Cheri Reeves

Great book!

Revisado: 07-31-23

An intensely complicated story that I thoroughly enjoyed. Only one major drawback in my mind and it could just be my own issues. The romance between Ian and his “betrothed” seems contrived in the manner of genre romance fiction. While I don’t begrudge including romance in fantasy fiction, I do get tired of the trope of the girl working hard at denying her feelings and the guy being clueless. For nearly the whole book! Other than this, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. This one will be a keeper, to be reread over and over.

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This series is one of the best

Revisado: 05-12-23

The biblical story may or may not be fiction(based on your perception of God and the universe. But it is based on the Gnostic scriptures, the New Testament and Revelation. The narrator did an adequate job. He has a soft mellifluous voice that does good credit to the pronunciation of so many biblical words and foreign locales. That said, I would have expected a bit more power behind the voice in the exciting parts. I got lost in the story a lot due not only to the time shifts, changes in character point of view, but mostly because the narrator doesn’t vary his reading style at all. His soft vocal style makes it hard to determine shifts in characters, although I do imagine a woman speaking most of the time when there is one, but otherwise the characters all sound alike. And his lack of emotional vocalizations makes it hard to tell where the story is and who is speaking or thinking. I am versed enough in Middle Eastern religions that I should’ve been able to follow the narrator’s path through the angelic mythology relatively easily. But I got lost a because the narration was so boring it started putting me to sleep. In fact I did fall asleep at least 3 times and ended up listening to book 1 just as many times to make sure I knew everything that had happened before I went on to Book 2. I will try the whole series again another day for what I hope will be a straight read from start to finish. I had the same problem in Books 2 and three, but to a lesser degree as the narrator began actually differentiating between character with the use of voice modulations and showing a bit more of the emotional nuances that should have been there from the beginning. By the end of book 3 we should have been able to know which character was speaking by the sound of the voice, not having to depend on the author’s directions in the read text.

Finally, a response to the reader who claimed these were Catholic bashing books, I have to ask: WHERE?

Historically the early church, once the apostles were gone from the earth, the Catholic Church used its considerable power to control the masses. Their uses and abuses of their growing power is legendary. It’s not abuse of the author’s emotional cudgels and use of historical fact in order to tell a story. The Catholic Church was riddled with popes and cardinals who used their position in the church to curry favor and line their pockets with money originally belonging to their parishioners. Sadly, the early church was as bad about living the gospel as Christ taught it as they have been in any age. Many churchmen and women were narrow minded and cruel to their fellow humans as most strongly religious people have been in any age. All I can say is being Catholic in the early years of the church was no different than any other profession at the time. I highly recommend anyone who thinks any human institution is inviolate when it comes to hypocrisy and abuse, read the books again. All people are fallible. And many of us are cruel. But the story of Lucifer’s Fall is a story full of hope in spite of all Lucifer’s efforts to the contrary. I think the Plan of Salvation was designed with that angel’s fall in the original plan. Poor Lucifer never realized how he was being manipulated to behave in a certain way. Without Lucifer’s choices being exactly what was needed to accomplish God’s plan, we might not have made it to this place in the drama.

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So much GOOD information…

Revisado: 04-17-23

I had to read it through from beginning to end to feel I assimilated as much as possible to make the content a part of my intuitive understanding. Excellent read with fascinating insights on the human psyche and social norms and expectations. One of the best books I’ve ever read on what works in storytelling. I will probably read it again and again because there is just so much good information that I can’t cram it all into my mind.

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The original Hero Tale of WWII

Revisado: 03-25-23

I grew up watching old Audie Murphy movies when I was a kid in the Baby Boomer years of SoCal. I was born the year To Hell and Back (the movie) was released. The movie was great, but the book was better! I always had respect for Audie Murphy. Fo the most part he played understated hero’s in films. You know? The kind of good guy who played by the rules and never bragged about his winning at the end. And the few villains he played had a code of honor. But this story was true. He loved it. He survived it. And you really knew from start to finish who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. All you could do at the end was cheer them on. This book reminded me of what America stood for once upon a time.

