Dana

connelly's stories really well written

Revisado: 01-30-19

Michael Connelly is a really good writer, from start to finish. However, I'm not sure everybody commenting here is listening to the same audiobooks as me because I find the narration of these books barely tolerable. To me this is what it would sound like if Rod Serling was reading Dr. Seuss for daytime TV. The narrator has about eight or maybe ten rhythm and stress patterns, kind of like variable metronomic measures, which he overlays on every sentence. Sometimes the patterns fit the meaning of the sentence, but often they don't. For example, in most sentences, the narrator lays heavy stress on the last syllable or word, a lot like what Rod Serling did in the Twilight Zone, making the most inconsequential information seem melodramatically ominous; sometimes it's warranted, usually it's not, and from time to time it just sounds ridiculous. For a very specific example of another facet of this chronic problem, there's a sentence midway through Echo Park that goes something like, "Jerry Edgar passed on well wishes to Bosch's partner." This sentence means Edgar wants his well wishes to be conveyed to the partner. But the narrator, in his pre-set rhythmic overlay, lays heavy stress on the word "passed", making the sentence mean Edgar somehow declined the well wishes. A listener who is paying attention has time and again to reassemble mis-stressed diction and to weed out nonexistent melodrama to get to the meaning of the sentences Mike Connelly actually wrote. And then there is the problem of the female characters speaking softly - because, I guess, guys talk loud and dolls talk soft, even crime-scene-hardened FBI agents like Rachel Walling who in this narration sounds like a coy Doris Day. In her longer speeches, I had to turn the volume up to get every word so I could re-form her speech into what Mike Connelly actually wrote - the consistent, idiomatic speech of a strong female character. I have to think the listeners who rate the narration of these books with 5 stars weren't really paying very close attention. Either that, or we are not talking about the same audiobooks.

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oh well

Revisado: 11-03-18

I imagine this book is entertaining to read in an armchair on a rainy afternoon, but the listening was very dull to me and I didn't make it all the way through. Long stretches go by where nothing happens that advances the plot an inch. The narrator's work I admired in his readings of Ian McEwan, but the glib, bantering tone of this book transforms in his parlance into a sort of knowingly sardonic British snottiness, a sense of humor that I don't really share and that I don't think is the tone of the actual writing. Oh well.

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really good book

Revisado: 03-12-18

This is a really well-written look into the cultural history of America in the mid-20th century, competently narrated.

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wooden

Revisado: 03-12-18

This book in its overall concept is quite "imaginative," to use an apropos cliche, especially the human-alien sex. But it is woodenly written, there is hardly any trace of a sense of humor, and the narrator, in an effort to give life to personality-less dialogue, ends up making the human characters sound mostly like petulant teenagers and the aliens sound like feminized avatars of HAL 9000. I just don't get that breathy whispering that sends the ends of sentences into floating tailspins of enervation.

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gold

Revisado: 12-27-16

In addition to the incredible story, Rob Inglis's reading of the Lord of the Rings is the gold standard in audiobook narration.

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uneven narration

Revisado: 11-12-16

This is a sort of interesting story dominated by inner musings. Simon Vance gives his usual very solid performance. The female narrator, Xe Sands, provides a classic example of a trend among narrators, mostly young, that I do not get at all: a low, breathy, often whispery voice that conveys mainly feelings of enervation, listlessness, boredom. In this case the voice is salted throughout with what linguists call vocal fry, which increases the feeling that it is a tremendous effort to have to speak through this boredom. Quite often a sentence or passage is spruced up with a kind of superficial chipperness, the voice of childlike amazement people pitch at children to create the illusion they are as amazed as the child is, or should be. But, you know, this book is for adults.

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good book

Revisado: 01-09-16

Good old-fashioned science fiction, good translation. The reading is serviceable in the narrative passages, but in the dialogue I again find the Saturday-morning cartoon voices hard to take. The novel's characters are well-realized grown-up adults, but are made to sound like a track from a Scooby-do episode.

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Oh well

Revisado: 09-26-15

This author's enthusiasm for trying to make shallow things seem profound is sort of disturbing.

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detached from reality

Revisado: 10-10-14

The narrator of this book has no clue whatsoever about the tone of this writing or even what the story is about.

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narrator

Revisado: 01-27-14

The narrator is completely numb to the emotional content and the humor of the stories.

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