The J Posse

Good story overall. Weak ending.

Revisado: 01-16-25

The performance is not up to Tim’s normal standard, with some of the voices very similar to each other. This book is listed as hard science, but without the details that normally put something in this category. The ending feels like a precursor to a second book rather than a full conclusion.

The story is better than average, but it could have been better
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Good, clean, adventure fun!

Revisado: 10-02-24

Light hearted adventure story. Simple and humorous without worrying about which favored character will die next. A refreshing read.

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Nice science m/adventure plot ruined by bad narration

Revisado: 03-14-24

The narration was awful! No differentiation between characters, mispronunciations, awful acronyms. If this had been read by a human, I would expect them to be terminated for incompetence.

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Surprisingly good read

Revisado: 07-14-23

A bit challenging if you listen to the book, with lots of characters and several plot lines. If you stick with it, the story converges nicely and wraps up with a sad, but satisfying conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, I gave this a 4 for story, but it was due to technical flaws that took me out of the story while I backtracked the flaws.

The voice actor is one of the few men I’ve heard who can voice plausible female voices and that is much appreciated. There were a few accent issues, but I’ve heard worse and few better ina mixed gender reading. Kudos to MacLeod!

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Good vintage science fiction

Revisado: 06-11-23

Well done Heineken from the 50’s. The few vintage technology references were smile-worthy instead of cringey. Well worth a read.

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Good story, but has not aged well

Revisado: 06-06-23

Reminiscent of the Niven/Barnes stories with technology and mundane crimes intermixed. I liked it a lot, but the political and technological components have not aged well. Worth a read, for sure. Suspense, intrigue, and tech combine for a good read. Has its flaws, especially in character development, but Ben was never very good at that, so this is well within expectations.

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Worse than a waste of time

Revisado: 02-20-23

I downloaded this book for free. If I return it, can I get 9 hours of my life back?

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Good Read - Worth Your Time

Revisado: 09-18-19

For the TL:DR crowd, this is well worth a credit. Reasonable pace, plenty of action, and a satisfying, though unconventional, conclusion.

The book takes place about 50% in the world described in the publishers summary and 50% elsewhere. If anything, I was disappointed that the summary was a bit misleading. The book itself is all about a journey of self discovery by the first person protagonist, Tanner. The myriad plot lines come together at the end with only a few gaps and the ending is satisfying. The world building is at least average, but that’s not terribly important because this book is about Tanner and what he sees and knows; important points in the grand scheme of things.

Shortcomings are numerous, but not terribly important in the end. There are a couple of plot lines that are brought to closure, but not entirely satisfying to my taste. Spoilers required, so I’ll stop there. Character development is lightweight, but can be excused when you consider that everything is from the viewpoint of a single protagonist. It’s tough to develop character in someone else, especially if you are not terribly empathetic in the first place.

Speaking of empathy, you do get there eventually, but this is a hero that you’re probably not going to like.

The reader was certainly above average, overall. However, one of his characterizations was a snarky know-it-all that you immediately hate, rightly so. Unfortunately, he did variations of that voice for other characters, poisoning them in my mind with the same snarkiness. This led to a rating of 4 stars “it’s great” because he’s good, but the the choice of voices in early characters affected how I felt about others later on. Not a fatal error, but distracting.

I rate the story and overall at 4 stars: It’s great

Minor issue is the lack of pauses between POV changes, especially in the later part of the book where POV changes more frequently. If you miss the first word of the POV change, “Bob looked down...”, then you have no clue that the POV changed. I see this a lot in audio books and the voice actors really need to pay attention to this as it can be very annoying.

-Johnson

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Great First Effort. Needs Editing.

Revisado: 06-01-19

This is a great self-published book, and let me start by saying this was worth the credit. The plot, alien invasion, is compelling and echoes parts of many classic themes without copying them. Epic in scope, it evolves one logical step after another. The battle scenes are amazing their detail and the entire premise about new technology and innovation brought a smile to my face (purely as a member of the awesome human race, by the way).

It suffers from many editorial issues you might expect from a self publish. Character development is spotty, but barely less than you would see from some mainstream authors. As usual, the jumping POV can be challenging for Audible readers. The book wasn’t written for Audible so you often have to skip back when the character is not mentioned at the beginning if a chapter. One nagging issue was what appeared to be loose management of the timelines. While I don’t have a print copy for comparisons, i had the impression that the author played loose with events within a timeline. On multiple multiple occasions, I thought “wait, this was done in a year, but I thought they said it took 3 years”. Not a deal breaker, and I may be wrong, but it took me out of the flow.

My rating is based on the Audible scale for ratings. This book is Good, with extra credit to RC Bray for his reading. The book suffers from word substitution or lack of editing, much of it could be contributed to autocorrect, but some of the substitution =s made me stop and rewind to try to figure out what word was intended. Not too unusual in many occasionally enigmatic “unabridged’ readings. RC has some pronunciation ideosyncracies, but I’m giving him extra credit for reading the text as written.

In the end, it was a satisfying book, worth the coin. It’s a huge set-up for the next book so I wouldn’t but it unless you plan to read all three. Regardless, I was satisfied with the resolution. I bought book 2.

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Great Read - Make Sure It’s Your Style

Revisado: 04-05-19

TL:DR Listen to the sample and make sure you’re OK with the heavy accent of the voice actor. If you have a problem with the sample, you will not enjoy the book. Otherwise, this is a charming, complex, and satisfying book; even a bit uplifting. I read at least one review that classified this as YA. While I see why they said that, from the general tone and uplifting ending, I rate this much too dark and intense for an underage reader. Highly recommended overall and doubly so for a single credit.

The story is complex enough to keep your brain engaged throughout. Imagine if Wheel of Time were only a single book in length and you get an idea of the mixture of depth and action. Gory battles, love, morality, redemption, compassion, and an overall love of nature dominate the narrative. The Dragon is hard to like, but Agniesczka is great. Thanks to the ready, I can now pronounce that name, too.

The voice acting is with worth comment. This story takes place in a medieval, fictionalized Poland. The characters have Polish names, the places are Polish, the nicknames are Polish, and, in my opinion, even the magic is Polish. This in no way diminishes the story and only makes it richer. However, the reader needs to pay attention, i.e. you have to listen closely. That deep involvement is worth the payoff, Nicknames vs formal names vs. family names can be tough to sort out in an audio book and my American ear and brain strained to make sure I knew who was who. That said, I applaud the author (Polish descent) and actor (Russian) for their respective work and for the guts to attempt this performance for this book. It worked.

I’ve seen reviews disparaging the performance. The voice actor is female, in accordance with the POV and author of the book. In several cases early in the book, she does a perfectly acceptable American accent for a few character exclamations. The rest of the time, everything is a heavy Russian (or maybe it’s a Russian doing a Polish accent, I wouldn’t know the difference) accent. I enjoyed the listening challenge. It’s very different. After this book, I will never think of Baba Yaga again without remembering Julia Emelin and this book.

There are minor issues include the pronunciation of words, but that just keeps you on your toes, points out how ridiculous English pronunciations can be (think “Dow-butt” instead of doubt), and gives an odd fairly-tale sense of authenticity to the tale. Agniesczka is literally telling the tale. There are minor narrative shifts where characters are somehow yards or miles from their previous locations, but that may be an artifact of listening vs. reading a book.

I repeat: Listen to the sample and then buy it.

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