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beautiful but very dark

Revisado: 12-15-23

A harrowing tale of a normal suburban family caught up in the descent of society into fascism and war. Brilliant narration, sublime prose and a worthy prize winner. However, if you are feeling emotionally vulnerable to start with, give it a miss as it is a very depressing story.

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Hard work

Revisado: 02-22-23

I finished this because I always try to (and it's easier with audiobooks I guess). I'm not averse to slow-moving stories or to dark subject matter. However, this tale of the long drawn out consequences of child abuse is overly long, spinning out periods in the life of the main protagonist unnecessarily bleak and tedious detail. The prose, combined with the rather monotonous reading by the 'performer' had a dirge like effect that continued for hours. On the plus side the character descriptions are fabulous and the detail incredible. However I would not recommend this book. It isn't good enough to compensate for its emotional drain.

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Too many unbelievable plot elements

Revisado: 03-30-21

This kind of book succeeds or fails on presenting a credible scenario for the unfolding of future events (it certainly wouldn’t want to be relying on the quality of the prose or the character development).  Some aspects of the plot were believable. That a confected incident could escalate out of control in the tense military conditions of the South China Sea is definitely believable. That the Russians could engage in tactical shenanigans with unanticipated consequences I also found believable. That the US arrogantly underestimates its geopolitical opponents and comes a cropper as a result was believable too.


Many of the details, however, left me scratching my head. Military aspects like the fact that the Chinese air force and air defense system were seemingly on holiday for much of the events, lack of use of missiles and particularly new hyper sonic missiles, how much damage a tactical nuclear weapon could really do to a city and whether it could be carried by a F18 hornet are things that others have focused on and I wont reiterate them here.  But the following really caused the failure of my suspension of disbelief.



1.      

The Chinese spend years devising their strategy for invading Taiwan including devilish new weapons, deceptions and the remote hijacking of war planes, but seemed to have ignored the possibility that the action could escalate to a nuclear war



2.      

The Chinese, having developed a game changing cyber capability that could essentially disable all US ships , decided to use that technology on a small number of US ships first, and then allow some of the crew to escape to report back and warn the US naval command, giving them the opportunity to develop countermeasures



3.      

The US, having been given this opportunity, rather than trying to come up with a counter measure, decide to sail a quarter of their navy into the face of this new weapon so that they can be disabled and sunk.   



4.      

That the Russians, on a covert mission to destroy subsea cables and ‘disable the US internet’ (something that there is a degree of debate about I understand since the action would most likely have a worse effect on the Russians, given that so much of the infrastructure on which the internet is based is already in the US) sit and sunbathe above the cables for a few days waiting for the right time to act.



5.      

That the US wouldn’t track a flotilla of Russian boats hanging menacingly around subsea internet cables and send some planes out to intercept,



6.      

That the Iranians don’t take the defense of islands in the Straights of Hormuz seriously.



7.      

That the Europeans wouldn’t intervene in the invasion of a European Union and NATO country, even if the US didn’t.



8.      

That Saudi Arabia and Israel wouldn’t have been centrally involved in a state of war or near war affecting the Gulf



9.      

That there wouldn’t have been an earlier nuclear war had Iran launched a military invasion of the Golan Heights.  



I also disliked a lot of the tone of the book. I don’t think the gravity of the threat of nuclear war was adequately expressed. I didn’t care about the individuals and how they felt if they were complicit in the deaths of millions of people and I found the yahoo-ing, top gun-esque maverick pilot story line, pretty distasteful in the context of dropping a nuclear weapon on city full of civilians.  



But with all the illogicality of the book, the most bewildering thing about it is the author. The precis to the interview at the end of the audio book describes the James Stavridis’ CV which, if true, makes him the ultimate geo-political and military insider. So why when you read the book are there so many illogicalities and non-sequiturs? If the leading lights of US foreign policy and military thinking can be so basically illiterate when it comes to the politics of the world, the US’s days as a superpower must surely be numbered. God help us when she goes down fighting

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esto le resultó útil a 40 personas

A history of Ulster

Revisado: 03-15-21

I bought this because I was interested in a comprehensive chronology of Irish history, akin to how 'This Sceptred Isle' covers that of Britain. It does basically do this but I couldn't finish it for several reasons. Firstly delivery is annoying. I wasn't as bothered as other listeners about the number of chapters. More of an issue was the hammy characterisations and ingratiating tones of some of the readers. Also far too much singing. Undoubtedly the biggest put off was that it is heavily Ulster centric. I appreciate that it's a BBC Northern Ireland production and in itself that wouldn't a problem if the book was entitled 'A history of Ulster with passing reference to events elsewhere on the island'. But as a history of the whole of Ireland I felt that, having such a focus on Ulster and the perspectives of those there, skews the narrative towards the demographic and political make up of the province, which has long been very distinctive.

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utter waste of a credit

Revisado: 04-28-20

Robot narrator ... a total turn off.

Constant introduction of new jargon without definition or explanation.

Made on the cheap with no thought to utility of listener.

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would have benefited from a vigorous edit

Revisado: 09-14-19

The concept is quite believable and the context well set up, but the many of the characters are poorly developed and the dialogue is excruciating in places. It is over long with a number of side stories that could easily have been excised without taking from the plot. Also, I really don't like audio books with an ensemble of readers. Inevitably inconsistencies arise between them, and there's always at least one reader that lets you down. Just pick one talented reader to do the whole thing.

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