L Day

Flat Readers

Revisado: 03-01-23

I hate story collections. They are never consistent across the board. The Kevin Hearne novella was a typical Oberon tale up to his usual standards. Luke Daniels delivered a performance as good as any he's ever given.
And then there are the other two filler tales. Flat performances of weak stories. all in all just tedious. I regretted buying this audiobook and couldn't finish it, which is rare for me. Take a pass on this one.

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The Story was strong but the execution mediocre

Revisado: 10-28-21

This probably should be classed as a YA novel, although I find that pulp YA’s tend to be better than their adult counterparts. For one, they don’t tend to be overly reliant on sex as a plot element, nor do they make heavy use of four letter words making for a more readable story. It was interesting enough that I found myself looking up historical characters such as the Borgias or Catherina Sforza and was pleased to discover it fit fairly well into what is known of historical events. The writing, had some limitations and tended to be repetitive. Probably the most irritating single feature was overuse of the main characters name. The word Ezio showed up in at least every other sentence for entire chapters as if the reader was going to get confused as to who the story was about. It rarely strayed away from the main character, even when it should have. The writer could also have made better use of some of the highly interesting characters woven into the story. Nicolo Machiavellifor example, is one who should have been expanded upon. Unfortunately he tends to be portrayed as rather a sinister comic book character, when in fact he was a rather astute observer of the politics of his time. There was a strong story built into the video game this novel was based on and the author uses it well. To its credit, video game elements were used sparingly, such as races and climbing buildings. The author does a fair job of translating a video game into a novel that provided an entertaining few hours.

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A strong presentation of a classic story

Revisado: 02-18-21

The stories from the 1001 Arabian night date back centuries, some as early as 800 AD and come from the golden age of Islamic culture. The story contains a framework in which a princess uses a string of connected stories to keep a Sultan from taking her life and adding to a never ending succession of brutally murdered women. Within this framework are some of the best known stories of all time such as Ali-baba and the 40 thieves and Sinbad the sailor. The 1001 nights are often lumped together with fairy tales, but some of them are quite a bit more sophisticated. Adding another 950 nights would be nice, but the audio drama is only 10 hours long. If only they’d make 100 more in the series.

This audible offering is done in the form of a 1930’s radio play and is really quite entertaining. It isn’t a collection of Disney stories so wouldn’t be recommended it for anyone under the age of 15; some of the stories get a bit racy and the execution vignettes are a cringe worthy. My only real complaint is the producer uses far too much yelling and screaming as filler to cover story transitions and for the sake of emphasizing dramatic moments. Also, the sound could be balanced better.

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Fun

Revisado: 08-14-20

This is the kind of book it is fun to sit and listen to with your granddaughter. If i have one complaint it's the book is too short. Otherwise everything just works. The actors have a wide range of voices, the format is an old radio play, the plot makes sense (if wildly improbable) and the kids save the day. What more is required?

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Half a book

Revisado: 08-05-20

This book sets up a story, with a detailed plot and then just, stops. After a wait of six years for a new Dresden file book this is a severe let down (short story collections don’t qualify as new books, they’re little more than repacking old scraps from the chest). Peace Talks is one of the worst examples of an authors cash grab since “the hobbit” turned into 3 movie’s. What there was of the book was, in terms of quality, on par with all of the other Dresden file novels. It followed the same basic pattern: 1 main plot segueing into a second plot and 1-2 sub plots. All of your favorite characters are there. James Marsters is a good reader; complaints about sound quality by previous reviewers are a bit picky, Some of their points are valid, it just wasn’t so severe as to matter to me. The book’s great problem is that nothing is resolved, nothing concluded, the ending is abrupt and poorly timed. Peace Talks is a relatively short book, so there’s no excuse for Jim Butcher to break it into pieces (352 pages, 12 hours reading time). A book should produce at least two 800 page parts or more than 25 hours reading before it becomes so large it needs to be split. This breaks my heart to say, but I don’t recommend It

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Highly Detailed Account of the War in the West

