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What Did I Just Listen To?

Revisado: 06-20-19

The premise of "Fall" is great. It's advertised as a fascinating near-future science-fiction novel by an established well-known author (Stephenson) about brain-scanning and life after death... Cool! I was all in! So much potential!

What was NOT mentioned in the book's blurb was that the brain-scanning and rebooting of a human after their death is just a setup for a quasi-religious teen-gamer story about magic fairy-tale creatures akin to trolls, gremlins, angels, and demons. Half or more of the book is just a silly quest to find a giant metal key to open a gateway for the return of "Egdod" (Dodge spelled backwards.... get it?), and a BIG chunk of that is a re-imagined Adam and Eve story (which comes to a clumsy and fuzzy conclusion).

The biggest disappointment of "Fall" is that when you're rebooted up after death, you can no longer recall who you are. Your old "meat-space" identity is (mostly) gone. So as the reader you're left confused as to why Stephenson even bothered with each characters LONG back-story? If I arrive in a new world after death thinking I'm a magical flying demigod, what is the point going into extreme painful detail about who I used to be? The characters didn't even know who they were, so I as a reader really had zero reason to care who they just became.

There are so many dead-ends and pointless side stories in this epic it becomes frustrating trying to keep up, and ultimately meaningless since most of it is needless extrapolation.

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Great story, Poor Narration

Revisado: 04-08-19

House of Suns is a really great story. Interesting and rich characters, new sci-fi concepts, with interesting worlds, and ideas. Really top-notch work, it's a "don't miss" novel.

But... as others have commented, the narration is a mess. John Lee has a pleasant voice that's easy on the ears. But this story needs characters that are easily distinguishable from each other. The story is told from multiple perspectives, a young girl, an adult male and female character, a robot, and many others. Unfortunately they all just sound like John Lee. This is especially hard to follow during intimate scenes where the male and female characters interact in a relationship.

For several characters Mr. Lee breaks out various contemporary accents, Posh British, Scottish, Cockney, etc... They do help distinguish a few of the characters, but seem out of place coming from characters who supposedly live millions of years in the future. Star Trek's "Scotty" is a believable accent 200 years in the future, but not 3 million years out.

What this story needs are two voice actors, one male and one female. Each with four or five distinct voices.

I was so confused that I set this book aside and didn't return to it for months, but ultimately I'm glad I finished it off. Hopefully this review (and others) will give you a little missing and needed insight before you begin.

That said... take the chance, you'll enjoy it greatly.

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Do you like stories about gladiators?

Revisado: 05-05-18

This is a very interesting book. It very nicely weaves together a somewhat implausible story of finding a first century gladiator buried in ice and awakening him into the 20th century.

The best parts are his stories of the arena, tactics, and the grandiose theater of death it became. Sadly the story sputters, slows, and then just kind of falls over at the end. Several times I had to go back, thinking I’d missed something, skipped a chapter, or hadn’t fully understood? But no, there are just gaps.

My first reaction to the ending was, “Well... I guess that’s ONE way of ending it?” But why, when there were SO many better ways it couldv’e gone?

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Fantastic Story... Barely SciFi

Revisado: 04-20-18

What made the experience of listening to Forged in Fire the most enjoyable?

Great narration, and immersive story telling

Any additional comments?

There's nothing NOT to love about this series. It's immensely enjoyable and leaves you always wanting more. 5 stars for sure!

I think the only slight I might make is that it is more of a fictional historical war drama about early 18th century warfare tactics, than it is a SciFi history novel. The war battle descriptions are beautifully written, and fun to hear, but take up 80-90% of the book. The science fiction elements are sprinkled on only to hold the story together, but become referenced less and less as the series continues. Maybe this will change in the future books? I hope so, it's an interesting and important element of the story, and only notable because of its general absence.

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Very Young Adults Only

Revisado: 08-27-16

While the underlying science fiction premise has a bit of merit, the writing is--at best--juvenile. The book is written as a series of emails to his girlfriend, from other dimensions. This "might" work in print, but it's very clumsy as an audio book.

I found most of the story cringe-worthy, often silly without being funny, and full of self-congratulatory over-dramatizations. It's everything an eight year-old thinks sci-fi should be. But the adult language is totally inappropriate for audience this book should please.

The author is also the narrator, and although he wasn't horrible, he does desperately need a producer/editor to give him feedback, and help level the performance. Like in most self produced narrations, there were numerous stumbles and restarts that weren't caught and deleted.

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Lots of plot holes but great

Revisado: 04-08-16

Time travel novels are either tidy and clean or sloppy and messy. This one is the later. But... An enjoyable ride.

If you like a little emotional disfunction in your novels this delivers nicely. Traveling though time would likely mess most of us up pretty badly. This novel explores that indirectly, but effectively.

I stopped saying, "Hey wait a second?!" after about the 15th plot hole... But that's when I finally enjoyed it the most.

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A fun ride.

Revisado: 06-04-15

This is a fun book on its own. But I somehow missed the fact that it's a sequel. So, there were numerous unknowns I had to discover that weren't immediately obvious. I may now go back and find the original series.

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Butterman (Time) Travel, Inc. is "Extra Ordinary"

Revisado: 07-01-14

Would you try another book from P.K. Hrezo and/or Bryarly Bishop?

The story had a few interesting moments, but was overall thin and lacking of substance. I'm sure a few teenage girls anxious to travel through time with their favorite boy-band squeeze "might" enjoy the plot? But most of us would rather... not.

What was most disappointing about P.K. Hrezo’s story?

The concept of a potentially dangerous time travel device being entrusted to an 18 year-old is... well... silly. But then letting her go on her first self-supervised time trip with a sad boy-band love interest is kind of just ridiculous. Oh... and after about the 20th or so elaboration describing his "steely blue eyes" I was ready for a barf bag. Cheese.

What didn’t you like about Bryarly Bishop’s performance?

Bryarly has potential, but REALLY needs a quality producer to supervise her sessions, and a skilled editor to fix her stumbles. Every voice over artist has stumbles, restarts and retakes, but they are removed prior to release. "Butterman" has several per chapter. Once she actually stopped, took a short pause, then restarted the paragraph from the top. On other occasions she read a few words – or sometimes whole sentences – in the wrong character voice. Yikes!

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Butterman?

I would place Ms. Bishop in a quality recording booth to avoid the ambient noise that litters the read. (It sounds as if she read this while under a blanket in her closet). Also the 5-10+ second dead zones between chapters was irritating.

Any additional comments?

Overall it wasn't horrible. But certainly NOT worth the price of admission.

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