B Welsh

Unexpected, Wholesome and Wonderful

Revisado: 10-02-23

Not what I expected at all. Affirming, sweet and lovely. I’ll listen again when I need a lift.

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Great Narration But Thin Book

Revisado: 11-03-18

Plot summary: Straight Declan and gay Sam have coordinated the marriage of their siblings over the past year but meet in person for the first time traveling to the wedding. The initial meeting doesn't bode well, but eventually Declan goes gay for Sam. They have lots of secret sex and quote scenes from The Princess Bride to each other.

What I liked, and comments: The writing was evocative and the writer has a flair for apt, clever word choice and added mood and depth to the novel with vivid language. There were a lot of humorous scenes -- and a lot of references to The Princess Bride -- that I enjoyed. A special nod goes to the narrator, Gary Furlong, for an outstanding job. He had great pacing and admirably performed a bunch of different accents and even some foreign languages. The two main characters were pretty well fleshed-out, and though the author had to hold Sam's past as a mystery for future books and that necessity drained some color from him he was a lot of fun.

I had a few complaints. First, the book was too light on plot. It seemed more teaser for future books than stand-alone novel. Second, there was simply too much time spent on too many sex scenes. I concede that the sex scenes were well-choreographed and well-varied and for some readers would be the best part of the book. Third, the supporting characters were stereotyped and flat; they were static, unmemorable props. Last and most important, Sam and Declan's relationship was too volatile and too obsessive. It became scary rather than romantic. Their ultimate reunion was jarring; I didn't know if a kiss or a homicide was happening next.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review so I don't have skin in the game. There's promise in the book I read for review, but I'm not sure I'm inclined to seek out the next book in the series.

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Not Much More Than an Intro

Revisado: 06-23-18

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

As the subtitle suggests, this short novel is the opening of a series. A lot could have been done with this novel other than introducing the cast and setting the scene. Sadly, not a lot was.

The premise is clever: Nathan, a soldier and real-life hero who is altruistic, brave, kind, and trustworthy, is reincarnated in a VR universe as The Boss Monster, that last powerful Monster that the good guys have to kill to finish a quest. He's a good man cast unwillingly as a monster. I thought the implicit parallel between this casting and Nathan's career as a soldier was also clever. I thought there was great possibility in that struggle between good man and monster nature. I thought the concept of an AI controlled Virtual Reality RPG also had huge possibilities.

I was disappointed that of all this cleverness and possibility, very little is actually used. Maybe it's being left for the future books.

There were, of course, good points. The monster develops his relationship with his goblin minions. The monster must bend to the (disgusting) necessities of eating and sleeping as a monster and the struggle Nathan has to go through with these necessities is well done.

Overall, though, the book felt too much like the recap of a dozen nights spent playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was probably a great dozen nights for the players, but it's just not that exciting for the people hearing about it afterward.

I'm hoping the book is later released as a single volume with, perhaps, the first few sequels. This one doesn't stand on its own very well.

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Whoa

Revisado: 06-17-18

Brilliantly, wonderfully creepy. I wish I had found this book and this author years ago. I was riveted throughout. The writing and the characters and the concepts and the storyline and the narration are all simply fabulous.

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Wonderful love story, well-told

Revisado: 06-09-18

The author gave a great feel for the life of a gay sheep farmer in middle-of-nowhere Western Australia. Great book. I’ve listened through it more than once and will again. The narrator’s Australian accent made the book even better for me.

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Informative, insightful and entertaining

Revisado: 05-01-18

Sapolsky's a wonderful speaker and teacher. It's a treat to listen to anyone teach who's passionate and expert, but Sapolski adds humor and a rapid-fire delivery that kept me riveted. I'll be recommending this to friends.

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Possibly the best of the lot

Revisado: 03-01-18

I adore the first three books in this series. I was checking frequently on Eli Easton’s website and in Audible to see when this installment would arrive.

Like the other books, this is a love story that takes its time to build its characters and its world wonderfully.

