Kindle Customer

Is Neal having other people write his books?

Revisado: 01-17-20

I’ve owned and loved numerous Neal Stephenson books, such as the Baroque series, cryptonomicon, Reamde, Diamond Age, and Anathem. All top notch books which leave me crying out for more when they’re finished. However, Neal’s last book, Seveneves, was strange. It had a very solid beginning and middle, but when the last section started in the far off future, it was boring, not very relatable or engaging, and felt like it was tacked on by another author not even in the same league as Mr. Stephenson. Very weird, but you can’t hit a home run on every book. Then The Fall...

The Fall is a continuation of Reamde, which is a great novel and I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already. This follows Dodge and his niece after Dodge dies and his brain is frozen in the hopes that it can be preserved and resuscitated in the future. His niece grows up with the dream of reviving his brain and the process involved in achieving those goals. All well and good and it is an enjoyable first third of the book. In the middle, Mr Stephenson gets a bad case of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), hypothesizing that social media will cause flyover country to become hypermilitant, hyper-religious, and cause a mass exodus of anyone with an IQ of over 100, leading to no professional services such as medical services or ready access to technology or education. This was insulting in the extreme and I almost quite the book there, but I soldiered on.

In the last section, Dodge and company then go on a fantasy quest to wrest back control on the virtual reality that reincarnated dead people go to once their brains are processed. Again, very different from the solid story that we started out with. In the end, the day is saved, the population of earth dwindles into obscurity, and the eternal Enoch Root is teleported away from the story in a shower of light to parts unknown, with his several hundred year mission complete, whatever that was.

Like I mentioned above, it seems that there are two or three different authors writing different sections of the book in more of an anthology than a single author novel. Mr. Stephenson is a great author and I enjoy his writing immensely, but I hope that he can get back on track to writing good coherent novels again.

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Not a very relatable character

Revisado: 01-16-20

So the premise behind this book is that the main character has a genetic mutation where his lifespan is slowed by 100x, and due to his extended experience he is an expert at martial arts, interpersonal relationships, etc. At several times in the story it is distinctly pointed out that he has NO magic or superhuman capabilities other than his lifetime of experience. Ok, not a bad premise to start from. However, despite this guy being 1500 years hold, who looks like a teenager, he still reacts like a teenager. There is no wisdom of years in his motivation or actions, just a haughty teenager who is super awesome at everything because of “experience”. Sigh... Could have been really good, but after a few hours of listening I couldn’t stand to listen to this whiny kid anymore.

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So many plot holes...

Revisado: 11-02-19

Picked this book up as a daily deal. The author overall has good reviews, so I decided to give him a chance. Beginning of the book was good with its premise of a group of researchers finding the formula for cellular immortality, living forever as long as an accident doesn’t get you. They then got into the practical aspects of how it could never be released to the public because of scarcity of resources and couldn’t be released even in limited numbers because of class jealously. They then decide to approach the wealthiest woman in the world and give it to her in exchange for 90% of her wealth so they all can have money to live off the grid and not have to worry about people cinching on that they’re not getting older. Ok so far, but then it goes off the rails.

20 years later, protagonist of the story, suave smart CIA man gets fired for having morals and is in between jobs. His college buddy (who he hasn’t spoken to in 10 years!) is targeted by the immortal group because he looks like one of the group members, and they want to kill and replace him with that group member to take over the buddies identity. Through an elaborate con job they kill him, but not before CIA man stumbles across him in a random bar the night before he’s killed and arrange to meet up in his house across the country in California next week. CIA protagonist goes out to the guys apartment, and happens to stumble across the dead guys doppelgänger as he is leaving his dead friends apartment. A thirty second chance meeting. From a meetup that was scheduled from across the country. By two guys that haven’t seen each other for ten years. Yeah.

CIA guy then chases the doppelgänger for two hours on a motorcycle to get answers. Doppelgänger calls his security guy who runs the CIA guy on his Harley off of a 200 foot cliff at speed. So he’s dead right? Nope. CIA man (through expert paratrooper training) falls just right and gets caught on a branch while his 1500 lb Harley goes to the bottom. After being unconscious hanging on a branch for 36 hours he wakes up, finds his cellphone and calls 911. Goes to the hospital and is found to have two sprains only and is released. What!?! As a medical guy, that is at least a two day stay. You were unconscious for 36 hours, meaning severe brain injury and dehydration/exposure. You’re lucky to be alive and you go home in an Uber with a knee brace that you wear for two days.