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Good succinct story

Revisado: 03-07-23

I would have liked a bit more of the anecdotes of how the people survived afterwards. Otherwise this was a good story and performance.

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Thank Heaven it was only 15 minutes long!

Revisado: 03-07-23

I appreciate a short book that gets right to the heart of the matter. Especially when the narrator is inexperienced and sometimes reads the text as if he were still in high school. Sadly his inexperience made me listen to how he was reading because I wanted to help him over the hurdles along the way, not to what was being said. Unfortunately, that’s not helpful on a book(?) so very short. As it turned out, I stopped listening to the narrator halfway through the book because I simply couldn’t take my focus off the sped up then slowed down pace of his narration, the words he stumbled over and the few phrases that were grammatically incorrect. The latter I might actually blame on the author but since I don’t have the kindle book to review, I can’t tell who was responsible for that. The way the narrator spoke those words made me think he stumbled over the words because the correct language he was seeing just didn’t sound right to his own mind and he substituted what did.

I could be wrong.

At least the narration was quick and if the narrator listens to his recording, he might use it to train himself out of those habits. Perhaps he could use it as a practice piece to go back into his audio software and edit the existing tracks before re-uploading a better version for the audience to enjoy. I don’t mean to be harsh here but as an author I would only want a near-perfect recording attached to my book. No matter how short.

Speaking of which, the title states “in 60 minutes or less. Fifteen minutes is no where near 60 minutes, but I think you could have included a bit more data about actually doing art. At first I thought the book was all about choosing a color scheme for the house!! There is so much room for expansion here…

Look me up if you need an editor. Or a co-author. 😉

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Not your typical history book

Revisado: 07-24-22

Fascinating discussion of medieval history of Britain’s survival of the sudden change in climate between 1315 and 1320. One of the best books I have read on this period. It describes not only the politics of the period, ie, the wars both in country and with other countries, the economics that created the feudal social order, and the organization of British society as a whole, etc., but how the Little Ice Age disrupted “life as usual.” This book makes plain how easily a small, temporary shift in climate affected not just Britain, but the whole of European society. I especially liked the layered look at how the loss of two years of normal summer weather affected the various levels of society.

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Narrator was so bad he ruined the story

Revisado: 07-18-22

The narrator read the story as if he were reading it to 6 year olds. Not sure if that was the reason the plot sounded so contrived, or if the author over dramatized events and created extremely wooden characters. Lots of head-hopping making it hard to figure out who was thinking or reacting to what.

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Good historical data, but—

Revisado: 11-23-21

The purpose of this book is religious teaching, not historical information. The author spends 2/3s of his time explaining how the highs and lows of Solomon’s life and actions apply to the reader’s life as a Christian. In fact much of the discourse in this book refers to Christ’s life rather than focusing strictly on Solomon. I was hoping to get more of a history book than religious teachings. I could have easily finished this book if there had been a little less proselytizing. I would have preferred more historical discussion of what life was like under Solomon’s rule and less preaching. I am returning the book because of this.

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Great Biography to listen to

Revisado: 08-28-21

Really enjoyed this book. I’ve always loved Jimmy Stewart in pretty much anything he did. The only negative I found in this book was the fact that the narrator mispronounced so many names of the actors who populated Jimmy’s life. He attempted to speak a bit like Jimmy in the quotations, but it took him nearly the entire book to finally start sounding like him. Other than that, the book was a great listen. The narrator simply needed a bit of pre-recording research to learn how people and places are pronounced. It got irritating after a while, especially for someone raised in Southern California and whose mother and aunts came to CA to be involved in the movie business. Anyone who watches old movies on TCM even just once in a while knows how these names and places are pronounced. The narrator needs to do his research before he starts recording.

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