Iris Greene

Sloppy

Revisado: 03-29-23

The first three books were interesting, engaging, and fun—lacking a bit of polish in places, but enjoyable. This book feels almost like it was written by a different author, or perhaps by the same author with less experience. The plot and pacing are less well-considered. The characters are inconsistent. The world mechanics are ... weird. Not quite illogical, but ... unreasonable, maybe? Unexpected in a bad way. And it's strange, because normally when a series goes downhill it's because the author starts running out of ideas, gets tired of writing it, or rushes things. Here, though, it instead seems almost like the previous books were written with important input from someone else, and this one wasn't.

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Body fixation

Revisado: 04-02-22

Wheezing for breath and dripping with sweat, the overweight gamers heaved their enormous bodies up the mountain path, bulbous bellies and flabby limbs jiggling with every staggering step.

I meant for that to be a caricature, but honestly, you could drop it into the text and it wouldn't seem out of place.

Yes, the story is set in a weight loss program, and naturally the participants are especially conscious of their physical stature, but show that through their inevitable conversations on the subject. We don't need to be reminded that they're fat every few words.

Also featuring bad psychology and unethical therapeutic practices. And schizophrenia is not multiple personality disorder!

The story is fine, mostly, and the narration is well done, but my goodness! The fixation on fat is annoying enough to be distracting.

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Technomancer meets MCU with LitRPG sensibilities

Revisado: 03-17-22

Just finished the final book of the trilogy, and this series has landed itself toward the top of my favorite literature list. I laughed, I cried, I bit my nails, I annoyed my family members with out-of-context quotes...

The first book is, in my opinion, the least of the three, with a number of the jokes falling flat and some minor editing errors (e.g., someone learns something, and a few pages later learns it for the first time again). Still very good (4/5), though the others are better (easily 5/5).

The narrator is excellent in his delivery, particularly with conveying emotions, but not very good at differentiating characters' voices or at accents. 4/5 for the performance overall.

To elaborate on this review's title...

Technomancer: trippy, dark and disturbing, cyberpunk-style body modifications

MCU: large-cast superhero ensemble, from the point of view of an older, wiser Deadpool

LitRPG: single-player, repeatedly reloading from a Quicksave until achieving The Perfect Run

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Thank goodness for Nick Podehl!

Revisado: 05-25-21

The plot, characters, world-building, and pacing are solid. The numerous, lengthy data dumps are handled well enough that they're actually interesting. The power balance is decently well managed, for the most part (the very OP main character occasionally comes up against insanely OP opponents, and his skills are completely unable to counter certain types of attack, so in spite of his OP-ness he still faces real threats). The action is exciting. And the mysteries are intriguing.

The writing, however, is inconsistent and often sloppy. More thorough proofreading and editing would have made a huge difference, since a lot of the problems are basic syntax errors (e.g., the frequent use of "besides" instead of "beside," where the intended meaning is "next to"). Some of the problem areas are much less noticeable in the audiobook format. In particular, there are plenty of lines of dialogue that would be awkward in print, but Nick Podehl's excellent narration makes them work. (Imho, this series stands among Nick's best performances, which is saying something!)

Now that I'm listening to the series a second time, I'm noticing a lot of plot points introduced in this book that will become plot holes later in the series, especially in the third and final book.

All that said, I did greatly enjoy this series (I mean, I just finished it last week and I'm already listening to it again, so...), and even with the numerous plot holes and editing issues, it's well worth a listen. Thanks in large part to Nick Podehl.

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Not nearly as bad as expected--I still want more!

Revisado: 05-20-21

After reading the reviews, I expected something much more clumsy and halfhearted. But, imho, this is very much not a bad book. It's just that the first two books were excellent, and this is more like three good books compressed into one.

From the reviews, I also expected that there would be a clear point at which the text transitioned from great to bleh, but instead, I felt the breakneck pace from the beginning. It does pick up speed as it goes, but there isn't really any point at which it falls off a cliff.