Plot holes continue ad Infinitum from there. Unlimited money, finding a sexy girlfriend whose severe second degree burns goes away in 36 hours as well, idiot security guy, and to top it off, the protagonist never confronts the group of immortals. I prefer stories where the adversaries are smart and the protagonists are in actual danger and meet challenges. Author had too much duex in machina and it led to a very dull book.

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Hard to listen to this narrator!

Revisado: 10-26-16

I purchased the omnibus from a recommendation from a third party website, and with the good reviews I was hoping for a pleasant listen while waiting for next month's credits to cycle. I've listened to most of the first book, but I don't think that I'll be able to finish the rest of them. This is pretty unusual for me, but this one is very hard to listen to for the following reasons:

First, the narrator is awful. He can read just fine, but he is speaking in an overacting tone the entire time. Picture the Brain from "Pinky and the Brain" reading a story for hour after hour and you'll get the picture. The character dialogue and the narration are all in that overly melodramatic tone, its hard to take this book seriously.

Second, there are so many plot holes and "deux en machina" coincidences, at least in the first book, that you can't believe that the characters are real people making logical decisions from their own point of view. For characters that are supposed to be biologically enhanced, they sure make very emotional, melodramatic, and silly decisions.

Combined together, this audiobook is a mess. I'm sorry, but when I saw that I was on chapter 53 of 248, I lost heart. I just won't be able to listen to this anymore.

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Completed the series, but no satisfactory ending

Revisado: 10-13-14

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

if you got through the first two books, it's worth the listen to complete the series. The performance really hampered the story. The narrator is British, and is struggling to pull off an American accent. Characters sound mostly the same, pronunciation is British, and all words that end in an "a" sound turn into "er", so you get a lot of "Joshu-er"s and "ide-er"s. The story was lackluster as well, too many "deus en la machina" plot holes.

Would you be willing to try another one of Michael Fenton Stevens’s performances?

Never. His performance would drive me away from titles read by him.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

no.

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Funny the first time you hear it, but gets of fast

Revisado: 05-28-12

I picked up this audiobook as a lark, as I saw the YouTube video of a Phillipino grandma reading it for the first time and I thought it was hilarious. Then I saw that Samuel Jackson was going to read it, so I had to get it. Like the Phillipino grandma, it was funny the first time, but gets old fast.

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An Excellent Read for Empire Building

Revisado: 05-28-12

I happened to pick up this first book in the Destroyermen series during an Audible sale, and I am sure glad I did. This is the first novel in a series (of soon to be seven!) books following the exploits of Capt. Matthew Reddy and his crew of the USS Walker. The story follows this crew of a doomed naval destroyer being harassed by the Japanese navy following the battle of the Phillipines and e Java Sea in the opening months of WWII. During their escape from the Japs, they are caught in a strange electrical storm that transports them and seven other friendly and enemy ships to an alternative Earth where there was no dinosaur extinction event, so evolution did not follow the same path.

They find themselves on a very hostile planet, but soon allying themselves with the sailing ship based "Lemurian" civilization who are in the opening battles against a widely expansive "Grik" empire, who are descendants of dinosaurs. Their technology is about 14-15th century, so the crew of the Walker have to fight the Grik and bootstrap the Lemurian technology to support a more modern army capable of meeting this threat.

This is a very enjoyable listen, the story is very entertaining, and the narrator is top rate. For this story he has name up two different a cents for the non human species, one of which have no movable lips!

This story appeals to anyone who enjoys historical military fiction, empire building and a bit of sci-fi thrown into the mix.

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My Ears, My Ears!!

Revisado: 03-08-11

James totally got it right, the post-production sound is awful. You have to crank up the volume to hear anybody, but then in between scenes or chapters in the book, they have awful '50's and 60's sci-fi electronica that is played at TOP VOLUME! The first time this happened it nearly blew my eardrums in.

I gave is two stars because it is Asimov, but this audiobook is one of the worst I've bought from Audible. There's a reason it's only $2.

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Worst Reading of a Story Ever!

Revisado: 05-16-05

I am a casual fan of the Berserker series and like to read one every so often as a new title pops up. This book is on par of what to expect from the most recent Berserker books (a lot of diologue with little action). However, the reader of this audiobook makes it almost unbarable to listen to. You know when he stops at the end of a paragraph because he stops - for 2 to 3 seconds - EVERY TIME!! Also his inflections of the different characters make them all sound whiny and paranoid. After listening to the masterful presentation of the Ender Trilogy by Orson Scott Card, this book is the audiobook equivalent of nails on a blackboard. Do not buy or you'll be sorry!

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