Peter in Barrie

I’ve only ever stopped listening to one audiobook. This one.

Revisado: 12-24-24

I stopped listening the first time after about an hour, then came back a few months later, thinking to give it another go — and then stopped again after about three hours. There were a number of reasons.

First, the author’s habit of defining a word immediately after having a character use that very word (e.g., “vestigial”) seemed to indicate to me that his estimation of the reader’s vocabulary was not very high.

Also, the writing just seemed amateurish to me — poor word choices, poorly described scenes, facial expression, etc. As well, the author failed to suspend my disbelief in too many instances: things happening suddenly with no apparently plausible explanation. Perhaps I’m too accustomed to writers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Frederick Forsyth, Tom Clancy, and the like.

There were also a few other minor irritants. One particularly ridiculous one that stands out was having characters repeatedly spell out “ASCII” letter by letter — especially given one of those characters is supposed to be a world renowned hacker. I’ve never heard anyone say “A-S-C-I-I” before this narrator. It’s always been pronounced “ASS-ki”. Someone should’ve caught that before putting out this audiobook, as it suggests strongly that either the narrator or the author had no concept of how the term is actually used.

I think if I were to have picked up this audiobook when I was 14 — around the time I started reading science fiction some 45 years ago — I might’ve enjoyed it. I think perhaps the target audience for this book isn’t much older.

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Confusing and disjointed

Revisado: 11-29-23

Peter Hamilton’s books have been hit or miss for me. Some I really enjoy. This one… well, it was a miss. Despite John Lee’s brilliant narration, the hodgepodge of strange names, species, even genders (I think) were too confusing, especially given all the jumping around from location to location. Hard to keep straight. I dropped it after about three hours.

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Like listening to a typewriter talking …

Revisado: 11-11-22

I’ve read many KSR’s books over the years, but couldn’t get past 30 minutes of the monotone droning of this narrator. I’ll go buy the book and finish it that way.

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Great story, less than stellar performance

Revisado: 04-11-20

While I really enjoyed the story itself, the performance was lackluster at best. My biggest issue was that throughout the entire book almost every character sounded like a slurring drunk, despite the different character voices. And the narration of events was also rendered in the same almost slurring manner. I almost stopped listening as a result, but the story pulled me along to the end. In fact, it was a good enough story to persuade me to download the next book in the series, despite knowing Stephen Lang would be reading it, as well.

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Great performance. Ending, not so much

Revisado: 04-06-20

As were all of RC Bray's performances that I've listened to, this was no exception. Outstanding!

The story, too, was very well written. The ending, however, was very sudden, seemingly wrapping everything up very quickly and, much as I hate to say it, in a rather unexpected and unsatisfying way.

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The narrator's voice grated on my nerves.

Revisado: 11-20-18

The writing style of this one of Robin Hobbs' stories somehow didn't mesh with my perception of her other works -- which I have thoroughly enjoyed. This one's flavour, however, seemed to me to be somewhat 19th century colonial British Empire in India. Perhaps that was her goal. And perhaps with a more pleasant-sounding narrator I would have continued. Unfortunately, the (to me) unusual writing style when combined with the narrator's high-pitched, halting voice and reading style... well, I couldn't get past the 3rd chapter. I tried. I really tried. But when returning to listen to an audiobook is less enjoyable and more akin to returning to an unfinished, drudgery-laced chore that would take more than 20 hours to complete, the effort far outweighs the pleasure.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Sorry, Couldn't Finish It ...

Revisado: 08-28-18

I've read a LOT of sci-fi over the last 40 years or so, some good, some less so. Unfortunately, this one falls in the latter group.

Little details mean a great deal to the suspension of disbelief when it comes to good writing. When I read (or in this case, heard) the alien "fuzzy face" shook his head "no" to more of the energy bar proferred by Bishop, I immediately thought, what are the chances that a being from a planet with a completely different evolutionary tree and with a social structure completely alien to ours would use the same physical movement (a head shake) to communicate a "no"? I can't help but think the answer is so close to zero as to be statistically if not impossible then at least highly implausible.

Further, the fact that said alien's energy bar was wrapped in pretty much exactly the same way an energy bar from any local (i.e., Earth) grocery store was wrapped (the author even mentions the use of plastic) made me pause.

Similarly, the assumption that the tactics used by the hamster invaders would be in any way similar to those used by the US military only added to my feelings that I wouldn't enjoy the rest of the novel. And so, I stopped.

That said, the narrator did a good job taking on the first person role -- the sample of his narration was what drew me to buy this audio book. Sad to say, the meat behind the narration was, to me at least, a disappointment.

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Great story. Narrator took some getting used to

Revisado: 06-04-18

I had started reading this book on my Kindle and had reached Chapter 18 before switching to the AudioBook version. Perhaps that is behind my sense that the narrator's voice somehow didn't mesh as well as I thought it should have with the work. That said, he did seem to get better as the book moved along. Or perhaps I simply became accustomed to his narrative style. Regardless, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in a good tale in general, or in Roman Britain in particular, and will download and listen to the next book -- regardless of who narrates it.

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Not classic Forsythe

Revisado: 04-19-15

While it had potential to shine at times, I felt the plot was somewhat shallow compared to Forsythe's earlier works.

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