Evolution Fan

Whispering for character voices?

Revisado: 04-19-25

The story is great. The choice of a female narrator for a mostly male cast of characters possiblycould have worked, but this narrator in particular used a whisper for the voice of multiple characters. It would have been better to just read the story and not try to give unique voices to characters.

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5 stars for kids, 2 stars for adults

Revisado: 03-11-22

This is my son's favorite book. If you haven't read or seen much fantasy and sci-fi, this is a fun, fast paced story. If you have, it's a cliche filled fantasy re-skinning of Star Wars with a lot of Lord of the Rings elements thrown in. It's performed well (despite the stiff dialogue), making the story and characters clear and easy to follow.

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Very relevant to COVID19 pandemic

Revisado: 09-18-20

The book presents good science, explained in a way that anyone can understand it. It gives many good insights on the SARS-CoV2/COVID19 pandemic. Probably would have been good if more policy makers had read this book before COVID19.

It was a little long. A few parts, in particular his narrative about how HIV might have entered the population, could have been left out.

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Easy to listen to

Revisado: 11-03-19

The Silmarillion, with its archaic language and many unfamiliar names, can be difficult to read through. I definitely got more out of it by listening to it, and enjoyed it even more than when I read it.

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2013 Must have been a slow year for Sci fi

Revisado: 09-27-19

I bought the book based on the number of awards it won. It's well written, but not exactly ground breaking. Its the evil British empire in space, and elitism is bad. I haven't seen such insightful and poignant social commentary since Star Wars and Harry Potter, respectively. The author does a good job portraying a culture that doesn't distinguish gender by refering to everyone with feminine articles, altgough it can be confusing in a few places. The sci fi setting itself is more of a background than an integral part of the story. The story could have been set in 19th century earth and work just as well in most regards. In fact, some features are more implausible because they as set in an interstellar empire rather than the British Empire, such as the 3,000 year stagnation in technology and culture. Overall not bad, worth a read, but I don't think it matches up favorably with other Nubula award winners.

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esto le resultó útil a 21 personas

Probably not necessary to actually sing the songs

Revisado: 08-20-19

Excellent book and an excellent reading. My only complaint is that actually singing the songs did not add much to the telling. In the case of elvin music, which was supposed to be beautiful beyond the music of mortals, it would have been better to leave the music to the imagination rather than a real performance that, no matter how skillfully done, could never live up to the beauty of the music in one's imagination.

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Weak on science

Revisado: 08-23-16

The book suffered from three problems making it less informative than I had hoped. First, the author has a poor grasp of science (and admits as much). He draws overly broad and strong conclusions from evidence, sometimes based on a single study, without considering alternate interpretations or alternate causes for study results. Second, the author clearly was deeply scarred by his support of and denial of wrongdoing by Nixon in college. Far too much of the book is spent on justifying his actions in this respect. Third, as other reviews have pointed out, the author suffers heavily from the very fallacies he illuminates in his book. He explains projection bias, the tendency for people to assume others think and react like they do, then spends a great deal of the book implying that if conservatives properly understood situations, they would believe as he does.

I wanted to like this book, and it does offer insights on why people might flock to figures such as Trump, but overall it was weak -- unless you are interested in his personal struggles to come to terms with his support of Nixon.

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