Kitsune

Started out with great premise, then (literally) died a thousand deaths

Revisado: 04-29-25

The author had a great idea. If you have read the enticing blurb, you'll probably be as excited as I was about it!

Sadly, that's a very tiny portion of the book.

The rest of the book is "PEW PEW LASER!!!" ...and it's most terrifically dull.

Because the author didn't bother to give us more than lightly fleshed out characters, it's easy to dismiss each death. They were never real to begin with. Therefore, it's also difficult to understand the protagonist's devotion to some dull, cardboard character female.

One day the author must have looked up at his Word-A-Day calendar to see the word "ichor," because there's a part of the book where he just drenches the chapters in "ichor."

The narrator is wasted on this. Oh, he *tries* to imbue this with a lot of excitement, but eventually it feels like his enthusiasm is forced to the point where it's comical. It's not his fault. One can only retell "then... PEW PEW LASER!!!" so many times.

And WHAT'S with the ACCENTS? This is supposed to be roughly 3,500 years into the future and we're told that everybody is roughly the same shade of brown, living in a relatively small colony (in relation to Earth) so homogeneous in all ways...but somehow there are all of these different accents going on?

I think the only accent the narrator missed was a good, solid Russian accent.

I found myself in the middle of my chores, losing entire chunks of chapters because it was so endlessly dull. I finally gave up entirely. I honestly don't care how it ends since it had already ended for me.

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An annoying stereotypical female character created by a man

Revisado: 04-26-25

This book had a great deal of promise, but it failed to live up to it all.

First, the supernatural good guy was as stiff and uninteresting as a cardboard cutout. I believe del Toro was attempting to make him mysterious but there it fell flat.

Second, the female character was an overly self-righteous, emotional creature. It's not believable that she would make it into the FBI or, at least, I hope the FBI has higher standards than this.

Third, the African American FBI agent was slightly more interesting. However, he has one moment of extreme irrationality when his life is saved by the supernatural good guy, followed by his threatening to arrest the good guy for "murder," instead of being exceedingly grateful for being saved from a horrible death.

in a nutshell, Del Toro creates a world with demons running amok. However, instead of pointing to them as a spiritual evil, he attempts to make them something more akin to space aliens. And it doesn't work.

Between the poorly executed premise and the badly written characters, it simply isn't worth The time it takes to wade through it all to find the occasional gem.

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nauseatingly trite, target audience may be preteen(?)

Revisado: 04-22-25

I'm not really sure if I'm being fair. I'm an adult, and this book may have only been written for preteens. However, I didn't see any indication that this was a children's book (?)

So coming at this from an adult perspective: This book begins with two young adult women arguing with each other about which one is more beautiful (GIRL#1: "oh YOU'RE more beautiful!" GIRL #2: "no YOU are," etc.)

Then the author goes on to assure us that, indeed, both were incredibly beautiful (insert eye roll here). The author's adjectives are juvenile ("wavy locks of cascading auburn hair," yada yada yada).

The author is apparently afraid to narrate very much in third person voice, so she has her characters explain everything in a very stilted manner.

As for the performance: The voice actor forgets her accents at times.

I seriously couldn't go on. Just dreadful.

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Truly trite and unoriginal: How did this become a series!?!?

Revisado: 04-22-25

I can't imagine why this has received so many stars. It's a simple rip off of Rosemary's Baby, with a different ending but the same premise. Not only that, but the main protagonist is such a ditzy airhead that it's impossible to believe one person could make so many idiotic mistakes. It's very far from believable.

Anyone with a medical background will be *groaning* by the end. I won't give away the ending but they would have to have a heck of a lot more victims with similar blood types to the residents than is plausible.

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GREAT performance, crappy script

Revisado: 04-22-25

The performers were great, the script was dull and full of unlikable people. there were a couple bright spots but, honestly, I wish the dragons had eaten more of them.

