Locke

Bite Sized Scalzi Awesomeness

Revisado: 08-05-22

Like most short story collections, some of the stories in Miniatures are better than others. But they're all worth a listen! I wish I could forget I heard them so I could listen to them again for the first time. I didn't dislike a single one. Every story is pure Scalzi - cool sci-fi ideas with a hilarious touch of his humor.


The narrators were all excellent. If I have one complaint it's that Will Wheaton didn't narrate anything in Minatures, and this is especially disappointing when it comes to a short story related to Redshirts that he would have been perfect for. Other than that, every narrator did a fantastic job.

One of the first stories in Minatures is When the Yogurt Took Over, and when I heard it I immediately remembered the Love, Death & Robots episode based on that story (season 1 episode 6). So if you want a taste of what Minatures has to offer, fire up Netflix and check that episode out! John Scalzi has actually written several Love, Death & Robots episodes, and even the ones he didn't write are great, so check it out regardless.

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Male power fantasy at it's worst.

Revisado: 01-01-22

This book is the most juvenile, trite, shallow collection of cliches I've ever had the misfortune of listening to on Audible.

Our story starts with a normal, mild mannered accountant. Well, normal except he can handle firearms better than people who were in special forces. And he has a genius level IQ. Oh yeah, and he spent his teens and early 20s winning brawls in a underground fight club (he broke the only Fight Club rule constantly by never shutting the fr*ck up about it). He does have daddy issues though, so I guess that holds him back. I mean, no one else in the world holds resentments towards their father, right? Nah, it's just one more thing that makes him a very special totally ordinary dude.

Our everyday kind of guy superhero throws a werewolf out of a highrise window, which goes to show how super awesome he is! Shortly afterwards, he meets a woman who works for a monster hunting company, who offers him a job. She's really perdy! Smart too! And omg she can handle guns! Oh yeah, and she has absolutely no personality or personal agency!! Our hero is in loooove.

From there, super soldier regular accountant guy partakes in gorefest monster battles that would give Michael Myers nightmares, where he often stops mid-action and gives long, boring descriptions of bullets. Outside of the war against the forces of eviiiil, he spends his time trying to win over the blow up sex doll of his dreams from his dastardly nemesis...some rich kid from New England.

And...well, that's pretty much it. Sorry to spoil the entirety of the plot for you, but hopefully it'll save you a credit. I guess there is the villain, who was so unoriginal and boring that I honestly can't remember much about them. There were other characters, but there wasn't much point to having other characters. The bad guys were all completely evil with no motives outside of wanting to be evil, and the good guys only seemed to exist as a way to show off how awesome the protagonist is. The monster hunters are all gun totting libertarians with slightly racist and misogynistic leanings, while the FBI are bafoons with badges. The women in the book were mostly pretty twenty-somethings with no personality. It makes me wonder if the author has ever met a woman, and if so, how many restraining orders he has against him from said met women.

The writing doesn't save the plot. It's at a highschool creative writing class level at best, Supernatural fanfic from Tumblr level at worst. It completely lacks substance, style and character development.

I grew up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, reading Dresden, playing games like Devil May Cry and Castlevania, pretty much geeking out over stuff like monster hunters. I have nerd cred, alright? But this book just isn't good. I truly do not understand why people enjoy it.

Oliver Wyman is, as always, an excellent narrator. He has narrated much better books that I highly recommend checking out and buying instead of this garbage.

In closing, I'd just like to say that I only paid $2 for this audiobook, and I still regret the purchase.

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Seconds Please!

Revisado: 12-14-21 El oyente recibió este título gratis

I love cooking competitions and watching chefs work, so I knew this would be something worth checking out. It was even better than I expected! Fun characters and interesting world-building are key ingredients in the best gamelits, and the author took those basic ingredients and cooked up something truly special. The narrator is new to me, and now I will look for more of his work. He dished up real personalities and distinct voices, not just for Arek and The Happy Sunflowers, but even minor characters.

As a side note, I've tried a couple of recipes from the book. They're delicious!

Five Michelin stars!

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Great Writing and Awesome Narration

Revisado: 04-18-21

This is a fun adventure about a girl and her dragon, exactly what I was hoping it would be. It leans towards young adult writing, so don't expect a complex epic fantasy. But the writing is fast paced and entertaining, with likable characters. The narrator does a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life with distinct voices and personality.

I'm excited to buy book 4 in the series!

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Cool

Revisado: 02-21-21

This was a rare impulse buy for me. I'm a huge Felicia Day fan, and knew I needed this book when I saw that she's the narrator. She does a fantastic job narrating - everything from tone to different character voices is perfect! It's like the book was written specifically for her.

The story is more of a 3.5 out of 5. It has some adventure, comedy, likable characters, a awesome main character, and a badass mech. I liked it enough so that I'd buy a sequel.

There's nothing too epic or exciting here, but this is a fun listen for LitRPG fans. Those who are just starting out with LitRPG should probably seek out something a bit more serious, and come back to this later.

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Middle of the road Koontz

Revisado: 12-10-20

I'm going to give this one a 3. I feel that that's a bit generous, but I didn't hate it.

I love the multiverse story, but it felt like it needed...more. A couple of terrible timeline-worlds were visited, but without spoiling the story, I'll just say that they seemed a bit generic. They lacked detail and originality. And there should have been more than a few timelines. More scary worlds! More peaceful worlds! More weird worlds! It just didn't happen.

