Patrick Ryan

Not worth your time

Revisado: 09-16-24

Instead of feeling like the beginning of an epic series, this book was just confusing and frustrating. You don't fall in love with any characters and the circumstances are poorly understood for the entire book.

Perhaps most frustrating is the end when instead of resolving any big existential questions, the characters are just moved to a new environment. It feels like the script of a TV season where they try to resolve just enough to keep you coming back for next season. But for that to work, you have to love the characters. In this book you are prevented from loving any of them.

I'm writing this review to remind myself to stop reading things from these writers. Books 7+ of the expanse often suffer the same lack of resolution and it frustrated me then. This more of the same but much less interesting or enjoyable.

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Narrator is terrible.

Revisado: 03-06-24

This book suffers intensely from poor narration. The mispronounciations are extremely distracting. What kind of narrator for a sci-fi book decides to pronounce Occam's Razor as "oh-cam"? One who has no business narrating the book.

The pace was fine; however, I expect better distinction between scenes. Each chapter has 7 or 8 perspective changes, but the narrator simply carries on as if he were a robot reading text. The scene changes should be clearly marked by voice acting or large pauses or really anything but monotone narration.

Rarely do I feel this way, but for me, this book was killed by the narrator.

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not a romance fan but I really enjoyed this

Revisado: 05-15-22

The whimsy was enticing. the cringiest sex scenes had to be skipped but I had fun being thrashed around by sam's terrible choices and gary's sassy dialog. Sam of wilds is a loveable character. While I'm unlikely to read another TJ Klune book anytime soon I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even if I was a little embarrassed to listen to it where others could hear.

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more paperback than my usual fare

Revisado: 02-22-22

I enjoyed the second installment of the series. The explanation for the quantum fugue and axis mundi are still a bit wacky. I do like Belasarius as a character. His motivations were well described. The quantum vegetable intelligences were a weird addition but I can already see their potential to save the day in a future adventure. I don't really enjoy the mind-bendy time travel. It may come across as clever but I think there is too much left unknown. The reader knows nothing extra beyond what the characters experience and what they predict is happening (though they often seem to get it wrong).

All in all I would read another installment but I'll consider this series a little more paperback than my usual fare.

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deserves it's place in history

Revisado: 01-11-22

The writing in Rama is both dry and compelling. Simply the facts make you want to keep going. It's the best kind of storytelling in my opinion. The characters are a bit shallow but they aren't disappointingly so. I prefer the oblique references to sex instead of the sex scenes found in more recent literature. The cliffhanger should have been predictable, but I didn't see it coming so that was very pleasant indeed.

The narrator does a good job of relaying the text and keeping the reader engaged.

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too much a fantasy novel

Revisado: 02-25-20

As a sci-fi enthusiast I was less impressed by the fantasy nature of this book.

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Pulp without substance

Revisado: 09-10-18

This would not pass the Bechemel test if it were a movie. The characters were flat and the action was forced. The use of a genetically engineered female to seduce men to move the plot along was in poor taste and the villians were one dimensional. The only exciting thing about the book is the possibility that technology like fusion has already been perfected and could be given away freely any day.

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Absolutely Awful Writing

Revisado: 07-06-14

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Pre-teens. But even then I'm thinking more around elementary age. There is so much "wide-eyed" writing that only a third grader could enjoy it. What I mean to say is that the book constantly uses superlative phrases to describe ordinary things: "so much ___ he could hardly believe it!" "he'd heard legends of ___ his whole life but it was the most beautiful ___ he'd ever seen!" It goes on and on like that for hours.

Again, let me repeat, this book is only suited for elementary schoolers.

Has A Quest of Heroes turned you off from other books in this genre?

Genre? No, I read The Hobbit in 4th grade and it was nothing like this trash. Author? most definitely.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Not for an adult. It espoused an egalitarian ethos with regards to women. It also put the gay character in a semi-accepted light. But at the end of the day, the homo was still the villain, and women were still subordinate to men.

Any additional comments?

I sped this book up to 2.0x to get past the "wide-eyed" writing of the kid who just got to a castle for the first time. But that style never went away! He was constantly surprised by some old THING that's the most ADJECTIVE he's ever seen!

The book is predictable. But there were a few surprises (not good ones) like how the Solstice lasted for several days. The joust occurred on the solstice in the beginning but several days later they were just getting around to the solstice celebration feast!

Lastly, if there wasn't enough wrong with this book already, it was too short. More happens in a single episode of Game of Thrones than in this entire book. It sets up the world, with some incidental actions by Thor, and then ends. The whole book spans about 3 days.

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Interesting book, not a must-read

Revisado: 02-09-12

Any additional comments?

Weirdly, the first thing I noticed was Mike Chamberlain's voice. It is mesmerizing and reminds me of Christian Bale's voice. It's something about the soft 't's. However, as the book moved on, I started to get annoyed with the way he was emphasizing emotional thoughts. He was too slow and it broke the pace of the book. Would have been better to say them with meaning and leave a pause instead of emphasizing each word.

As far as the writing goes... I have to say the storyline is pretty interesting. It keeps you thinking. The protagonist insists that each event was critical to the war effort but you don't really see all the pieces until the very end. I recommend reading this book over a short period of time. This is not the kind of audiobook you can listen to casually. The author leaves out so much detail that you are required to deduce a great deal yourself.

My last comment about Robopocalypse is about the writing. The wording gets too poetic. Too many times we hear poetic descriptions of emotional scenes. It's okay if one of the crazy characters (perhaps Mr. Namora) get poetic with his thoughts. But for every character to have the same poetic arch is fake and quite distracting. The most compelling thing about this book is the fascinating storyline/premise and all the details he leaves out.

I would recommend Daniel H Wilson and Mike Chamberlain to others, but I feel that both have some maturing to do.

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Horrible

Revisado: 08-10-11

This book has nothing to offer, especially in audiobook form. The Narrator is NOT reading sentences, phrases, and ideas. He is simply reading words. It's as if he's learning how to read so he pauses before big words or reads common phrases quickly while other phrases are disjointed. I'll give him credit for consistency though. He is consistently horrible. The unnatural pauses are just small enough that you can understand the text, but so annoying that after a while the book is completely unlistenable.

Fine, the narration is bad; that's not the author's fault. So how does this book stand up on content? At best, it is an outsider's misunderstanding of the virtual world. At worst, it is a alarmist attempt to dissuade us from using the internet by telling horror stories. The author is a mental health professional specializing in OCD and compulsive disorders. By the very nature of his job, he sees lots of people with unhealthy relationships to the virtual world. He uses these extreme examples to try and prove that we are all in danger of losing our identities online. He points to changes in communication style, online dating, online gambling, online shopping habits, and our narcissistic tendencies on blogs or social networks. I concede that problematic behavior exists online. And I concede that some people take things too far. But instead of pointing to healthy online behavior and the advantages of moderation, the author seems to be saying that we are all doomed to acquire some form of mental compulsion or psychosis from using the internet.

In the end, there is no redeeming quality to this book, in audio or paper form. The narration is the worst I've ever heard out of the hundreds of books in my library, and the author is an outsider who thinks the internet can only bring bad. I just want to shake him and say "Please don't write anymore books about the internet. You don't know what you're talking about! Stick to books about OCD and Clinical Depression."

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