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bland & predictable, creepy voice

Revisado: 04-18-25

The story itself was bland and predictable. It wasn't much of a mystery, and you had to wade through a lot of vicious Irish people to get to the end of it. generally, a very unpleasant experience.

on top of that, the narrator has an immensely creepy voice.

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A Novel Written by a Man who Misunderstands Women

Revisado: 04-05-25

okay, I know: Andrew Weir is an incredible author. I loved his other two novels. The problem is that I'm a woman... and he isn't.

There are some male authors who absolutely can write from a woman's perspective (Sci-Fi authors James H Schmitz and Alexi Panshin did it well).

However, it's too easy for authors to promote stereotypes, with the hopes that it saves the trouble of paving the long, hard path of character development. In this case, that's exactly what Weir chose to do.

His heroine is far from female in the way she thinks and behaves. (There are plenty of tough females that he could have drawn from, in real life, who are more nuanced and far more interesting.)

Instead, this heroine is basically a hard-boiled slut who supposedly is groundbreaking because she's a reformed Muslim. Her tolerant father is a devout Muslim who only mildly disapproves of her. Again, this is far from believable for those of us who know the Muslim faith very well. A Muslim who takes his faith as seriously as her father would never be so indulgent.

Basically, Weir gave Sam Marlow a sex change, as well as a lack of personal and professional ethics, and renamed the character. The only other primary female character is the colony's mayor and she is also a distastefully shrewish, calculating creature.

The truth is: Women are more subtle than these characters.

As for the plot, it's actually pretty weak. It had the promise of being far more interesting, but quickly devolved into nothing more than a novel about The Mafia in outer space.

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excellent but very obvious marketing advice that can be found anywhere

Revisado: 03-03-25

My review is coming years after this book was written. however, it seems that, although I learned a couple small factoids, the vast majority of what Saad says is already well known in the marketing world. at the time he wrote this, he said he assumed this was going to be such a spectacular book that it would be mandatory reading for all marketing degrees. maybe it is? But I see no reason for it.

that was my conclusion even before I reached to the end, where he began to slam religion with great glee and viciousness. I was rather shocked, because up until then I had respect for him and his well reasoned points. I should add that I'm a major fan of Dr Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker (and other evolutionary psychologists).

there is every probability that much, if not all, of religion is manufactured by humans. But Dr Jonathan Haidt made a much more logical and dispassionate argument for that. It appears that Saad maybe a little thin-skinned about this topic, having come from Lebanon and seen so much damage done in the name of a variety of religions.

however he claims that he has discussed anti-religion arguments with a variety of people in a variety of religions and nobody has good answers for his questions. The problem is that his questions are not phrased correctly, and apparently he wasn't really discussing this with anyone that has given the topic of religion in evolutionary psychology any serious research. there are some very good answers to his arguments but they wouldn't take him where he wants to go. He seems to be a victim of his own confirmation bias.

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I REEEALLLY wanted to like this but...

Revisado: 02-22-25

This is kind of what you have to actually sit down and pay attention to. The purpose of audible, at least for me, is to give you something to listen to while you are doing other things. there is no way to do both, at least for me.

there's no doubt the author is well researched and has done his very best to make this interesting. sadly, it's still falls short

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I wish I could give this more than one star. So I gave the performance two stars. That's as good as I can give.

Revisado: 02-21-25

The reader / performer seems to get her Irish and Italian accents mixed up at times. her voice for certain roles is just so very stereotyped/trite. in her defense, it's probably that she's working with very poor material.

Because...worst of all, the writing is just garbage. once you realize that JD Robb is really Nora Roberts, it all falls into place.

A lot of the dialogue is pure cringe like:

FEMALE #1: Oh my goodness, aren't we lucky? we're rich AND powerful AND have hot studs to go home to every night.
FEMALE #2: maybe the problem is we are TOO rich and TOO powerful.
FEMALE #1: I'm not worthy of my rock star husband who's a literal rock star. did I mention he's a rockstar?
FEMALE #2: well I have a castle and tons of money but, for some neurotic need, I continue to work as a detective. And by the way did I mention I had a castle?

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