Jussi Korhonen

Lost in the woods

Revisado: 08-17-22

I kind of liked the writing style, and some of the dialogue was pretty good. Unfortunately the story is not quite there - it's a relatively simple murder mystery, tied in with the main character's dark past. The book is just way too long for the simple story, especially as an audiobook this was a painful experience. I listened at 1.15x speed just to get through it quicker.

The narrator is difficult to rate. His normal reading voice is excellent, but somehow he made all conversations sound like everyone is just bickering with each other - it was extremely irritating. Also, none of the characters have an Irish accent (despite being Irish - the main character has an explanation for it) and the narrator mispronounces most Irish names and places, which made listening very confusing at times.

This might have been okay as an abridged version - I'd avoid the full length version.

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Sharpe is back, but should he be?

Revisado: 01-16-22

Always nice to get a new Sharpe novel, but there isn't too much point to this story - except to get an ending to Sharpe's story, which might make this book worthwhile. If you've read the previous novels, you'll know Sharpe will end up in any battle of the war, very often in a way that suspends belief. This time there is no major historical battle, but he goes to Paris instead and looks at paintings. There is a battle later on, and it's a thrilling one, but it seems completely unnecessary.

The main issue was with the narration, or rather the dialogue. Rupert Farley's narrating voice is fine, but all the dialogue is awful - sometimes he does a terrible Sean Bean impression, sometimes he forgets to do that. Sometimes he whispers, and sometimes he shouts. I don't know how accurate Wellington's accent is, but if anyone sounded like that and tried to tell me what to do, I'd run fast in the opposite direction. All Irish accents are of the "to be sure, to be sure" -variety (although they are the least irritating of Farley's accents), and the French accents are particularly horrible and sound like cartoon villains (as if Officer Crabtree had a few too many bottles of wine at Cafe Renee). At one occasion Lucille sounds like a sneering madwoman, and in the next she whispers softly. It's sometimes difficult to understand who is speaking, because the accents are so inconsistent. In the final battle the narration is more fast-paced, so Farley largely forgets to do the accents, and suddenly it sounds fine.

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Entertaining, but way too long

Revisado: 09-30-21

I assume the author got paid by the word written. This is a great book, if you've never heard of World War II, because it will tell you what Hitler did in the Great War, and how he started the second war. You'll also learn about brothel operations in the Middle-East. The Siege of Tobruk? It eventually starts in chapter 13 (out of 19). I listened at 1.25x speed, because the book just went on and on.

When you eventually get to Tobruk, it's not too bad. I would have preferred either a novel of Tobruk, or a history lesson of Tobruk. Now it's a hybrid - the author tells you what is happening (and it's pretty entertaining), but adds a lot of "you bloody beauties" and such in between, which I just found distracting and annoying.

You do get the German/Italian point of view, but in general the story is completely biased with the Aussies described as the usual superheroes. Which is fine, it's an Australian account of the events.

I think it might have been a lot better with at least some focus on Tobruk, now you're hearing how the Germans are attacking, and then jump to a description of someone's train trip to a concentration camp - it's very confusing.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the Tobruk bits of the book and some of the descriptions of the soldiers' journey there, but that's only about 25% of the book. Humphrey Bower is always good, although he keeps shouting at times.

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Not quite what it promises

Revisado: 08-16-21

The first and last parts (Amazon and Uber) are interesting. The other two parts (homecare and call centre) ramble on about other things, such as the history of coalmines and working class in general, and hardly mention the jobs he was supposedly working. I assume the author didn't really have enough material for a full book, so he added some fairly irrelevant stuff to make it longer. In short, the parts where the author actually talks about "working undercover" are interesting, while the rest of it is tedious to listen. While I'd find listening to a former coal miner interesting and their stories deserve to be heard, it was not what I picked this book up for. I also think the author only concentrated on the negatives of each job - in particular the call centre job did not sound horrible, but since he didn't need to stay working there, he was able to write any offered "perks" off as silly and argue that they should pay people more instead. He also earned what Uber told him he would, but then complained that he spent a lot of it on expenses such as renting a car and paying someone to clean it. All in all it was a fairly shallow book. Some of it was interesting, a lot of it wasn't. The narrator I thought did okay, he didn't have a lot to work with.