Revisado: 07-04-20

This book is for a serious reader of civil war history, it shouldn’t be your first; if you don’t have a dozen or so civil war book under your belt you’d probably do well to find a book with a more flowing narrative. The book’s filled with facts and is quite interesting but a little dry in spots, especially with the lists of names. It seems as everyone over the rank of major is listed at some point and every general officer has a detailed biographical entry. It is amazingly well researched with mountains of facts, quotes, names and detailed examples of most of the major personalities in both Braggs and Rosencrans’ armies. What this book doesn’t have is a smoothly flowing narrative. It’s heritage as an army war college ride around course book is quite apparent as one listens to it. Frankly, it’s a course I’d love to take, especially while “riding around” at the turn of the 20th century. Due to the scope of the material covered and extreme level of detail, this book almost isn’t suitable for publication as an audiobook, and the omission of a PDF to accompany it is a serious oversight. This book is best experienced with maps showing battlefields, & historical photos I found myself listening to it in pieces with an iPad so I could research references. That said, I’m kind of irritated that Tantor Audio hasn’t issued the second half.
The narrator is excellent, his tempo and diction are perfect for the material and he has the gravitas required for this type of book . He actually knows how to pronounce both place & peoples names which has been a problem in some history books,

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The Greatest Sci-fi ever written

Revisado: 12-17-19

Its an upbeat tale about mankind's efforts to free themselves and earth from the shackles of a conquering alien race. Epic in scope and it moves along at a frenetic clip. A great all around story.

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Homo Erotic Twaddle

Revisado: 07-24-19

The author has decided to water down classic literature with a modern sexual obsessions. She has taken the greatest war story ever and rewritten it as a gay love story. About 1/3 to one half of the book is written around an imagined gay relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. I listened to this book thinking I’d missed something in the Iliad so went back and listened to both Butler & Fitzgerald translations looking to see what I’d missed. Not once was there a reference to a sexual relationship between the two, in fact both have relationships with women in the story. The Iliad is a story of friends who trained together in a military environment their entire lives confronted by the worlds first Great War. The Iliad is an anti war story, the way Homer describes death in a way that leaves no room for “glory”, death is mean and brutal. As always, a generals glory is earned by dead private’s, and Homer stacks private’s like cordwood. Additionally, there are several references to leaders standing apart from the fighting. . The presence of heroes makes the Iliad different, and I sinus-etc that has more to do with legend building by the generals over 1,000 years. In this story, Ms Miller choses to take Patroclus superior military skills away from him in order to emphasize femininity, which isn’t reflected by the Iliad. In song of Achilles he’s a weakling unable to train in the military arts; when in fact Homer records Patroclus as being one of their great captains and one of the best spearman the Myrmidons had, laying waste to the Trojans when he goes into combat. Patroclus died because he met a man with better skills, not because he was a weakling. Hector killed almost every Greek he met. Ultimately the sexual nature of the Achilles/Patroclus relationship isn’t important, there’s a reason homer didn’t focus on it.
Ms Miller is in good company, the writings of Plato, Aeschylus and others of the classical period chose to portray Achilles as gay; however the classical Greeks rewriting took place 600 years after Homer and almost 1,000 years after the events portrayed in the story, so anyone wanting a gay Achilles can have him. This obsession with sex & Ms Millers tawdry take on the sexual orientation of the Achilles/Patroclus relationship doesn’t add to the iliad it diminishes it. Stick with the Iliad, it’s a better story and not nearly so sleazy.

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Good story limited by voice actor

Revisado: 05-27-19

K.J Parker’s “The Devil You Know”, is a novella that asking how could one twist a contract to sell their soul for their own benefit. The story offers an intriguing twist, although based on medieval pseudoscience. The problem with this edition of the audiobook is the reader, Will Damon, performs with a single voice. Since the story has no obvious transitions, such as “joe said” or the “devil stated”, there’s no way to tell when the story is transitioning between two characters, so whenever there was a transition it was several sentences before it became obvious which character was speaking. Otherwise a decent story.

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Mesmerizing

Revisado: 05-13-19

A Man on the Moon is written for those of us who would hop on the next rocket to space without a moments hesitation If the moon explorations of the Apollo program resonate with you, if you were a kid who clung to every space broadcast between 1967 - 1972, subsequently dreamt of being an astronaut, this book Was written for you. It could easily be titled “The Right Stuff II”, starting right where Tom Wolfe left off. . It’s an excellent survey of the events, technology, personalities and people that made moon exploration possible, written in a logical way that way that’s succinct and entrancing. If work hadn’t intruded I could have sat through A Man on the Moon in a single sitting. Each astronauts is presented the order of his missions. To his credit, the author doesn’t focus on any one personality, though the program was filled with them. The reader is reminded just how exceptional and ordinary each astronaut was, never losing sight of the fact mankind’s greatest achievement was a group effort. The only weak point is the “where are they now” section at the end which seems to have alternatively written in 1994 and 2012, the timing is a touch confused.

I strongly recommend this book.

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