Nathan

An emotional and endlessly creative mystery

Revisado: 03-29-25

Cryptozoo explores our world through the eyes, ears, and noses of folkloric creatures, but it is their ultimate humanity that endears us to them. This is a book full of larger-than-life characters who feel personal and relatable, with twists and turns that build to a freight train's worth of momentum by the end.

Add to that a gripping performance from the two voice actors that really brings the characters to life.

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A weak beginning, with enormous potential

Revisado: 08-13-24

Epic series so often spawn prequels. This is not yet a prequel, and has no connection to its predecessor "The Expanse" except for a shared authorial worldview and style of phrase. And yet, it has all the hallmarks: the writing assumes we already care about the viewpoint characters, and have little thirst for the wider world. The plot has the focus of a special-event miniseries, as though explaining some oft-theorized slice of a favored character's origin. Worst, it feels shackled to a grim foregone conclusion, hoping that the process and ethical hand wringing of getting there is interesting. Someday, if this series follows its predecessor and grows into something vast in scope and rich in character, this may be a fitting tale of how it began. So I hold out hope, because of the lineage of the story, and because it is so obvious that, just behind the curtain, the authors have created a truly enormous and unique world of which we are, frustratingly, only seeing a tiny, tiny part. Hopefully we're allowed to see it next time.

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On a roll now

Revisado: 05-14-21

Having been underwhelmed by Words of Radiance, I was becoming skeptical of this series - but Oathbringer delivers an action-and-lore packed adventure with satisfying storylines which feel like they could go anywhere. This longest-yet tome felt shorter than any of its predecessors - it takes full advantage of the world's new connectedness to allow storylines to cross nations and cultures freely.

As always, the narration is a stellar performance.

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Amazing first two thirds, pretty good last act.

Revisado: 11-04-20

The first two thirds or so of this book are riveting: the perfect sci-fi application, discussing many topics at once without ever being preachy or trite- and without ever commiting the sin of authorial hubris. The last third is still good, but the hand of the plot starts to overwhelm the no-holds-barred freedom of the earlier sections.

The voice work is great, well-characterized without becoming overacted. On balance, this is a thought provoking sci fi classic with real pathos behind it, well worth the read.

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Chesspieces Moving as Required

Revisado: 09-21-19

This book is serviceable as a way to exposit where the chesspieces are for the last book, but entirely predictable.

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A Fine Primer

Revisado: 08-16-16

What is our energy future?
This course provides a selection of lectures on the details of how we use energy today, how we have used it historically, and how we might use it in the future. It is not especially intensive about any one topic, but it brings up many of the issues we need to think about concerning our utilization of the resources here on Earth.

I might have preferred a greater focus on how future technologies are developing, but this lecture series paints a good overall picture.

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A Good Recording, with a Few Specific Issues

Revisado: 12-24-12

Christopher Paolini's "Inheritance Cycle" starts off with this excellent novel; I have very little to complain of concerning the actual writing of the book, except perhaps a certain stiffness to the wordingin its vocabulary, as if it had been written with a thesaurus close at hand. These technical issues, however, interfere only a little with the unfolding of what is really a brilliant tale. In this interpretation by Gerard Doyle, it maintains its power, and with a few very particular exceptions, is very well read. I enjoy the voices for nearly every character; Doyle is able to capture their personalities very well.

There are a few exceptions, however.

Remember how the new voice of Batman in the Christopher Nolan movies was one of the few elements that could really get annoying? That raspy voice works fairly well for brief parts - it's great for use with highly individual characters we only meet briefly - but in this reading, that voice is given to the dragon Saphira, as well as to the werecat Solembum. The voice makes them dramatically different from characters of the other races, to be sure, but in a way which does not suit them and which becomes grating on the ears after a while.

My only other problem with this recording comes at the very end. For those who haven't actually read this fine book, I won't say specifically what happens, but someone decided to put some music in over the voice of one of the characters and give it a lot of echo. I might not complain if this were a device used more often in the book - if, for example, the way of differentiating Saphira from everyone else were simply a small echo, it would work well. However, the presence of music, and the fact that this is not done for any other character anywhere in the book, makes the device quite jarring.

Issues with the production aside, I do think that the writing wins out over those few issues which do appear, so while I am not so much a fan of the way the book was read, Doyle does manage to carry Paolini's story fairly well.

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