Christian Torres

WHOA! HANG ON!

Revisado: 10-11-20

This work is a wild adventure and worth every penny. Every character in this novel is defined, dynamic, and very much alive. Apart from that, this story can be described as: "I thought I saw where this was going and I was right - but I had NO IDEA how awesome it would look."

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New Take On Superheroes

Revisado: 10-11-20

This is not at all the story you thought you would read. It starts like it feels trope-y. But it's not. Don't let the starting few pages throw you off, as they actually work very well into what they author is going for. This is certainly not the kind of book for everyone, but for people willing to either explore new perspectives on storytelling or explore narrow - but surprisingly deep - worldbuilding. It's honestly a great title. A good selection.

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You'll love it

Revisado: 10-11-20

This work will surprise you. For being a short listen, it's worth it. It's a unique take on horror - seeing the awful from the subjective side rather than the objective side. It's unique like very few other works I've experienced. And the voice actress is very talented. Her acting is compelling and her voice enticing. I know this review sounds canned, but it's not. I mean all of these things honestly. You will enjoy it.

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Run of the Mill

Revisado: 10-11-20

Run of the mill horror story. It is well written; uses a diverse cast of characters; and has clever challenges for the protagonists.

The motion into the story feels accelerated, rather than integrated. But for the first book of the series, it works fine.

What bothers me a lot is that the books feel like it's projecting a fantastic idea of the author's characters and provides a novel for the author to display them. An excuse to plant their OC into a novel, in other words. Halfway into the second book and I couldn't take it anymore.

Well made. But it doesn't add anything different to the genre and quickly starts to feel like a fanfiction of itself.

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Surprisingly Refreshing!

Revisado: 10-11-20

It's the old fashioned "boy faces trauma; boy overcomes adversity; boy becomes man; boy overcomes trauma" but it's just done... well. Character driven - the story matters but it's really about watching the main character grow and develop as a unique person. The story very much threw a mystery at me I didn't quite see coming.

Worth your time.

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Spectacular horror. Well done!

Revisado: 09-15-19

Let me start with this. The Podcast was better.

The advantage this novel has is that the podcast should never have been told from the first person. Joseph Fink abandoned that idea late in the second season. And the third season kinda just forgot that it was being told from first person limited perspective. This novel rectifies that by just making it what it was supposed to be. 3rd person omniscient perspective.

The novel declares itself a re-imagining of the podcast, but it isn't. Only season 2 of the 3 was 're-imagined' and even then only slightly.

But the story is good. It has two major plot holes. Which, after listening to the podcast 6 times and listening to the novel two times, have become annoying to me. But I enjoy this book thoroughly and would recommend. But if I had to choose between the podcast and this novel, I'd do the podcast for sure.

The Thistle Men meet the Uncanny Valley almost perfectly. Which is well done, but unfortunately predictable for people who are heavily invested into writing horror fiction. But for the litterally everyone else, it'll just be a great spook.

Highly recommend this work. Recommend the podcast even more.

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Decent, slow, story. Droning narrator.

Revisado: 09-15-19

Andy Rowe, the narrator, has a very bland voice. To me, he seems to have very little inflection and can make it difficult to interpret who is saying what when there are multiple people at a scene. The differences between his dialogue and his narration are also so minuscule, unless you're paying rapt attention, you'll not notice when he's done talking or when he's started to talk.

Honestly, I think I'll never listen to another story narrated by him.

The story was alright. It was slow, but not unbearably so. The horror here was undefined - almost borderline ambiguous. That's a fine line there, between the uncertainty of a horror story and the ambiguity of a lazy fanfiction writer. But treads that line well and keeps it well written. It leaves a lot of questions for us without making it seem like he never intended for answers of those questions to exist.

The characters are unremarkable and forgettable. It's really just the story that keep you tethered.

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Lumley Is An Insult To Eldritch Horror

Revisado: 09-15-19

Brian Lumley takes everything Lovecraft, Smith, and Chambers built and pisses upon it. He applied "good" and "evil" to the eldritch horrors. He took their cosmic mystery and turned them all into the equivalent of the Greek pantheon. And he safely locked away all the "evil" ones so that all of us can live in peace. He spits upon the founders of eldritch horror and deserves nothing from you.

The big three original eldritch horror writers created something new. The whole point of their works was to expose us to a cosmos, a mythos, far beyond our comprehension. They were so far beyond the realm of human understanding, the most we could do was ascribe motives and ideas to them that were never quite accurate.

Let me give you an example. Yog-Sothoth is so colossal in scale, we can barely comprehend it as an idea. It's mysterious because the only interaction we had with it was via proxy. We only ever learned second hand what Yog-Sothoth was. And what we learned was terrifying enough. But the idea that the machinations of the elder gods are comprehensible to us is absurd. The King in Yellow yearns to swallow every world into Carcosa. What happens when he does? How does he do it? How do the other elder gods feel about it? None of that matters. The answers to those questions are not for us tiny flecks of insignificant dust to consider. We'll never understand it and we can't understand it because the elder gods are not quite bound by the same laws of physics and time that we are. No amount of rationalization will ever be accurate. This was the key to their cosmic scale of horror.

What Brian Lumley does is take all the cosmic mythos... and turn it into a Greek pantheon. He made Cthluhu and Tsathoggua into half brothers. He turned King in Yellow into an avatar. He made Nodens a champion of humanity. Lumley gave the elder gods politics and drama. He stripped away all of their cosmic scales into a familiar trope.

If this wasn't enough, Lumley also stripped them all of their power. In this series of works, Lumley goes on to say that all the elder gods are either "good" or "evil". And all the "evil" ones have been locked safely away. LUMLEY APPLIED GOOD AND EVIL TO THE ELDRITCH GODS.

August Dereleth did a lot of damage to the Eldritch mythos. But at least Dereleth kept the genre alive after Lovecraft's death. He served a vital function, even if it came at a hefty price. But Lumley? Lumley straight ignores the work of the founders and has normalized the elder gods. His actions have led to so much misinformation among the public. Screw Brian Lumley and all he did.

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Deep. But so darn slow.

Revisado: 09-15-19

This work has some eldritch horror elements - and I'm a major eldritch horror fan. But even my tremendous patience simply gave out. The character development is good. The world building is good. The narration is kinda 'eh' but not exhausting.

It's good. It's just too darn slow. I couldn't finish it. Do I recommend? I'll give it some praise. But I'd point you towards something like Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher. That's got eldritch horror elements, unique worldbuilding, and great character development. And it accomplishes at a reasonable pace.

This isn't a bad work. It just isn't worth trudging through unless you have a love for deep, long, drawn out, stories.

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Exceptional!

Revisado: 09-15-19

I review audiobooks pretty often and rarely give anything a perfect score. But I feel that The Girl With All The Gifts deserves it.

The voice actress was perfect. The story was actually very original and well executed.

If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic stories, a fan of zombies, a fan of horror-lite, or a fan of low sci-fi, buy this book.

One of the best reads ever.

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