Easton’s prose often had me skipping back to relish some particularly apt phrase. Shaw’s narration with his feel for tone and timing adds a whole dimension to the story. All of the books share Easton’s skill with language and Shaw’s skill with delivery. But having just finished this one, I’m tempted to say it’s the best so far.

It would be hard for me to recommend this enough.

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Disjointed Shoot-Em-Up With Bad Narration

Revisado: 02-28-18

Sort of cyberpunk action comics Dungeons & Dragons. With sex.

Three main characters, an assassin, a hacker, and a teenaged getaway driver get together and become the Troubleshooters. Two main supporting characters are a cyborg ninja with excellent manners and an OCD artificial intelligence desperately in need of counseling.

The group is offered a pile of money to go find some collectables and kills many, many people during their world collecting tour. It's a basic D&D quest premise. But unlike my high-school version of D&D, there's combinatoric sex: Cyborg on AI, AI on human, human on cyborg, human on human, sex during fights. Sex without fights. Sex in space. It got tedious. But it took my mind off of the author's apparent idea of how science works, which seemed to be that enough buzzwords in close proximity would fuse and become actual sci-fi.

The main problem with the narrator was that he kept mispronouncing words, which I found grating. Add to that his over-caffeinated enthusiasm in the action scenes -- and most of the book is action scenes -- and it was just painful.

I found the book very difficult to get through. And, sadly, it wasn't worth the effort.

I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.

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All Around Brilliant

Revisado: 10-05-17

One summer on a farm changes everything for a city boy. The book's touching and hysterical and completely wonderful. The performance is pitch-perfect. Worth more than one listen.

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Great Potential Squandered

Revisado: 09-28-17

I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.

This is a new take on the vampire-as-romantic-superhero books. This take, though, is through the lens of a recently-turned black vampire, Peter Stone, stuck working a lousy job in New Detroit, a city owned and run by the old vampires. It's not such a great un-life. Racism and classism are still here, but now with a ladle of supernatural racism and classism stirred in. People, even undead ones, are still people.

To summarize the plot, Peter, his smart-mouthed friend/servant David, and a vampire hunter newly turned into a vampire herself, Melissa, discover a menace to vampire existence and join with others to fight it.

Twined in are killer ex-girlfriends, arch-enemies, demented psychics, and assorted supernatural barflies. To complicate matters, Peter's super vampire powers only occasionally work when he needs them and his mind-reading ability lets other people read him. Every time the name of the Lord is spoken by his name-in-vain-prone cohorts, it hurts him. And there's that embarrassing compulsion to count sesame seeds that comes to the fore in a dangerous burger joint.

New Detroit is Detroit as taken over and revamped (so to speak) by the ruling class of vampires while vampires are achieving civil rights in the USA. Other supernatural creatures are coming out of the shadows, too. Of course, organizations exist to violently oppose vampires and vampire rights.

So, there are a lot of really promising, really good ideas. And, yet, somehow it all doesn't gel. The characters, their interactions, the venue with its glitter and danger, the super-villains with their pure, despicable evil -- none of it shone. The book was gauzy to me, muddled, not crisp and vivid. And I'll say the "Comedic" part of the subtitle threw me. I expected coyote-and-roadrunner slapstick when the protagonists could take such abuse; I expected funny cultural mistakes from a character who's 8000 years old or one rich enough to bail out a bankrupt country. Instead, I got sci-fi movie quotes and actor references coming so thick that one of the villains begged for death to put a stop to it.

The narrator didn't help matters. His measured delivery didn't work for the jabbing dialog. His pacing and emphasis seemed off. And his seeming insistence on a noticeable pause with every comma paired with his need to chuckle when the text said chuckle was distracting. The material needed a perky reading, and it didn't get one.

I think the ideas and characters had great potential. But I think that potential wasn't achieved. The world, the plot, and the characters and the comedy didn't hold together well. And the book didn't survive its rebirth as an audiobook with grace.

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