Joey

Don't find it to be biased - updated review

Revisado: 03-05-22

My original review is below and I stand by it as far as content, but I've had to decrease my overall rating because many episodes seem to be missing. The podcast is organized in groups of themed episodes - 6 episodes on one topic or similar. For some topics there is only one episode. Do you want to learn about the Chicago riots? Only one of the 6 episodes is here. I still enjoy the content of the groups that are fully present, but this is not the first time I've had technical issues with audible's podcasts and they need to get it together if they're going to vie for my default podcast source.

I went looking for some general overview history podcasts. This one's pretty good. The narrator's voice is soothing and it can be slightly dry at times (like all history) so it's actually great for bedtime as it doesn't keep me awake when I'm tired, ha. When I'm not tired, I have no trouble listening for hours. A couple of reviews (between reviews for the series and for individual episodes) say this is left-leaning. I've only listened to the Child War episodes, but so far I'm not sure what specifically they objected to. It may be a little leftist, but it's hard to talk about McCarthyism and racism with the benefit of hindsight and not side with the more liberal side of both of those disputes. They did catch some communists, but the lives of many innocent people were destroyed without good cause, too, and racism... well, I don't see how you can dispute that was harmful. They also cited the fact that the story talked about what the US did and not the awful things the communists did. That's because this is an American history retrospective and for the most part the communists were not here. They touched on the problems with the communist leaders of the time, but my impression was that they were trying to keep the series within time constraints and just assumed we'd know the communists were doing bad things. For insurance, they talked about Catholic propaganda, but not about priests being killed, because the propaganda was happening here and the protests were being killed in other countries. Perhaps explaining that persecution of priests contributed to the Catholic Church's willingness to propagandize for the CIA would have given a more nuanced view, but the takeaway was not "the Catholic church is bad," it was "can you believe the CIA was using the Catholic Church to spread propaganda." If this were 20 hours of only Cold War coverage, I'd expect more, but as it is I feel it's been pretty balanced and factual.

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Weak for an Outlander book, but still great

Revisado: 12-28-21

Absent some sort of disaster, I wouldn't rate an Outlander book below 5 stars because I love the story. That having been said, this was one of my less favored of the Outlander books. There was a lot of story-building and suspense and not as much story-progression as in some other installments. I did like getting some more story involving Young Ian, who I like a lot. Davina Porter is, as usual, amazing. What follows may include spoilers, WARNING.

WARNING, POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.
Jamie is verging on old for the 1700s and I'm not sure how Diana Gabaldon intends to deal with that fact. So far she has progressed the story in small time increments (well, since the second book) and I'm fine with that. I'll happily read the daily life story of Claire and Jamie. But Jamie is not a man to grow old peacefully and let others fight in his stead. This book made me wonder how she's planning on dealing with that. Will there be several spin-offs, one following Claire, one following Brianna, one following Young Ian, etc? Will there still be one storyline following whoever survives? Will Claire go back to the future? It's hard to know. So far, no one has gripped me the way Claire and Jamie has, but there is potential. For the first time in the series, I wondered while reading this book, what will happen after? I can't tell whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, it might mean there is a future for the series absent the main characters - I can imagine such future series(es), after all, after reading this book. On the other hand, is this book preparing us for such an eventuality? Because I'm not ready for it :) In any case, this book was full of questions and I'm anxious for the next book in the series to answer those questions.

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Great first book in a new series

Revisado: 12-28-21

Sometimes I'm not thrilled by Audible's recommendations for me, but this one was a winner. The book isn't perfect - I think it should have either been twice as long or split into two installments. There are some portions in the middle that were a bit short on details in a way that reminded me of abridged books I've read and I would have liked a bit more detail on some of the alien races introduced. I assume with no evidence that this was due to the book being too long and shortened by an editor. I really enjoyed the story, though, and am looking forward to the rest of the series. There was something about the narrator's voice that I didn't love and he didn't really do different voices, even for the main characters, but it was fine, totally listenable. Looking forward to the next installment, due in Feb.

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There are better in the same vein

Revisado: 10-03-21

If I could give this book exactly 2.5 starts, I would. It was neither really good not really bad. I was confused by the reviews for this book - they seemed to be either glowing or scathing. I decided to give it a go and my reaction is... eh. It's not a bad book, I don't regret reading it, but I've read better similar books. The end didn't take me by surprise, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion, either. Some parts of the book felt overly "clever" and contrived. The characters fell a bit flat - the main character had minimal depth. He was a good guy, full stop. The parts that were supposed to be moral dilemmas were bland and inconsequential, the equivalent of me being like, ohhhh, I really shouldn't have a piece of cake, but.... well, I'll be BAD. The villain, on the other hand, was a bad guy, the end, no redeeming qualities to explain why people liked him before he revealed his evilness. Dialogue was... fine, I guess. All in all, it was kind of forgettable. I'm going to go read the description for the second book. I hate to leave a series started but unfinished. I probably won't waste the credit, though.

