A. Massey

Very Difficult to Listen to

Revisado: 03-27-25

I am just a few chapters into the book, but I am not sure I can finish. Form some reason the author decided to name the AI in the story "Alexa". Every 30 seconds one character or another says "Alexa" to talk to the AI. This has the unfortunate consequence of making my iPhone stop playing the book while the Alexa app is activated and then the Alexa app will tell me that it does not understand what I am asking. When I stop the Alex app from listening on the iPhone, the other Alexa apps I have all over my house will hear the keyword and try to answer.

This is just a really stupid decision on the part of the author, he could of named the AI anything and he picked one of the few words that activates a response from every device I own.

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A true classic

Revisado: 01-04-25

It’s been 30 years at least since I last read this book. I really enjoyed listening to it, but a lot of the language has aged poorly. While listening, you just have to remember the time it was written was very different than the time we live in now and just enjoy the story and the writings of a true master.

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I was hoping for more,

Revisado: 07-12-23

I have become a bit lazy lately and have not written as many reviews as I did a few years ago. But this book really pushed me to write a review. I love science fiction and have read many terrific books about powerful AI’s gaining consciousness. I was really hoping this would be a story of an AI told from the AI’s viewpoint. At a running length of almost 26 hours, I thought /Grace would really be able to explore this fascinating topic. I was deeply disappointed, Creighton Hoke can tell a story, able to build believable characters, set those characters in a well-developed world. But there are problems. We get introduced to the CEO of the company building /Grace and she is a powerful woman trying to make a name for herself in a man’s world. She is complex, interesting and has lots to offer the reader, but after hundreds of pages developing her character, she never does anything to advance the plot. We meet the CEO’s bodyguard, a well-trained competent veteran with some heavy stuff in his past. Again, we get hundreds of pages about him, and the story never tells about anything he does to advance the plot. We meet the Project manager for the Grace project, she is trying to follow in the footsteps of the CEO and gets a lot of attention in the book and again we are left waiting for something important to happen to her. Spoiler, nothing ever does. There is a great villain, a powerful senator that is running for president and sees an opportunity to make anti AI sentiment the center of his campaign. He could have been such a great character, but of course nothing ever happens with him. Then, of course there is /Grace, we see the AI interact with people, but we never know much about how powerful she is or what her intentions are. I managed to make it through all 26 hours hoping (and hoping) that something important was going to happen and it just never really did. There was some major action near the end, but it story treated it like was incidental and not very Imortant and it was never explained. The book was just boring, giving us hours and hours of flowery prose but with no goals in sight.

Maybe this is just book 1 of a series and book 2 is where stuff will happen. I just don’t think I can devote another 26 hours hoping something will happen.
I was very impressed with Noah Wall’s narration he did a great job and I would like to listen to another book he has narrated.

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First Jack Reacher book that was actually boring

Revisado: 05-16-20

I really enjoy the Jack Reacher books, Lee Child is a national treasure. But I guess even Lee Child can have a bad day.
I kept listening and waiting for something to happen, but it was almost 13 hours before Reacher even hit someone. Seriously if you think you must get this book, just skip ahead to about hour 13 and start there. I promise you are not going to miss much at all, certainly nothing important. The bad guys, their plot and everything of importance happens in the last hour.

The narration of the book is by Dick Hill, my favorite Reacher narrator and he does a great job as always. But... for the entire book Reacher has a badly broken nose (from the book before this one). So Dick Hill reads all the Reacher lines sounding exactly like someone with a badly broken nose would sound. This is novel and OK for about an hour, then it becomes tedious, after another five hours it becomes maddening. We get it, he has a broken nose. Just read the lines.

So if you only have one credit this month, and want a good Reacher book, this one is not going to be it (in my opinion)

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Great start of the series

Revisado: 05-10-16

If you enjoyed the CommonWealth Saga (Pandora's Star ..) then you will enjoy this series. Great story telling, lots of interesting characters, very interesting locations (new worlds and habitats). But the best part is how seamlessly Hamilton weaves the advanced technologies into the story without stopping the narrative every few page to explain them. Hamilton understands that his readers are smart enough to figure it out from context. A welcome relief from the majority of new science fiction.

Now if only the next two books in the series were available on Audible!

Why do they only have this one? The Reality Dysfunction really leaves the reader hanging at the end.

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Very good.

Revisado: 07-01-15

Excellent story. One of the rare audio books that cause me to sit in my car listening for long periods of time after I reach my destination.

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Great

Revisado: 06-13-15

Really enjoyed it. Plenty of science and a very completing story. There is plenty of room for multiple sequels.

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Very disapointed

Revisado: 01-30-14

I had high hopes for Atopia and was eager to listen to the story. I knew right from the start that the book was not going to keep my interest. I thought (based on the descriptions) that this was going to be a hard science fiction story. The first 100 pages showed this was at best a very soft science fiction, the kind where the author introduces a new technology without any explanation or background. This is not always a fatal flaw, if the author then moves the story forward with strict rules about the limits and functionality of the new technologies. In Atopia we have a lazy author that never tries to understand the technology they are writing about. Mather uses the technology as a magic wand that behaves differently depending on the immediate needs of the story.

Sometimes when the story is lacking the science, it can make up for it with powerful characters that draw the reader into the world. Again Mather fails in a big way, there are many characters and I did not like any of them. I had no desire to see what would happen to any of the one dimensional characters.

So I did not enjoy this book at all and would not recommend it to anyone. I can only hope there will not be any more of them, but I fear there will be an entire horrible series.

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Not the book I thought it would be

Revisado: 01-30-14

This is a book with many plot turns and mysteries revealed. I must admit I did not expect the direction the book took. The plot moved quickly and the characters were very interesting and made me care about what happened. The only thing that prevented this from being a 3 or 4 star book was the numerous technical problems with the entire Aegis complex. It just keep breaking me out of the plot when the author would just ignore the serious problems with the logistics and engineering of the Aegis complex. The idea that the government would just allow thousands of people to enter a complex like Aegis with no medical care, no food distribution, no repair and maintenance staff. And on top of that leave all the mechanical spaces open the general population (even allow them onto the roof) and then just hope everything goes ok was difficult to accept. I just had to stop trying to make sense of all those plot holes to enjoy the book.

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Much less than it could have been

Revisado: 07-14-13

This is the seconds book in the Larson's Star Force series. I liked the direction the first book took, I thought there were some interesting things the series could explore and decided to ignore the problems with the first book and see where the second book went. Well now I know, we went to lazyville. Lawson must have written this book in about a week. The plot is silly, the characters are flat and the science has left the building.

Very sad, this could have been a very interesting series. I think Larson has the ability to write a much better book. But for some reason he just seems to be cranking out these books like cheap romance novels. Maybe that is how a writer needs to pay the bills these days - Volume. I think there are about another 9 books in this series, but I am in no hurry to read the rest.

On the brighter side, Mark Boyett did a great job narrating the book!

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