OYENTE

John R. Holmes, Jr.

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  • 55
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Complex but not exciting

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-23-24

I am left wondering why a series about a man whose main claim to fame is being a tough guy would make him one-armed in this one. Hey, why not make him a paraplegic next tine?

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Didn't finish the story

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-14-24

He stopped in the middle. There was a lot of things not answered, and suddenly he just said the end.

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A Nepotism Fail

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-23-24

It's sweet that Lee Child wants to do a handoff to his son, but it's not working. The Secret has all the same stuff, but without the spark that made the original Reacher novels enjoyable.

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Improbable in so many ways

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-12-23

Talking ghost from his past? Incredibly rapid progression of ALS symptoms designed to fit the story? This was amateurish!

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Deus Ex Machina

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-06-23

In ancient Greek plays an actor would be lowered onto the stage with ropes in order to signify that a god was arriving. These days, god-from-a-machine (Deus Ex Machina) is considered literarily weak.

Detective Sean Duffy leads a life of suspense. Unfortunately, the author's go-to device is the old I-never-have-my-gun-when-I-need-it trick. Many times, he sallies forth to confront the bad guys leaving his gun behind. Once this pattern is established, a team of assassins is sent to shoot up his house, which he narrowly escapes by running downstairs and coming across his misplaced machine gun lying conveniently on the front hall table. Although he never has a gun when he needs one, he turns out to be a machine-gun expert, so he hills all the assassins and survives, although badly wounded.

Finally, having recovered from his wounds, he visits the bad guy in his home, gets the drop on him with a cap pistol, takes him to a back office and finds the bad guy's gun in a drawer. Now he has a real gun, but amazingly allows the bad guy to slap it out of his hand. One more time he's in an unarmed fight for his life.

I won't tell you how the fight ends, but knowing this is the first book in a series you can probably guess. Basically, this is a story of gun-incompetence and incredible luck. Our hero regularly forgets his gun but always manages to fall on one when he most needs it. Even at the end, he goes out to confront the bad guy armed with a cap pistol, luckily finds the bad guy's in a drawer, but still manages to get it slapped out of his hand.

Is there no limit to this stale device?



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Total Ripoff

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 08-18-22

An Army Ranger, skilled in close-quarters combat, returns to civilian life, finishes his MBA, and gets a job in a huge financial house. Pretty soon a female colleague with whom he'd had a one-night stand is found in an apparent suicide that soon turns out to be a homicide.

Several threads soon emerge. The company is immensely rich but very shady. For reason nobody can figure out, our boy emerges as the murder suspect, When he starts looking around for answers, a shadowy government agent appears and coerces him into working with the feds to find out how extensive his employer's financial corruption is.

Building on this start, the rest of the book is dedicated to building tension and confusion. Several more women die, all of them employees of the evil firm, or family members of them. The head of the firm is not only ruthless, it seems he has access to enforcers to protect his company. Our hero, backed by his federal agency, continues to work for the financial house and has all manner of close calls; meanwhile, people are dying all around him and he himself has several near-death experiences.

As the story unfolds we learn that our boy has several roommates whose hacking and other skills help him investigate the people he suspects. He keeps looking for the murderer inside the criminal organization, enlisting the help of his roommates, his federal bosses, and the girlfriend of the firms evil head man. Baldacci builds in plenty of twists, turns and diversions, and of course inserts some beautiful love interests.

With such a great start, you might be wondering what could go wrong. Well, it turns out the evil financial firm and their various henchmen were irrelevant -- all just a giant distraction. It seems the murdered girl he'd had that first one night stand with was lesbian but with inclinations toward bi-sexual, so she'd had a fling with our boy. What we never could have imagined was that her lesbian lover was one of our boy's roommates! Yes, and before she'd had the fling she got artificially inseminated with the roommate's twin brother's sperm and later decided to have it aborted. And just to make sure it was crazy over the top. the twin-brother sperm donor was planning to have the operation to become transsexual. It's a crazy soap opera!

So the story comes to a close, with the real villain being the crazy lesbian roommate having killed the first girl out of jealousy, killing another girl for having had sex with our hero, and killing various other people for having had the bad luck to be in the vicinity.

I feel totally ripped off. Nothing in the story-building turns out to be relevant. All of the plot twists and turns were distractors, and the forces that drove the action were entirely the result of a crazy woman. Admittedly, crazy people do crazy things, but it hardly makes for good fiction. I'm waiting for Baldacci's next book to get us all excited and end with, "And then I woke up."





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Clever Performance, Impossible to Hear

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 08-21-21

Audio was very difficult to hear. Different actors spoke at very different volumes. Good idea, but poor implementation.

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Great Information but Meandering and Repetitive

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-13-21

The content of this book is similar to other Kahneman books, but I found the presentation both meandering and repetitive. Perhaps the problem is that there were three different authors, but I'm reminded of the old saying that "a camel is a horse assembled by a committee."

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that several whole sentences, and maybe even paragraphs, were repeated verbatim at various points in the book. I also developed the disturbing sense that these guys are going into the "noise audit" business and planning to use this book to buttress their sales pitch. I don't deny that a noise audit would be beneficial to many large organizations, but it's hardly relevant to typical reader who's only reading it for general interest.

That said, the content is very interesting, and I come away persuaded by their central thesis that "noise" is a significant unrecognized factor in various areas of human decision making. I only wish someone had done some basic editing before publication.

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Incomplete Episode in an Ongoing Series

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-13-21

"Daylight" is a partial book. It's listed as part of the Atlee Pine series, but I find the title misleading. Most books -- even books in a series -- can be read in isolation. This one definitely can't.

There's nothing wrong with a series. We see it all the time in Netflix and on TV. For example, "Law & Order" has literally hundreds of episodes, but you can safely watch any episode because each episode is a complete story. Familiarity with the series may add richness. but it's not essential.

Sometimes the story is too long for the time slot, in which case the producers split the episode into multiple parts. For example Law & Order's Season Two ended with "Closure Part I" and "Closure Part II." They're still episodes, of course, but the naming convention alerts the viewer that you shouldn't watch Part I if you're not going to be able to watch Part II,

Back to Baldacci, this book "Daylight" should be re-titled, "Daylight Part I." It definitely can't stand alone. FBI agent Atlee Pine is searching for her long-lost twin sister, and just when they're getting close to finding her, the book ends. I can't imagine why anyone would want to read this book if they're not going to see the future book to find out whether the sister is even alive, much less okay.

David Baldacci is a good writer, and I'm sufficiently hooked that I'm probably going to buy the next book when it comes out. But that said, I'm disappointed to be three books into this series and still have no closure. So if you haven't already read any of the Atlee Pine series, my advice would be to stay away -- at least until the series is concluded.

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Too many characters

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-19-21

I love Harlan Coban, but this book has probably 25 significant characters, and it's very hard to keep straight as an audible book.

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