Sean

There a moment in these books that shows the potential of audiobooks as a medium

Revisado: 01-19-17

When this audiobook was commissioned it's very clear that Robin Hobb was more successful author who could command stronger narrator for her second trilogy. However despite the narrator being better, all the voices I'd come to love we're gone. even the familiar characters were 15 years older now they had the voices of men. I felt just as detached from this world that I knew and love as as the main characters does, we both knew that it was better but it didn't feel like ours. And then we hear a voice, a voice we expected to never hear again either due to change or estrangement, and I felt the same elation that fitz does not moment and I cried. Finally feeling something familiar just as our character finally felt something familiar was brilliant.

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Totally Reprehensible. No book I recommend less.

Revisado: 05-06-16

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This book gives linguistics a bad name.

It propagates bad science and worse understandings of human language. Obviously I didn't expect a pop-science book about language to get everything right, but the ideas this book spreads are not only wrong but reprehensible in the deepest way.

I only made it 15 minutes in before I couldn't listen to it anymore, BUT in those 15 minutes I heard: poor understandings of language in general, a complete disregard for the existence of language before 6000 BCE, terrible etymologies everywhere, and *ACTUAL F***ING NAZI PROPAGANDA*

That isn't in anyway hyperbole.

Let's quickly debunk the entire first 15 minutes of this book.

The first thing the author claims in that the first words acted out their meaning, that they were all onomatopoeia, that 'Poop,' the word, acts out our reaction to poop. This isn't backed up by science, but it's possible, that is until he implies that this was the case for our ancestors less than 10,000 years ago. If he was saying this was how our ape-like ancestors, hundreds of thousands of years ago, spoke then it'd be plausible, but he didn't so it isn't. This is absurd notion appeals to the idea that 'primitive people' speak 'primitive languages' which has been thoroughly debunked and is a bit racist.

After, some terrible etymologies and mistakes that a simple google search would reveal (No it is not the sometimes called 'proto-indo-european' it's always called 'proto-indo-european') He goes into the history of the study of the proto-indo-european culture. He actually does a fairly good job about this.

Bafflingly though, he fails to explain, why the word 'Aryan' fell out of use before being replaced by the term proto-indo-european. Simply saying "it took on a sinister tone in the 1930s," without explaining why it took on that sinister tone.

However right before I stopped listening it became very clear why he didn't explain it.

I'm sure you all can guess, but the word 'Aryan' fell out of use because the Nazis that the Aryan people were the 'ubermensch' and that all other types of people needed to be exterminated. This was partly based on the idea that the Aryan (proto-indo-european) languages were fundamentally superior and that they were superior because their speakers superior. This is why they killed Jews, or how they justified it, Jews were semitic people, not proto-indo-european their languages were inferior and their people were inferior.

Christopher Stevens didn't go that far (at least in the first 15 minutes) but immediately after glossing over the 'sinister tone' of the word 'Aryan.' He disparages the click languages of Africa and the Native languages of Paraguay saying that proto-indo-european languages were 'infinitely simple and more flexible.' He says that this is why PIE cultures have dominated the world, because our language is better. This has been thoroughly debunked by linguists. every language is equally capable of expression and understanding, the idea of 'a superior language' is not only bad science, but dangerous. This idea was used in the 19th century to justify the destruction of the American Indian. It was was used to justify Imperialism, it was used to justify the holocaust.

It is wrong, even at the time, and disgusting and most of all it's *sinister.*

Also I didn't like the narrator.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Lingo, Lingo, Lingo

Did Michael Healy do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Nope

What character would you cut from Written in Stone?

Every character in the book. As in every character that makes up the text.. like A though Z.

Any additional comments?

nope

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