betsy

Is it because I'm not a parent?

Revisado: 07-05-22

I just couldn't believe the scenario, though if I think about it I'm sure I've heard of things approaching it. Book probably would have been too scary for me if I had believed. I think you'd need to really work yourself into something, maybe become something different, too. Little of that here.

Love McKinty's Sean Duffy series.

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This could be more offensive and boring

Revisado: 07-02-17

I have read the rest of the series as text, and find I far prefer it to this narrator. This is not the best story. They're away from the boats and have limited agency for much of the book, so it's a different type of adventure: an exoticized account of cooling their heels in China and doing Latin lessons. Sounds fun?

Larkin is shouty, especially for Captain Flint. She regularly misplaces the emphasis or tone of a sentence, and there were some whoppers of mispronunciation. (Bimeby is a dialect variant of "by and by" and pronounced accordingly. Look it up before you say an unknown word 50 times?)

The Chinese characters are written with stereotypical pidgin or exaggerated accents including consistent difficulty pronouncing R, even the Cambridge educated one. The narrator's performance of these is a non-stop embarrassment.

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might as well be reading technical documentation

Revisado: 06-03-17

What's the difference between a novel and a meaningless narration of fictional events? Bob doesn't jell. There's no tension. I have almost no sympathy for the Bobs because it's simply one guy's fantasy of possible heroic results of the three things he just did-two conference panels and signing up for cryonic preservation.

One software guy becomes expert in everything needed to colonize the universe. No hurdle appears that isn't overcome with ease. No area of mankind's knowledge seems to be difficult. There are no qualms, terrors, or moral questions, just self assurance and vindication. I fell asleep repeatedly.

The narrator is good, lively in dialogue but matter of fact for most narrative sections.

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much rewinding, Unlistenable narration

Revisado: 12-11-16

Why?!
I do not choose audio books so that I can sit very still and give them 200% focus to catch every word. Euan Morton throws in so much unnecessary and misplaced expression and accent it makes it hard to grasp the words, let alone their meaning.

Moore is not subtle, but in audio and when working with Shakespearean source material, a narrator of greater subtlety would be far better.

Morton's funny voices don't even serve the author's humor, they distract from it. No doubt the man has vocal skills, but he deploys them senselessly here.

Once resigned to the narration, it's the Fool and his retinue wandering into and changing a mash-up of Othello and Merchant of Venice. There's also a monster.

The first Fool book, Fool, was superior. Lear's just better material and had interesting people besides the lead. Shylock remains Shylock, Othello a caricature, Iago a Scottish obsessive, and the women have very little going on except that Nerissa is randy. The Fool wanders through their world affecting events but not people, add unaffected himself. The monster remains mysterious.

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Exhausting Listen, unable to finish

Revisado: 09-01-16

I don't know how people endured Rubinate's version of a southern child's voice and the incredible danger for eleven hours. I barely made it halfway. A runaway child teams up with a black nanny in the grip of a life crisis to make terrible decisions rambling across the 1960s south. They're putting each other in very real danger, and must be driving the girl's family crazy with her increasing absence.

Starla's voice is breathy and emphatic. The accent is a little too intrusive and the intensity level too high. It only adds to the stress created by the innocents-in-danger story.

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Facile psychodrama, too long

Revisado: 10-05-15

What could A. L. Kennedy have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The Drosten's Curse needed a better plot and to be less long.The Doctor has Tom Baker's insouciance as well as his wardrobe and physical tics, but he's not pure Fourth Doctor. There are some new, possibly situational, powers, and a good bit of the lonely-god-in-a-goddess-box, think Matt Smith. The new companions are not completely unlike Amy and Rory Pond. Pleasant, inexplicably in love, a clever lass and a determined lad, she following the Doctor, he following her.The monster's too powerful, and the threats too big to be believable for the Who universe. There's nothing at stake, the resolution is telegraphed early on, and then the novel is dragged out by introducing setbacks, new opponents, and constraining the overpowered Doctor so he has to coach his companions through some things instead of doing them himself. Which is awkward as he does so very literally and telepathically, stripping these companions of most of the dignity and responsibility of thinking for themselves and making tough decisions that give weight to most companions.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Clare Corbett?

Clare Corbett's great, a pleasant voice, humorous, but dry. She only falls short of the best Who narrators in that she doesn't capture the Doctor's distinct cadences at all. I was regularly distracted thinking how Tom Baker would have delivered a line.The performance is marred by the choice to add background noise in many sections, sometimes the cloister bell and sometimes just weird shrieky or clangy atmospheric noise.

