Scott George

Great story but needed better production

Revisado: 03-29-22

Big Trouble is probably my favorite Dave Barry novel of all time. The narrator did a good job, especially with the individual character voices, but the production quality was lacking, at best. I could hear every breath and every clicky swallow the narrator took throughout the whole book. It was very distracting at times.

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Couldn’t bring myself to finish it

Revisado: 08-24-21

The subject matter was interesting, but the narrator’s vocal style was far too saccharin and overacted. It felt less like a study course and more like someone performing ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas for and audience of bored toddlers. A good narrator knows how to walk the line between vocal performance and letting the material speak itself. This was not a good narrator and I could only get through about two chapters before I had to turn her irritating voice off.

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Not bad but the stories were kind of all over the place

Revisado: 08-12-21

I enjoyed maybe half of the stories in this collection. That’s not to say that they were bad, they were just all very different from one another. Different styles for different tastes.
I do have one complaint, though. The first story in the collection took its opening from a book and author I’ve never heard of. I recognized all of the opening lines except that one. It seems very weak planning to open a book of stories about ripping off famous first lines with a story using an opening line from a little known author.

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Not worth my time

Revisado: 06-23-21

I was really looking forward to listening to this book but I couldn’t make it even an hour into the read before I turned it off. The book is written in stiff, archaic language that reminded me of boring college textbooks. The prose was so formal that I had trouble taking in the information being conveyed. Furthermore, when providing examples of the fallacies being discussed, he would cite books or articles that I’ve never heard of, either expecting the reader to already be familiar with them, or to stop their listening to go look them up.
And as for the “common fallacies”, I only recognized perhaps 40% of the examples he mentioned. I don’t know when the book was written but I’d guess it’s at least a few decades old. And in case you were wondering, I’m no spring chicken either: I’m in my forties. In the preface, the author invites the reader to contact him with suggestions for improvements to the book, whether by addition, correction, or deletion of material. Seems like he should have deleted half of the book if he wanted to keep the current title rather than changing it to “historical fallacies”.

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An interesting departure from / outgrowth of the first two novels

Revisado: 10-26-20

This book was nothing like what I expected after having read The Short Drop and Poison Feather. Those books establish a steady setting and rhythm of life for the main character that this book almost wholly ignores. If you’ve read Poison Feather, you know it ends on a huge cliff hanger, leaving Vaughn violently pulled out of his normal life. Cold Harbor continues that downward spiral, tearing away everything and everyone he cherishes. Even for a character whose entire identity consists of being blocked by unseen higher powers, this story took him far beyond what we’ve seen before. While I’m not a fan of books where the author treats the characters as expendable or as punching bags (indeed, halfway through the book, I was questioning whether I would even continue the series after this title), FitzSimmons does a good job of transitioning his main character into new story venues and away from the patented “return to baseline” sort of storytelling where no long term changes are ever made for fear of losing readership. Long-standing, multi-novel series’ often tend to feel stale or static when the characters aren’t allowed to grow or change. I applaud the author’s choice to push the main character into new areas and to invite the reader to follow along on his journey of self-recreation. I also feel FitzSimmons does an excellent job of maintaining the story universe in ways that are both dynamic and sensible. Major characters from both the first and second books return to play important roles in the third story, giving it a sense of continuity and realism without feeling as if they were brought back in because the author didn’t want to create new characters. I look forward to seeing how the series develops from here on out.

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A truly excellent* novel!

