent, but he does a great job of distinguishing characters and really making an effort to make the story come alive with his performance.

So much potential.

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a satisfying conclusion

Revisado: 08-06-17

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The first hour of this book should have been cut. It was soooooooooo slow. Granted, I had a pretty big gap between reading books 3 & 4... but had I not committed to reviewing this book I would have never gotten past the first chapter. The book begins with a "war game." I needed something to pull me back into the story, and I simply could not have cared less about the strengths and weaknesses of their army.

At some point, however, the story did pick up. There were some great lines from that even made me pause the audio to think. I would have liked to have spent more time with some of the Isen and gotten to know the other vagabonds more closely (in part because Kara's never been my favorite), but, in the end, the story felt complete and I don't regret taking the time to finish this saga.

The narration continued to be good. It felt like there was less differentiation between some of the non-accented main male characters this time around (there's a lot of characters!) -- but overall the narration made this an easy listen.

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entertaining installment in a creative world

Revisado: 05-29-17

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This installment lacked some of the intensity of the first two volumes, but it was still an entertaining listen, nonetheless. The world and the characters are very memorable, and the customs of the people we've encountered allow us to see the "humanity" in this other world. The fisherman character is my new favorite and reminded me of the korean "mermaid" divers that were filtering through the news awhile back. I'm hoping maybe there will be a spin-off series just about his world.

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Smooth continuation of the story

Revisado: 02-19-17

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The story was still entertaining, but this book felt almost like a re-do of book 2 (in the same way that every harry potter book feels like the same book to me). So don't read that too negatively.

The narration continued to be fantastic, and it seems the more I listened the better she got.

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Three thought provoking stories

Revisado: 02-19-17

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I listened to these three short stories and found each of them uniquely thought-provoking. They were enjoyable; however, they all had that mysterious, what-just-happened, type of ending that doesn't quite leave a listener feeling fulfilled.

I loved that they were the perfect length for listening start-to-finish on longer commutes.

The narration was fine - but audio production needs to work on adding appropriate silent spaces between scenes and stories.

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Unique blend of zombie and fantasy

Revisado: 10-21-16

Have you listened to any of Kristin James’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Yes. She is always a great narrator, but I particularly loved her russian in this book.

Who was the most memorable character of The Harvesting (The Harvesting Series Book 1) and why?

Grandma!

Any additional comments?

This review is incredibly overdue. At first I waited because I just couldn't decide what I thought about the story (and then my computer crapped out on me after I was almost done the first time I tried writing it...). There's something about this story that almost felt cheesy to me. Maybe that's because I expect there to be some amount of grit with a book I pick up because it has zombies in it... and this was clean, strategic, rational... but, hey, maybe that's because the main character was a woman :-) lol. The story was full of action, but I wasn't biting my nails in anticipation of what was going to happen. The main character and the two brothers were intriguing, likable characters. I absolutely loved the grandmother character (although that might have had to do with the narrator's great accent in part). For me, the best part of the book was that it was definitely not a traditional zombie story. I read both fantasy and zombie, and I've never gotten a mix of the two anything like this.I received this book from audiobook boom free for honest review.

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what a whirlwind of a story

Revisado: 09-29-16

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Book 2 is quite entertaining. It's full of action, and there's continually new things to learn about Ourea.

It was great to get to know Stone, Cedric, and Deidre better. They are really great, complex characters that helped me to stay engaged in the story.

In this installment, however, there were quite a few times where I felt the alternate world/fantasy elements were abused a little bit. Does this character need a mount? Oh! Lets add a new species we haven't talked about yet and have it appear magically at just the right moment!! I don't think I minded as much in book 1, because we were still getting to know the world... but every time something like this happened (which did feel pretty frequent) I cared just a little less about the book.

The other thing that irked me a bit was that there were some pretty simple could-be solutions to some of the problems presented and there wasn't any explanation given as to why it couldn't happen like that. It made some of the main characters feel dumb to me.

I really enjoyed the narration. Whenever I read a first book and then listen to a second, I'm either thrilled with how much the narration adds to the story or disappointed that it adds almost nothing. In this instance, it was quite the former. There were a variety of accents for the many characters and their personalities really were brought to life in this installment. She did a much better job than my imagination did the first time around!!!

I received this book free for review.

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brilliantly flawed characters

Revisado: 09-17-16

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I've been dreading writing this review, so it is long overdue.

I loved the banter between Ren and Adelaide in book 2. They were basically not talking throughout this installment though, so it lacked a bit of the lightheartedness that I had grown to love and took a more serious tone. Overall, it felt less polished than the previous book.

Further, although I really ought not to let my personal beliefs shade my rating of a book, I had a particularly hard time with the way pregnancy/childbirth/newborn care was handled.. it felt more like an exaggerated t.v. drama and didn't jive with the "genius" characters and the powers of the dream-travelers. Similarly, I found the treatment of the "mole" entirely inconsistent with the treatment of Joseph in the Lucidites series. Items like these left me frustrated.

I still enjoyed the book... Vivian was a fun villain... I just know it could have been better. Usually the final installment of a Noffke trilogy blows me away or leaves me in tears... but this one just sorta fell flat. I suspect if I were to reread this I would be less critical of the author's plot choices and more enamored with the beautiful prose.

I received this audiobook from the author free for review.

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No surprises here.

Revisado: 09-17-16

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This book started out with with an almost non-fiction style flare. Thus, it didn't suck you into the story as some fiction works are able to do. I was also slightly frustrated that I had no idea when the information being given was factual vs when there was artistic license being taken. I was also somewhat frustrated when there was a significant amount of time spent on the science behind what was happening -- but not enough for me to really understand what was going on. I shouldn't really fault the book for these items... as it was just my experience. As a regular non-fiction reader and true-suspend-your-belief fiction reader, I suppose I just had a hard time balancing comfortably right in the middle.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with the story... there just really isn't all that much there... just one family's experiences as they prep for a potential disaster. Shopping trips. Business meetings. A long drive home. Yes, there's some conflict... readers get little glimpses of the "depravity of man," just nothing to really buy me in as a reader to want to know what happens next. Although the characters are pretty well developed, I simply don't really care if they live or die, any more than I care about their next door neighbors.

Other readers have called the story "preachy." I wouldn't quite go there. The characters might be religious and somewhat goody-goody, but their thoughts are their thoughts... It didn't help me like or connect to them though...

The narration was fine. Nothing spectacular but nothing that would make me stop listening. This is at least the second book I've listened to by this narrator, and he seems to have a consistent performance.

I received this book free from audiobook boom for review.

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