Neil

Absolutely awful

Revisado: 04-18-24

I have listened to hundreds of science fiction books, this is the first I’ve ever stopped before the end. It’s terrible. The writing is non stop exposition. It’s all so pop-culture aware that it doesn’t even seem to believe in its own world. I like wild premises but beyond the premise there’s nothing here. It’s an idea in search of a story. At one point a character describes the literary practice of lampshading. Well this is all Lampshade, no lamp.

Wil Wheaton makes a heroic effort at injecting life into this lifeless corpse, he should be commended for that.

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Absolutely Fantastic

Revisado: 10-06-16

This is a book I found myself telling my girlfriend about over dinner. I have a feeling I will recommend it to all my friends. It hits this perfect middle ground between art and pulp and confidently walks that line the whole way through. The storytelling never allows itself to be predictable and by the end you'll really care about the characters.

It's entertaining as hell and also a very deep look at American in the last 50 years.

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Quirky and fun - the performance is fine

Revisado: 10-06-16

This is my first David Wong. It's quirky madness that holds a cohesive narrative and plays by it's own rules. It's a punk-rock Neal Stephenson. I can't rave, but I can recommend.

Some reviewers have complained about the narrator. I found her performance to be a little uneven, but it really grew on me. I think she literally improved as she went. The first hour or so it dodgy, but she really hits her stride by the end. Don't be turned away by those warnings.

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Libertarian Fantasy

Revisado: 09-01-16

I was looking for some pulp. I got that. What I didn't expect was hours and hours of Libertarian stump speeches inserted into a supernatural Rainbow Six. Seriously, the book was fine except for this. It wasn't really amazing, but it was doing it's job fine. But seriously the GOVERNMENT-MESSES-EVERYTHING-UP-AND-PRIVATE-INDUSTRY-IS-ALWAYS-RIGHT message is clear from the go. Then Larry Correia goes and has a character literally say just that. Then it happens again. And again. Seriously, Corriea should have gone all the way and renamed "MHI" to "Rand Industries." The plot of this book is like playing D&D with that one weird kid from your freshman dorm. Not recommended.

All that aside, Oliver Wyman is really a great narrator. Big points to him.

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Don't Read Reviews: Just do it!

Revisado: 07-02-15

Fantastic Fantastic Fantastic! I just finished this book 30 seconds ago and could not wait to rave about it. Original, Fun, Imaginative, Funny, Genre-bending terrific.

This was a blind buy for me - I knew nothing about it nor had a recommendation - I just liked the publisher's summary.Wow, what a treat.If you like the truly original, do yourself a favor and listen.

I'm going to try to (spoiler free) describe it below for those of you who might not be convinced:

Imagine Michael Crichton had an orgy with HP Lovecraft and Jasper Fforde, A baby is born of this unholy union, and the child then takes near overdose levels of LSD and reads "The Martian" and "The Road" back to back. If you can imagine a book written by such a child you'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of this book. Pop speculative fiction at it's best.

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A Trainwreck of a Novel, Dressed up in Fancy Duds

Revisado: 04-15-15

This book is so utterly disappointing. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on with the characters through most of the book, and the main protagonist's addiction is frustrating and genuine. There's some good writing here.

But seriously, the 'reveals' and the 'wrap up' of the story are stupid beyond belief. This is, essentially, an Amnesia thriller. Amnesia is perhaps the single most tired, cliche, and lazy plot device in storytelling. Just because it's dressed up as something more appealing doesn't make it centrally less stupid.

On the plus side, the actual performance, with the three narrators is very good. This is not enough to redeem this trainwreck. Avoid.

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Interesting and informative, but not mind-blowing!

Revisado: 02-18-13

After listening to the first book, I was invested enough to listen to the second, but wasn't particularly gagging for it either. After finishing the second book, my feelings hadn't appreciably changed in either direction.

What's good: Very well researched, great sense of the era, the war, the city, and great exposure to the inglorious and undertold parts of the British WWII story. I genuinely learned much more about the second world war, and found myself very interested in that.

