Christopher

A solid "101 class" for Regulated Investment Crowdfunding

Revisado: 10-23-24 El oyente recibió este título gratis

A great survey of definitions, fundamental practices, and resources for someone newly interested in this space. It also explains what "Regulated Investment Crowdfunding" is and isn't (i.e., how it's different from things like Patreon, Kickstarter, and others).

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So much better than the first of the Bard series

Revisado: 05-16-21

Where the first book was painful due to being a hard-to-follow, continuous stream of one-liners, this one was MUCH more refined. The narrative and plot flowed without being an ode to the author's knowledge of quotes and cultural references. *This* book was what I was hoping for out of the Bard series, and I greatly look forward to more.

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I have hope...

Revisado: 05-11-21

The book reads like an unbroken string of one-liners connected together to try and narrate a story. It loosely feels like the Shaman series, but the constant barrage of one-liners seems like the author's attempt at creating witty, well-read characters. Instead, however, it's just incredibly distracting and makes the narrative hard to follow. If you filter that out, though, the characters are still likeable and the plot arc is interesting (if less so than the Shaman series). Thus, I have hope for the rest of the series.

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Never seen a character make EVERY wrong decision

Revisado: 04-23-21

Mind-blowing. Sabina literally makes every wrong decision possible. Her repeated failure to EVER even THINK about using her magic is a constant Deus Ex like plot device.

It's like every time she *should* think to draw on her magic, the Ms. Wells makes sure Sabina avoids thinking about it. Sabina avoids thinking about magic so hard that it's like a gaping, empty silence - one which is so complete as to scream as loud as a jet engine from 5 feet away. This improbably-frequent emptiness of thought trumpets to the world, "I am the dumbest, most obstinate, and obtuse character EVER! I have failed to learn anything over 4 books and continue to choose the absolute worst - and same - decision EVERY time so that I can advance the plot!"

I love Prospero's War. I liked the first 2 books of this series. But the last book and this one (books 3 and 4) are just terrible.

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I enjoy Jaye Wells, but this one was PAINFUL.

Revisado: 04-15-21

To the narrator: Calvary is a hill. CAValry are the folks who ride in to save the day. I recall one, possibly two, other cases of words that were grossly mispronounced. I have enjoyed your performance on the first two books, but these types of things shouldn't happen.

To the author: As above, I enjoyed the first two books (and I love the Prospero's War series...still waiting for another, BTW), but this one was painful. Sabina's main character flaw was overused and abused to the point of absurdity, to the point at which I could no longer suspend disbelief. Yet 25% of the book still remained. Flaw begets stupid decisions begets tragedy begets redemption. Normal pattern, right? Except the level of continuous boneheaded choices - backed by absolutely no incremental learning - that was required to lead to the main plot device is mind-bogglingly inconceivable (yes, imagine Vizzini speaking when you read that). And a massive deus ex at the end just piled even more onto that heap. I have come to expect better from you, Ms. Wells.

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Just Like Vince Flynn

Revisado: 10-17-15

Okay, like very many others, I was utterly devastated when Vince Flynn passed away. I have never encountered another author and series which had a truly perfect blend of character development, intensity, and pace (both in and out of action). Vince Flynn set the standard, and I have yet to find an author who could even come close. Well, I now have to add Kyle Mills to that list. While there's a subtle difference between him and Flynn that I can't quite identify, I say with much gratitude that Mills came as close as humanly possible to emulating Flynn's writing. My thanks is not only for maintaining the spirit of the series, but for doing so in such a way that allows one of my top 5 favorite characters of all time to live on beyond his creator.

Rest in peace, Vince Flynn, and thank you, Kyle Mills, for a job well done. I greatly look forward to the next one.

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Great Story; TERRIBLE Narration

Revisado: 06-25-15

I loved the Jakarta Pandemic, which got me excited to dig into the Perseid Collapse. I'm about 2 hours into the book and I *would* really be enjoying the story if it weren't for the awful narration.

First, it's clear that the narrator did NOT listen to the Jakarta Pandemic to get a feel for the characters as presented in their debut. In the Jakarta Pandemic, Kate and Alex are actually pretty level-headed, calm, and realistic (given that they're not prone to panic) in their emotional expression. None of this holds in the Perseid Collapse. Instead, the narrator dramatically overexpresses every emotion for every character. He turns Kate, who was steady as a rock even though living some of her worst fears in the Jakarta Pandemic, into a whiny waif with a damsel-in-distress kind of expression. Alex, on the other hand goes from a strong, calm, and collected individual with a gruff, whisper-like inner monologue, and who tends to speak quietly but with authority, to a raucous, loud-mouthed individual prone to extreme emotional expression in every sentence.

Beyond the narrator's overacting, he has no depth and poor differentiation in his voicing of the characters. It's hard to describe except by analogy: The voices sound like they're right out of South Park. As much as I love the TV show's satirical subtext, it's character voices have no place in a semi-realistic contemporary "doomsday" thriller.

PUNCHLINE: I prefer to listen to audiobooks over reading them *because* of the narration, and I have been chewing through Audible books for years. As much as I really enjoy the setting and characters of the Jakarta Pandemic (and subsequently the Perseid Collapse), the narration is so bad and inconsistent with the characters' debut narration in the Jakarta Pandemic that I don't know if I can finish this audiobook. At this point, I may have to read the series the "old fashioned" way. Given the nature of the series, though, Alex Fletcher may approve.

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Enlightening, applicable, and non-traditional

Revisado: 01-03-12

This book challenges the established competition-based view of business strategy, suggesting that there is an alternative to the cutthroat competition in which businesses regularly engage today. Offering more than just a critique of traditional strategic analysis, the authors provide poignant examples of how their value-based "blue ocean strategy" can be utilized to great effect and build upon these examples to present their analysis framework. All in all, the authors provide well-founded criticisms of competition-based strategy, compelling arguments for how and why their value-based strategy is superior, and a framework that enables a reader to apply their philosophy.

The only issue I have with this book is a result of the nature of the audiobook format, not the book's contents: When listening to the book, the loss of the visual component (charts and diagrams) definitely has a negative impact on the comprehensibility of the material. The book's message still comes through "loud-and-clear" without visual aids, but said aids would certainly strengthen and fortify the presentation.

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