Revisado: 10-13-20

I write “excellent” with an asterisk because the story is not complete. The novel comes to what would be a very abrupt and unsatisfying end if there weren’t a sequel. As such, I do look excitedly forward to listening to the sequel, which I purchased immediately after finishing Daemon. I can’t wait to find out how the story ends. In fact, my eagerness to continue the story should show how much I enjoyed the first book. The writing and action were riveting and I had trouble putting the book down whenever I had to go do boring everyday activities like my job. I do have a few negative comments to make, though. For one thing, most of the characters left me with a bad taste in my mouth. There are very few truly “good guys” who don’t have some level of impiety or wrongdoing in their backstory, not to mention the out-and-out fully evil characters. Secondly, the author has a tendency to kill characters off seemingly without a thought. I know doing such is the author’s prerogative and that it serves the story, but, past a certain point, killing characters tends to turn the reader against the author. Too much narrative impermanence leaves a reader feeling ill. That being said, both those downfalls can be chalked up the personal writing style and I’m willing to forgive them. What I’m not willing to forgive is the primary narrator’s performance. When speaking in his normal speaking voice or doing an accent, he sounds perfectly fine, but any time he tries to put on a vocal affect for a specific character, it comes off as aurally grating. One of the main characters sounds like a bad imitation of Jack Nicholson. And most of the law enforcement individuals in the book have a literal growl to their voice as if the narrator was pretending to be a werewolf when speaking their lines. It was very distracting, which is something a narrator’s performance should never be.

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A great translation of the story but a mediocre performance

Revisado: 09-16-20

I won’t lie, I’m a big, big fan of the movie and I expected a lot from this audiobook, especially as it was voiced by Simon Vance. And I was very happy to discover that the novel was almost word for word the same as the movie, only adding in exposition that fleshed out backgrounds and character motivations in a way that added to the story. Sadly, Simon’s performance left a lot to be desired. I felt the actors in the movie gave much better, more subtly nuanced depictions of the characters. It felt as if Vance either didn’t care much about the book or didn’t see the acting potential in it. Also, his female voices were just plain bad. Every female he voiced sounded the same, not like a woman’s voice but like that of a young boy, very pinched and squeaky and extremely annoying to listen to. They all sound as if they’ve been screaming for hours on end and have barely enough breath to croak out their lines. Granted, Vance played V well and did a decent job with Suttler’s lines, but it was at the cost of the rest of the recording.

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Captivating and and thoroughly enjoyable mystery

Revisado: 09-11-20

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It was well written and thought-provoking. I thought I knew what the ending would be halfway through the story and, while I was partly right, there was much more going on that I hadn’t guessed at. The story was so engrossing that I missed sleep to keep listening to it. I very much look forward to hearing the other stories in the series.

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A well balanced, if somewhat bird’s eye view of the publishing history and rivalry between Marvel and DC

Revisado: 06-21-20

I enjoyed the audiobook quite a bit and wish it had been published later so as to show more of the current drama going on in the comics industry. The book gave a much more balanced, less biased look at the fight between the two biggest comics publishers than have other books of this kind that I’ve read. It didn’t paint one publisher as the bad guy and the other as the good guy. Rather, it called out unfair and unkind practices on both sides when they occurred. Similarly, it showed both the missteps and triumphs of each publisher in their proper light. At the same time, it was obviously written by someone with a love of comics and the industry surrounding them. I do wish the book had been longer, allowing the author to go into a more granular examination of individual events and interactions between characters. The author does better at this as the book goes along, coming closer to the present, but a lot of the first two-thirds of the book feel like it’s giving a summary of events rather than digging into them to get the real story. Still, I think I would recommend this book to friends before others like it that I’ve read. It’s a good starting point for those that want to discover the history of comics.

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Two out of three ain’t bad

Revisado: 06-12-20

I enjoyed the first and last stories quite a bit, especially the first one. It was quite funny and well voice-acted. The middle story, however, was a pretty poor attempt at a horror story. Horror stories should be about normal people encountering odd and macabre events; this was the opposite, odd and macabre people going through a relatively normal event and reacting in ways that make no sense because they themselves are abnormal. Instead of being creeped out or scared, I spent the entire story thinking, “Why did he just say/do that? I don’t understand, am I supposed to be scared?” In the end, the author was trying too hard to creep out the reader. But, hey, I got the title for free so I won’t come down on it too hard. It was interesting seeing someone write from the perspective of being under quarantine.

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