Likewise, the main villain and his squad of goons were incredibly generic. Even one of the main characters points out how bland and unoriginal the big bad is - he's just a run of the mill psychopath. The type of bad guy that Koontz has used many times before and will no doubt use many times in the future. A good portion of the book has the boring psycho narrating to himself about how evil he is and how much he wants to kill people. It gets old fast. The short story at the end of the book is similar as it revolves around other soulless psychos talking about how soulless and psycho they are. It wasn't really worth listening to, it didn't add anything positive to the overall experience.

The other characters were likable, I did care about them by the end of the book. That's what matters I suppose, but they probably could've been fleshed out a bit more as well.

Finally, we arrive at the performance. I can't say that I hated the narration, at least not as much as others did. The young woman who narrates the kid in the book sounds like a kid, so it's appropriate enough. The problem for me was when she also narrated a grown woman in the book - she sounded like a little kid as well, and it was a bit confusing a couple of times. It made me wish that it had been a full cast audiobook - I think it would've been more fun to listen to.

I like Dean Koontz; I own several of his books and audiobooks. But I suggest either skipping this one altogether, waiting for a sale, or listening on Kindle Unlimited (it's on KU now). It's an alright book, a decent listen while you're in between muh better books, but not worth a credit.

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Not Fun To Listen To

Revisado: 09-04-20

I don't usually quit halfway through an audiobook. If I made it that far through it, I try to finish it up even if I'm not enjoying all that much. I can't finish this book. The audiobook has a full cast, and every single voice actor in it (that I've heard) does an excellent job. The story is told through a series of interviews, World War Z style, and I dig that type of storytelling. It's the story itself I can't get into. It all seems so pointless. I don't have thin skin, but I don't like hearing about young people killing each other for absolutely no reason. The story is cynical, hopeless, and disappointing in nearly every way. I've known many young people who have put their safety in the line for others, so I don't buy into the idea that so many of them would turn into psychos within a few days time. Maybe one or two, sure....but not like this. It's little better than the type of torture porn you'd see in Saw, in my opinion. It's just not my thing.

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Adventure on the Ghostly Seas

Revisado: 11-12-19 El oyente recibió este título gratis

I'm not usually one for high seas fantasy adventure, but this book may just change my mind about that. The world building and lore, combined with the excellent descriptions and narrative make for a tale that I didn't want to stop listening to. Good thing the narrator is so talented! She brought the characters to life in ways that I wasn't expecting. The story did slow down a few times, but never to the point where it was bogged down or boring. It stayed fun and intriguing right down to the last few sentences. I'm looking forward to more stories in this world and from this author!

I received a free review copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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Cybercriminals Beware, Lisa Tanchik is Here!

Revisado: 11-06-19

This was a fun cybercrime novel, narrated by the talented and always wonderful Emily Sutton-Smith. If you haven't heard her perform a book yet, you owe it to yourself to listen to one of her many narrations as soon as you can!

The story in Black Nowhere is very obviously modeled after the real life deep web site, The Silk Road. But honestly, there's nothing wrong with that. It does not exploit anyone involved in the true crime, it just takes inspiration.

Despite the story being fun and fun moving, the characters are relatively shallow. Our heroine - Lisa Tanchik - suffers from bouts with depression and tends to use alcohol to ease her pain. She deals with the typical misogyny that a women has to put up with in law enforcment, and she's haunted by the death of her sister. She's also very intelligent and ambitious. So those are her motivations in a nutshell, but her personality never really shines through.

Our Vilian - Nate Fallon - has a lot more depth to both his motives and personality. He's a college kid who believes that he's a lot more intelligent than he is. In actuality, he's a pretentious, arrogant know-it-all who never bothers to examine his own selfishness. He never learns that standing by your convictions is pointless unless you also consider other viewpoints. That doesn't mean he starts out as a bad person, but his journey to becoming a cyber drug kingpin is interesting because he never understands that he ends up as one. Even right til the end, he sees himself as a good person who made a few mistakes. This story is worth listening because of Nate.

The rest of the cast of characters are a bit shallow, and not really worth going into.

I would recommend this book, definitely! I hope the Lisa Tanchik series continues, but I also hope we get to know Lisa a bit better next time.

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Not Lost

Revisado: 11-06-19

The first few chapters of Departure are quite good. There's an unexplained plane crash, followed by a frantic struggle to survive in a mysterious location. A strong male leader and tough but quirky female lead, with intriguing romantic vibes. That one guy you love to hate is in this story. Mysteries and interpersonal dramas are evident in every word, and it is amazing!

What's that, you've heard this tale before? No, you haven't. After the first few chapters, Departure takes a rather sharp turn from survival to sci-fi, which may leave some people feeling Lost in a way they weren't expecting. From that point on, the story has more in common with a completely different classic J.J Abrams show: Fringe. I'm not saying that Departure is identical to any TV series - it's not! - but take this as a warning: If you're looking to get lost with characters similar to Jack, Kate and John Locke, keep on looking. That's not going to happen here.

Nicola Barber and Scott Aiello did an excellent job performing the two main characters, and giving the assortment of other characters strong voices and personalities. Scott was really quite good - his voice, tone and manner of speaking seemed perfect for someone in his line of work. Nicola did a wonderful job portraying a angsty British gal who feels like she's at a crossroads. The two narrators do have slightly different styles though, with Nicola being a bit quieter than Scott. It's not a problem if you're listening with headphones, but be aware if you're planning on listening with a speaker.

While I won't feel the need to relisten to this sci-fi survival tale again any time soon, I did find the story interesting enough so that I finished it in 1 night with zero regrets about buying it. I really do think that J.J. Abrams fans will dig this, just not for the reasons they'd expect. This was my first listen from this author, but it won't be my last!

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