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Well-researched book

Revisado: 04-28-20

The author has clearly researched his subject well, you feel like the whole life of Randy Morgenson has been documented in detail. While it was never uninteresting, the book might be a bit too long - I never felt like I really needed to know absolutely everything. The book would probably have benefited from some more editing, as there is some repetition. I thought the narrator was pretty good, and overall the book was worth listening to. This was more of an audiobook you play in the background rather than one you listen to intensely.

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Not really part 3 of the Kingsbridge series

Revisado: 12-02-19

I thought I was going to listen to the third part of the Kingsbridge series, but instead this is more like a Ken Follett's history lesson. It starts off well in Kingsbridge, but suddenly changes completely - it is as if mr. Follett decided he doesn't want to continue the Kingsbridge series after all, but instead is just narrating history. There are several well known historical events, the characters are observing most of them and narrating them to the reader. While that is fairly interesting, it's not really historical fiction any more. This book is similar to the third part of the Century trilogy, where there is little story and the characters are just present in all important historical events.

I thought book 1 was great, and 2 good - 3 is a lesson of history not set in Kingsbridge (most of the time). As an audiobook, it is still quite good, thanks to the excellent John Lee.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Perhaps better read than listened to

Revisado: 02-27-19

I've read the book about twenty-five years ago and really liked it, so I was looking forward to revisiting it as an audiobook. However, I'd have to say the narrator (Graham Rowat) is not the best - it is very difficult to understand who is speaking with the way he voices different characters. And when he narrates the story, he sounds quite pompous (I challenge listeners to listen through one of the very long lists of nazis early in the story, I had to fast forward through it myself). He is not the worst narrator I've heard, so I'd recommend listening to the sample to see if you'd like to listen to the story for 25 hours.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Listen at 1.5x speed and it is fine

Revisado: 07-19-15

What made the experience of listening to Hornblower and the "Atropos" the most enjoyable?

There must be something wrong with the recording, the narrator reads extremely slowly which doesn't fit a fast-paced light story like Hornblower at all. Once I set the playback speed to 1.5x it was fine. You can see the other books are around 8 hours long, this recording is much longer but the story really isn't.

What did you like best about this story?

Good old fashioned adventure story

Would you be willing to try another one of Nicolas Coster’s performances?

The other books in the series are narrated by Christian Rodska, who is more enjoyable to listen to - so, not necessarily.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes

Any additional comments?

Do not skip this book, just play it a higher speed (1.25x or 1.5x) - it doesn't make it sound like it was performed by the Chipmunks, but is far more bearable that way.

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Listen at 1.5x speed and it is fine

Revisado: 07-19-15

What made the experience of listening to Hornblower and the "Atropos" the most enjoyable?

There must be something wrong with the recording, the narrator reads extremely slowly which doesn't fit a fast-paced light story like Hornblower at all. Once I set the playback speed to 1.5x it was fine. You can see the other books are around 8 hours long, this recording is much longer but the story really isn't.

What did you like best about this story?

Good old fashioned adventure story

Would you be willing to try another one of Nicolas Coster’s performances?

The other books in the series are narrated by Christian Rodska, who is more enjoyable to listen to - so, not necessarily.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes

Any additional comments?

Do not skip this book, just play it a higher speed (1.25x or 1.5x) - it doesn't make it sound like it was performed by the Chipmunks, but is far more bearable that way.

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3rd best of the trilogy

Revisado: 04-14-15

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Anyone who wants an overview of world events from 1950s onwards might find this interesting. The parts set in Europe seemed to be a bit better.

Would you ever listen to anything by Ken Follett again?

He knows his historical fiction, so I will be interested in his future works.

Have you listened to any of John Lee’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

John Lee is always a great performer, once you get used to his strong accents. I thought he handled this book well, which can't be easy since there are so many different characters.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Edge of Eternity?

None of the American characters were interesting, and only existed to give a voice to the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. For anyone interested in them, I'd suggest reading a better book.

Any additional comments?

The biggest flaw in the book was the characters who are completely wooden, and only exist to listen and comment to speeches made by political figures. There was very little continuity from the first two, I barely remembered who was related to who.

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