Johan

First book of the series that was a bit less good

Revisado: 09-10-21

So far I've loved this series, and all books including this one have been good, there's been very few moments when I felt like I something in the story makes no sense or that "why would they do that? it makes no sense" there are some things like the way the belter creole works that seems an unrealistic way for it to evolve, as someone interested in linguistics this is something I just have to accept though. However in this book the main problem with the story is how hard it is to keep track of where they are going and why. It is also hard to tell how much time passes in parts of the story, because of this, it often is hard to follow I got bored and uninterested which I never got in the previous books. Also the characters' behaviour are many times not realistic, like Marco's crew, and how characters who act in impossible and unreasonable manner are tolerated even in extremely serious and grave situations.
So this is the first book in the series where I will give it a lower score. The previous ones in the series got highest scores from me.
Babylon's Ashes only get this:
Overall: ★★★★☆
Performance: ★★★★★
Story: ★★★☆☆
Performance still gets top score as Jefferson Mays manages to be lively and exciting, and any range of emotions from any character, he does convincingly, without ever sounding silly or over-the-top.
Also this is the first series where I have been listening to most of it in higher than 1x speed, usually 1.10x or 1.15x speed. Any speeds between 0.90 and 1.20 sound good, and - I would say - completely natural. Which has not been the case with most audiobook productions I've listened to. Even 1.25 sounds fine most of the time, but at some points it sounds a little unnatural.

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Interesting concept, some audiobook issues

Revisado: 01-27-20

Fantastic concept and worldbuilding, so fantastic that it's worth a listen for that alone. Maybe the book could have simply been more about that setting, because the story itself is less interesting.
The inner life of the main character is never really described at all, despite the book being written in first person. It's all just very descriptive of the setting and events, but not much of thoughts or feelings.
Also there is at least one moment where the narration is cut in the audiobook, there is no way for me to know how much of it was left out.

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Better narration, more annoying story than first

Revisado: 04-09-17

The first book's narrator is the same but he's much better in this book in the previous book where his New England dialect was so strong that it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying rather than HOW he was saying everything. Having Skippy along in the whole book in this one, was a bit annoying to not only the fictional characters, but to the listener/reader too. I had hoped his character would tone down the longer the story goes, but no, if anything he's even more annoying. This made me consider stopping to listen to the book a few times. Hopefully, in the next book he leaves them, or his behavior starts getting a bit calmer or we the listeners/readers don't have to know every annoying thing he says. It is was funny only about as long as after Skippy was found on Paradise until they were off the planet, the rest of Skippy really hurts me as the reader even more than it seems disturb Joe. It has gotten really old now. No more, please. But I'll of course listen to the next book too, but I hope there will be much less of Skippy in the next one.

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Good story, not so great narration.

Revisado: 04-07-17

The first chapter of the book was hard to get through, but once you are done with it the story is really captivating, sadly the narrator has a very strong New England accent and sounds much older than the character (Joe) he's portraying. It just sounds wrong, his voice would be better for a gangster novel set in 1940's New York or Boston (I'm Swedish, not American, so I can't place it closer than somewhere in New England, and the main character Joe is indeed from Maine, but he's young and born in the late 90's or later, being in his mid 20's, while the narratah could be an old faht age 55-75 from Bwostun.

Another thing that gets annoying in the second half is Skippy. Funny for a short while but then really frustrating to both the characters in the book, as well as the listener.

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Mediocre effort by narrator, interesting story

Revisado: 04-23-16

The voice actor / narrator could have done a better job at research and training for a book which emphasizes various accents and broken English.
The story is clearly only a beginning of a series, and it really doesn't stand on its own any more than an episode of a soap opera. The ending was very abrupt, but if the quality of the story is consistent, I will listen to the whole series.

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Great first story of a series

Revisado: 01-27-16

Very good narrator with a talent for accent and roles, which was absolutely necessary for this perticular story. Unique story style at least from any I've heard and read. I will follow this series for sure.

I found out about Tobias Buckell from the Metropolis series which is a very well made collaboration of several sci-fi authors made for audio book specifically as I understand it.

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