As for the unconcluded plot threads, the ending does actually give a valid, if not exactly satisfying, reason for dropping them. And it also leaves room to pick them up again in subsequent books.

Side note--I suspect that readers, as opposed to listeners, might have been more disappointed in this book, as Nick Podehl's phenomenal performance curbs some of the weak points.

I so very much hope that Cosimo Yap finds a renewed passion for this series and continues it. He left that option open from a plot perspective, and I for one will eagerly pre-order any future additions to the series.

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Decent plot, frustrating execution

Revisado: 05-09-21

I've been mostly enjoying these books so far—enough to keep listening to them for free, anyway—but as of this book, I've started skipping past entire sections, even at risk of missing important information. (Though, to be honest, I'm pretty sure you could skip upwards of 65% of the book without missing anything worthwhile.)

Why are almost all of the adult women the exact same character—overbearing, melodramatic, whiny, pigheaded, and suicidally stubborn? Why does there have to be a detailed description of the experience of vomiting every few pages? Why do we need to know the backstories of so many minor characters?

The dialogue generally bears little resemblance to the way people actually talk, especially when it's a kid speaking (the speech is usually overly adult but sometimes, jarringly, becomes overly infantile), when it's a combat situation (everyone talks way too much, taking up way more time than they'd actually have available and never using two words when twenty would do), and when the speaker is relating past events (e.g., "I staggered back against the wall, sickened by the overwhelming stench of decay that poured out of the open door...," which isn't an actual quote, but is very much in keeping with what someone in this series mighty say—aloud—when describing a traumatic experience).

I didn't have much of a problem with the narrative rabbit trails in the previous books, but especially in this book, some of them seem forced. A lot of the often-less-than-witty repartee seems similarly forced. And in both cases, the unnecessary interruptions only serve as annoying distractions from the main story.

I really have been mostly enjoying this series, even if it does keep giving me flashbacks to Stephen King's The Stand, and in spite of the issues listed above (among others), but those issues are just getting worse. I want to see where the plot and the characters (at least, the few characters I care about) end up, but... argh! Look, Mr. Tufo, just evacuate all the women and children off to safety and never speak of them again, and the series would improve tenfold. I say this as a woman. I'd much rather see my sex even further underrepresented than have every representative be a hateful bitch.

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Excellent story, interrupted by data dumps

Revisado: 04-29-21

Expeditionary Force has become one of my favorite listens, thanks in no small part to R.C. Bray's masterful reading, and Valkyrie is generally a solid addition to the series... but as I listen for a second time, I'm reminded of how often my mind wandered during the tediously long expositions about space combat techniques and technologies, intergalactic politics, etc. I'm sure it was important information, but the contrast with the usually conversational tone served only to highlight the dryness of these passages, and... as I said, my mind wandered. If the information couldn't be effectively compressed, then it needed more interjections of Joe's typical commentary, or to be delivered through actual conversation, and to be broken down into smaller chunks.

Honestly, though, this is a minor quibble with a book that, on the whole, I quite enjoyed.

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The best one yet

Revisado: 11-13-19

I've been loving Expeditionary Force (except for Mavericks, which is in a different—and much lower—league in terms of writing quality, imho), but I'll admit that I was starting to wonder how many more plot-extending coincidences the series could handle before it all just got to be too much.

At first, while still being thoroughly enjoyable, this book did not allay that particular concern. But as it closes, Armageddon leaves enough unresolved material to potentially fill a few more books—in addition to cutting off the primary plot at something of a cliffhanger. So I'm feeling much better about the future of the series!

On top of that, Armageddon is quite the emotional rollercoaster! I laughed, I cried, I stayed up way too late in nail-biting suspense... and now I'll have to wait way too long for the next one to come out!

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Seems like he could use some beta readers.

Revisado: 06-02-19

there were many times where my wife and I figured out how things were going to go way before the various Bob's did. there were also some convenient continuity errors and things that were glazed over to make problems seem larger than they actually were. overall, very well performed but the story got pretty mediocre at times.

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