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disastrous

Revisado: 09-23-15

Simon Vance is popular, I think, but he's always rubbed me the wrong way. Narrating a stuffy, melodramatic gothic novel brings out the traits of his that I have trouble with. He really doubles down on sounding like a pompous 19th c Euro aristocrat, with no humanizing or naturalizing of the language.

The novel is not good. There are so many words and so little happening. Frankenstein made sense as a young man, but grown, he just runs around Europe alternately fleeing, chasing, and trying to forget his monster, while having regular nervous breakdowns. There are a number of deaths and a monster, but there's not much horror or suspense as far as I've read.

I'm giving up at 80%, having read most of that at 2x, looking fruitlessly for anything of interest in this stinker.

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"Jesus is running my (butt) down"

Revisado: 09-22-15

"Confessional Style" is the phrase I should have noticed in the blurb.

This book is too much about the author for me. Everything is about how God affects her, her faith journey, and to some extent people around her, but it's so centered on her. I expected something more outreachy or more universal, I guess. Bolz-Weber sees grace in how a congregant was really moved by finding her church before he died, despite the fact that she avoided him and was a bit of a jerk to him. She meets a outsider, possibly suicidal, kid on a plane on her way to give a speech to some kids, and the speech was really successful because she was channeling the outsider and God is using her, or something.

The author narrates, and while she's charismatic and conversational, her conversational styles include insistent? grating? upspeak? and earnest sympathetic child psychologist. I'm not usually bothered by upspeak, but OMG?

I would recommend Greg Boyle's Tattoos on the Heart several times over before Accidental Saints. Bole manages to be a jerk sometimes but inspirational, and he shows more than tells the effects of grace and love, letting his flock take center stage more than he.

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Incredibly Weak Prose

Revisado: 05-05-15

So much effort is put into plot and exposition there's none left for humor, characterization, world-building, or making us care. What we get are completely flat characters and half-hearted occasional efforts. Molly loves Cole, Cole pretty much exists for nothing but loving and serving under Molly. Walter exists to be the annoying nerd, everyone else is already forgotten. There's a joke or a bit of world-building color once every few chapters. Molly is contacted by someone claiming to be her long-dead mother. The process of her resolving whether to believe this incredible claim is terribly slap-dash. She does, she doesn't she does, there's an info-dump about Turing Tests, and then it's settled, with no explanation or call-back and no use of the Turing Test idea.

The plot is episodic; this could easily be a TV series. We get into scrapes, we have predictable escapes, over and over. Molly and Cole are, no surprise, always noble and true and fearless. There's a larger plot arc that's just chasing a MacGuffin for now.

In the second half of this book, we run into a woman whose dream is to be eternally pregnant and raise a possibly unbounded number of children, dressing them all alike, calling them all the same. I believe motherhood to be a great joy, but constant pregnancy? Dozens of children? This is a really poorly thought-out version of what a woman's heaven might be.

I'm finishing this, but I've sped it up to 1.5x to get it over with quickly, a first for me.

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First Impressions

Revisado: 03-28-15

This is my first Hamilton, and I don't know. There are a lot of ideas and a lot of scope here, but the execution feels sloppy and perfunctory. I was really hoping for more. This feels like the Hyperion Cantos in scope and in its mix of sci-fi with horror and slight fantasy elements, but Hyperion is much more perfused with detail.

I don't think I miss much by not having read earlier books in the related series. It's a mix of hardish sci-fi and fantasy/horror elements with an epic historical tragical comical plot, heavy on the historical-tragical.

A group of revolutionaries plans a revolution and executes on their plans, and all the major events that happen along the way are narrated drily and at length, but without interest. This is where Hamilton loses me. There are a number of long plot dumps describing textbook revolution planning, executing, and outcomes. They're dry, I'm not sure anyone's invested in them, including the author, there are no surprises, and they feel perfunctory but long. Like expositionary infodumps, but of plot. I'm not sure it's unintentional, but I do not enjoy it. I have to admit I didn't like the tragedy either. It didn't feel earned - one of the ways the major plot-moving characters are built is by POV narration sections, which are interesting, and another way they're built feels really cheap, just periodically mentioning something that hints at a backstory or a character flaw. I can't describe without spoilers, but we're seeing a version of these characters that isn't definitive. What happens to Slvasta in particular feels unearned.

The nasal qualities in Lee's voice and his falling emphasis and quick quick slow cadence and something disinterested in his tone do not enhance my enjoyment. This voice just evokes unpleasant characters to me.

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