Rami Ungar

Like a bloody episode of Criminal Minds

Revisado: 09-03-20

If you like serial killer stories but prefer them a bit more gritty and cynical in nature, this might be for you. Lots of gore and some crooked cops help keep things entertaining.

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By the end, I was in trepidation

Revisado: 04-07-20

I first heard of this novel because of the YA Twitter assault on the author and the book for supposedly insensitive references to African Americans and slavery in America. When I heard that the novel would be coming out despite the hate campaign, I decided to check it out.

First off, in case you're still wondering, there's no references to African Americans or slavery in America. This book focuses more on forced contracts and human trafficking in Asia, which is a very relevant problem today. And I feel it gives the subject both a thorough and a sensitive exploration.

Second, this is a decent novel. It started off a bit slow for me and some of the subject material isn't exactly original (Affinites are basically Marvel mutants, but have existed since the dawn of mankind and have very specific ability categories), the story and characters do draw you in and make you want to keep reading or listening. By the end, I was in trepidation as to how the climax would resolve itself. And now that I've finished it, I have just one question: when's the sequel due out? I wanna know what happens!

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Short and sweet

Revisado: 03-12-20

Every collection has some good stories and some bad ones. This collection, with its various (really) short stories, is mostly filled with good ones. My personal favorite is the one where a guy is tormented by the early arrival of the Christmas season a few days after Halloween (dude, I feel you). The scariest by far though, has to be the one involving a baby (and I won't go into more detail than that).

If you want something short and effective, you might get something out of this collection. Consider checking it out.

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Better than the original

Revisado: 09-10-19

Listening to a book instead of reading one, while using the same areas of the brain, can be entirely different experiences. So was this book, which I enjoyed anew in audio, and found more exciting as well. Mixing gun battles with deep-space politics and travel and touches of cyberpunk, this is a great follow-up to the original, and is worth a download.

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Engaging sci-fi story

Revisado: 06-18-19

I read the book when it first came out, and was interested to hear the audio version. Suffice to say, it did not disappoint. Part mystery, part look at what humanity could be like one day, it's a great story paired with a top-notch narrator. Totally recommend.

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As good as it is probable.

Revisado: 04-12-19

Hard science fiction stories present scenarios not just for entertainment, but to tell us what could conceivably happen in our future. Beyond Apollo does just that, presenting the story of a mission to Mars that is poignant as well as possible.

The narrator might have sounded a little run of the mill, but other than that, decent enough.

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Just what I needed.

Revisado: 04-04-18

Beautiful, scary, and a little sad, too. Definitely worth the read, in my humble opinion.

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Weird and uneven

Revisado: 01-04-16

What disappointed you about Day Four?

I just felt like this book never could decide what sort of story it wanted to be. One minute things are quick-paced and exciting and terrifying, the next it's a slow-burn, and finally it just ends on this really weird and surreal note involving either an alternate dimension or a trip to the future, and it's all related in transcripts, like the author wanted to finish things up super quick and didn't have the energy for writing it out in her usual style. It just annoyed me.

What could Sarah Lotz have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

One thing that definitely could've been done better is the supernatural elements. In the beginning of the novel it's hinted that what's happening is partly supernatural, but as the novel goes on, the supernatural elements are only just there, like they've been tacked on at the last minute to spice up the story. It isn't until the very end that the supernatural stuff really gains prominence, but then it's lost in some really surreal stuff and you really don't know how to make sense of it all as a reader. Ms. Lotz should have either made those supernatural elements more prominent and defined or taken them out altogether. Either way the story would've benefited.I also think that the story could've been written a bit more evenly in pace and tone. It was just so all-over-the-place, like the author was still figuring out what sort of story she was writing while writing it. I really think that if she had done better in deciding where the story would go and what sort of pace it was going to go at, we'd have a much better story.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Penelope Rawlins?

Sure, if she was narrating a book I was interested in. Her male voices are pretty obviously a woman pretending to be a man, but she does it better than other narrators I could name. And she also handles accents pretty well too.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Yes, it did. Lotz handles multiple narrative point of views very well, developing each narrator quite well. This is also the most diverse cast of characters I've seen in a book: male and female, old and young, every race and ethnicity under the sun. I rarely see that in fiction. It was definitely interesting.

Any additional comments?

You'll be intrigued to see where this story goes, though you'll be left wondering if even the author knows where the story is going as time goes on.

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