Andrew

No character development, a stream of nonsense

Revisado: 01-29-25

This book is just impossible to like. There’s no character development, indeed almost no real characters at all. And the writing is so choppy as to be unpleasant to read. Finally, the whole set of ideas for the future it’s just absurd. I would avoid this book at all cost.

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Interesting characters, good science fiction, naïve ending

Revisado: 08-02-24

This was a very good book with strong character development and an excellent, very believable Science Fiction storyline, and even some realistic, barely fiction physics and agricultural science and engineering. The ending was childish and displayed an utter lack of understanding, chemistry, and molecular biology. I wanted to scream to the author to go back and come up with a much more believable and interesting ending to cap off this very good book. It is almost as if the author got lazy intellectually and just decided to finish the book!

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Caustic first third turns into a much better book later

Revisado: 06-24-22

The author tries too hard to shock in the beginning and to impress upon us how smart and witty and sarcastic and obnoxious she is. Her descriptions of her husband are simply uncalled for. I almost stopped reading the book because of that. But I’m glad I didn’t as the last 2/3 were more poignant, more funny, and more descriptive of what real life and real marriage are like.

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A horrible play masquerading as a book

Revisado: 02-28-22

The authors have written a screen play and believe it is a book. It is confusing and nearly impossible to figure out who’s talking, who’s thinking, who’s doing anything in this horrible waste of time. The only good thing is that it was free and I only wasted a couple of hours!

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Dated storyline and shallow characters

Revisado: 06-30-21

This is an easy listening book because the performance was very good. The characters are really caricatures and the storyline is both shallow and predictable.

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Boring, wordy story without much science fiction

Revisado: 01-06-21

This is such a disappointment after reviews said this was better than his previous book fire in the deep. Both books are tedious and long without much science fiction or action. They’re really about interactions between countries made up of different species. Boring!!!

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Confusing story with poorly developed characters

Revisado: 01-29-20

I read and really liked the first volume in this series. But, this volume is a hodgepodge story that is bad compared to the first book. To make things worse, the performance by the audiobook reader, P.J. Ochlan is horrible as he doesn’t even pause between chapters and seems to give each character the same voice except for the French and Germans. A very unpleasant experience overall and I stopped listening after about half of the book.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Good story until the ridiculous unbelievable events

Revisado: 09-13-19

The author kept piling one improbable relationship on another until the whole story became ridiculous. Riddle needed help in ending this very good story and he didn’t get it. I will avoid anything by Riddle in the future!!!

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Interesting storyline with ridiculous characters

Revisado: 07-19-19

Characters came out of John Wayne movies. Just horrible caricatures of individuals without any development.

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More accurate title: "Emanuel and his family"

Revisado: 07-09-17

Any additional comments?

My late wife worked for Zeke in the 1990's when he was at Harvard and her description of him as very smart, very driven, very capable, and oblivious to his effect on others ring through the entire book. While Zeke did write the book, it is still too focused on his accomplishments and life and too little on that of his brothers.

IMHO, there is also too much blame heaped on his mother, who faced a very difficult chore of bringing up 3 ADHD boys in a small apartment in Chicago while her husband's mother lived with and despised her, and her husband worked long hours. Zeke could use a little more empathy.

I also would have liked to learn more about Rahm's and Ari's childhood. It appears that they were shaped quite differently by the family. Why? How did Ari's dyslexia affect him positively (rather than negatively as he is described as a pugnacious, fighter most of the time)?

Overall, the book is a good read and entertaining. But, it could have been much more is Zeke had taken the time to interview Rahm and Ari and then write about events from their viewpoints also.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona