gbcrockett

Not ideal for audio

Revisado: 04-22-25

So many Hindu god names… it is hard to keep track of them in audio book format

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Editor needed

Revisado: 10-09-23

I have enough faith in Stephen King that I'll keep slogging a while longer to get past the annoyance, but there is WAY, WAY too much time spent about Barbara's poetry, and all of it is the worst sort of treacle.

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Move along, nothing to see here

Revisado: 10-09-23

The first book in this series did some excellent world-building. If there are to be additional interesting ideas in this one, they are not to be found in the first 8 chapters. I can't say beyond that because I got too bored to continue.

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Not credible

Revisado: 09-09-23

I liked the Butcher Boy books, but this one not at all. Neither the hero nor the villain were believable characters, and the dialog (internal and external) was mostly cringe-worthy.

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Not up to Slough House standards

Revisado: 01-03-23

I'm a huge fan of Herron's Slough House series and his writing. This book happens in the Slough House universe, but it's not part of the series and it's hard to believe that the same author wrote it. The protagonist isn't appealing in any way, and there's none of the humor and general pleasure of the Slough House series. I got it because you need this book to understand why the J.K. Coe character became the way he is and ended up in Slough House. But the right way to do that is to get the Kindle version instead of thte audiobook, so you can just search for Coe's name and find those parts without having to slog through the rest of this.

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People behaving strangely

Revisado: 03-18-22

The central mystery of this story is not nearly as hard to swallow as the ways the characters act. Very few of the things people do or the ways they interact make any sense. This one didn't work for me at all; in retrospect I don't know why I listened to the whole thing. The narrator was fine.

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High hopes dashed

Revisado: 02-22-22

I have enjoyed much of Mr. Stephenson's work going all the way back to Snow Crash, and I was looking forward to this one. I persevered through two-thirds of this overlong book before finally giving up. There's a martial-arts-in-the-mountains subplot that's just plain silly. The main plot is more reasonable, but quite preachy. And under no circumstances should this author be permitted to write sex or seduction scenes in the future.

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Great narration, Good concept, Meh story

Revisado: 08-29-20

First, the voice actor narrating this is among the best I've heard. The concept, of cities becoming living entities on a parallel plane, is imaginative and has lots of possibilities. However, I didn't find any compelling story lines. This is not a book that made me eager to listen. Too many protagonists who were quirky for quirkiness's sake, too much use of "it just feels right" to move action forward, no sense of the heroes ever being in real peril. I lost the motivation to continue about halfway through.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

It depends on what you want

Revisado: 11-04-19

This book has an interesting premise and the author does a workmanlike job of writing action scenes. If that's all you're looking for, go for it.

If you're one of the few tech-thriller readers who hopes for an author who is also a writer, look elsewhere. This book has the standard cardboard characters and exposition via clunky dialogue.

If you're one of the larger group of tech-thriller readers who wants the tech and science to be reasonably credible, or at least not clearly wrong, also look elsewhere. One shouldn't write deep-sea action scenes without researching how the "bends" works, shouldn't write about astrophysics while thinking amino acids are made in supernova explosions, and in the case of this author, shouldn't write about convergent evolution or wave mechanics at all.

The narration is fine. Scott Brick knows what he's doing and is good at it.

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esto le resultó útil a 161 personas

Why people scorn sci-fi

Revisado: 09-01-19

When I was in sixth grade and inhaling Tom Swift Jr. books, I would have absolutely loved this book. It's full of shiny tech-toys (the disassembler-replicator that plays a significant part in the plot is essentially Tom Swift's "space solartron"). But it's also full of cardboard characters and exposition in the form of clunky dialogue where people tell each other things they should both already know. Some of the ideas are fun, and I would probably have stuck with it if the writing didn't keep annoying me.

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esto le resultó útil a 28 personas