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I was skeptical, but it's really good

Revisado: 07-20-21

Let me start by saying that I love Brandi Carlile's music. I've loved her since before it was cool. Still, I was skeptical of this book. I'm critical of autobiographies - it's easy for them to feel kind of like humble bragging or be poorly written (not every celebrity can be a great writer) or sound nothing like the author because there's been so much editing. I always end up coming away from those autobiographies liking the author a tad less. This book had none of those problems. Brandi has an interesting life story and does a good job telling it. The music is a fun bonus and there's a lot of it throughout the book. (By the way, if you find it distracting interspersed with the story, feel free to skip through it, it's all gathered into one chapter at the end so you won't miss hearing the songs.) The only part I was iffy on was the lead up to the Joni Mitchell stuff... It got a little hero-worshippy without the humor that accompanied the similar parts about Elton John. Whether you're familiar with Brandi's music or not, this is a worthwhile read.

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Another great Andy Weir book!

Revisado: 05-15-21

The Martian was so brilliantly thought-out, that when I saw Andy Weir had another book out, I bought it right away. I was not disappointed. I will say, I liked The Martian a little better because some plot points of this book I could foresee, but this one was also very good. I am not a science professional by trade, but I have more than the average person's science knowledge, and a lot of it was necessary to understand every aspect of this book. There were a couple things that I had to look up, which is usual for me, even for sci fi, but it was okay and for someone who doesn't care if some details pass them by, you could let them go without missing any of the crucial portions of the story. I do not know how the print book conveyed the alien language, but it was amazing on audiobook! I would have preferred the alien language portions to be a little louder, when I was listening at low volume, I was able to make out the English words with no problem but had trouble hearing the alien language (I'm just going to refer to it like that so no spoilers). I really hope they make a movie! I'd love to see how they portray Rocky!

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Unnecessary addition to the series

Revisado: 04-15-21

I am not generally a fan of XX.5 books. I get an author wanting to write a side story about a non-main character, but in my opinion it's better done as either part of a larger book focused on the main characters or as a book that is not numbered as part of the series at all. In an 8, not terribly long, book series, two "half" books seems excessive, plus there have been problems with both of them. I won't go into book 5.5 here other than to say that despite the problems, I still enjoyed that book and felt it fit into the series. This one misses the mark. It's about Zirkander's cousin, who we've never met before and didn't need to meet, and Therrik, a character from previous books who I really didn't care to learn more about. Not everyone needs a backstory/redemption story/romance. It's okay to have support characters. On top of feeling somewhat unnecessary, this book is much more of a "romance" book than an adventure story. The plot seems contrived and there are large numbers of bad double-entendres (archeologist joking about boners, Therrik asking if anything else is sticking up after someone removes something stuck in his hair). For the first time in the series I was just hoping to get through the book and on to the next one.

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Awful retcon tarnishes RP1

Revisado: 12-08-20

I am beyond disappointed in this book. This has the feel of a school assignment that you're given at the beginning of the semester and told it will be due at the end and will be 80% of your grade. You start off strong and then get busy and don't work on it and suddenly it's 2 days before the paper is due and you have no time to do a good job, you can only push through to the end. Instead of using creativity to come up with new villains, the author just reused characters, conveniently getting one out of jail and ruining our memory of another. He retconned James to totally change his personality and not even well - there are tons of inconsistencies. He turned Samantha into a shrew and Wade into a lazy whiner. The entire action of the story takes place in a 12-hour period which somehow simultaneously drags and speeds along too quickly. The timeline doesn't even make sense. They kill two hours having a short conversation and then rush through the hardest dungeon in the Oasis universe in like 15 minutes. It almost completely lacks the charm of the 80s nostalgia in RP1 and instead delves into dorkdom. The story is totally predictable. It's not even written well... where was the editor? It sounds like a third grader narrating a dream he had. An unreasonable number of sentences in the last few chapters start with the word "then" (e.g. then I went to school, then I came home, then I watched TV, then I made a snack), like the author was just giving up at that point. The only good thing I have to say is that Wil Wheaton did everything he could, imbuing lifeless characters with a little charm. This wasn't just a bad sequel, it poisoned my memories of the first book. Skip it.

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Surprisingly good

Revisado: 11-01-20

I've read quite a few of the Audible plus books and podcasts. They've pretty universally been good, but most have been either 1. books that were fine to pass the time, but I wouldn't want to read again or 2. the first couple books of a series, presumably to lure me in and buy the rest. This one was the first one that I've been really surprised by. It's an intelligent and thought-provoking story and the narration was also excellent. It's probably not for everyone, it's a little esoteric, but I greatly enjoyed it.

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Not groundbreaking but decent

Revisado: 10-11-20

Work the read, especially as it's part of the Audible plus. I saw the ending coming a mile away, but it was well-written and enjoyable. The narration was very good.

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