LESS EFFECTIVE was the actual narrative storytelling. The characters are often 'prevented' from doing things that they'd like due to narrative conceits (according to the book the 'space-time-continuum') but I found myself thinking the characters were rather thick-skulled and were trying far too hard to be polite. Given the stakes, one would expect the characters to be more assertive. The pacing of the whole series was fairly poor -- there is no appreciable climax.

I would recommend this as a 'mood-piece' of historical fiction; as straight narrative it's fairly weak.

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Superb Science Fiction - a deserving classic.

Revisado: 11-02-11

I recently panned Frank Herbert's Dune in a review. I hated it. Somebody recommended this classic to me as an alternative and boy oh boy am I glad I listened. This is a classic deserving of that title.

I was aware of much about Ender's Game for a long time -- the young boy, the battle school, the training to fight an Alien War -- but that's only half the book. The other half is a wider picture of the world of this time -- of human nature at it's best and worst in a wonderfully realized world.

The pacing of this book is strange: The first 3/4 of it are predominantly focused on the Battle School and War -- and then the 'denouement' changes into something completely different. It becomes a poignant and philosophical book about morals and human nature -- and it extends beyond where a 'typical' novel would leave off.

If you finish this book, and like me, find the "Game" part of Ender's Game good, but what comes after it much much better, then please listen also to SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, the sequel, which is more in this vein. This is shaping up to be my favorite science fiction series of all time.

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Boo

Revisado: 10-24-11

Is it Heresy to say that Dune is actually not very good?

Well, it's not.

It's overwrought, overlong, and hard to access. It lacks empathetic characters, it's pacing is bizarre and inconsistent. It may have been a milestone book at one time, but it is not actually -- well -- good.

I've seen both the old film and the SciFi miniseries. The book is the best way to experience the story, no doubt. Too much of the plot revolves around mental control, subtle understandings, and 'magic' to translate well onto film.

However, just because it's the best doesn't mean it's good.

I didn't mind the "full cast" production for a long time, until narrators started switching towards the end. The sudden change in the voice of Vladimir Harkonen was particularly jarring.

Overall -- don't waste your time. This is a classic in the same way that a biplane is classic. Important in it's day, but you wouldn't want to fly in one now if you could avoid it.

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Very interesting history, biased conclusions

Revisado: 10-24-11

I've never heard of Tim Wu before reading this, but he really knows his stuff as far as media/technology history goes. The best parts of this book were examining this history of prior "cutting edge" media (Telephony, Radio, Television) through the eyes of what we'd now call the "Open Source" vs. "Closed System" dynamic. Fascinating and informative. I found I couldn't put it down.

HOWEVER -- the last hour turns into a very biased analysis of what's going on today.

I take his larger point -- that the Internet's open-ended structure which we tend to think of as permanent is not, in fact, unassailable. I think it's a well-supported point and he makes some interesting conjectures as to how that structure could change.

But I feel he makes a serious error in his analysis.

Specifically, he reduces "fate of the communications future" to a simple dynamic: Apple vs Google, with his preference clearly falling on Team Google. I think this a fairly short-sighted, narrow interpretation. Unlike the Bell of RCA companies of yesteryear, *neither* company owns anything that could not be replaced through a process of consumer demand. (Neither owns the "wires") Apple is not the "too big to fail" monopoly that Bell was -- it just plays nicely with the companies that are. So while these two companies clearly have different ideologies vis-a-vis the internet, BOTH could be undone by a vertically integrated powerhouse!

Further, as another reviewer points out, it assumes an American dominance of the communications future. And, like it or not, the Internet has wrested that ability from any one nation. Let's assume that "Comcast-NBC-Verizon-Apple-Intel-Universal" (Hypothetical Conglomerate) were to make the internet "controlled" in the USA. This would be such an economic disadvantage the the US, that new pioneer firms would pop up in more free information markets. This will always serve as a disincentive towards central control.

My griping aside -- I can heartily recommend this book. Take some of the analyses with a grain of salt and make up your own mind -- but don't skip this book simply because it draws some dodgy conclusions. You'll learn a lot and it will make you think.

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