Ruth

5 stars…right up until the last 5 minutes.

Revisado: 04-05-22

“Argh!” was a thing I actually said out loud when the fight against the big baddie started at the end of the book. Why in the world would you write the whole book in 1st person, only to switch POVs to a bystander for the final boss fight? It made the climax of the story very passive and uninteresting, at best.

I’m definitely going onto the next book in the series, but if stunts like that continue, it might be my last.

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A mediocre story saved by great narration

Revisado: 02-16-22

I’m 8 hours into book 1 and still can’t quite figure out if I like this one or not. Let’s start with the good stuff… 43 hours for a single credit? Awesome! Andrea Parsneau does an excellent job with the narration, if possibly a little overly dramatic at times, but that actually fits with the way the main character is written, so I’m good with it. Finally, I find the premise to be interesting and a nice change of pace from your run-of-the-mill isekai fantasy. The idea of the MC becoming an innkeeper as opposed to an OP magic user is refreshing.

Now for the stuff that bugs me. Unfortunately, The Wandering Inn suffers from the same issues many web novels do. The writing is passive to the point that I find my attention wandering off quite frequently. The characters, at least to this point, are very shallow — 8 hours in, and I know almost nothing about the main character and the two primary supporting characters, which makes it hard to care about what happens to them. I’m also having a very difficult time believing the MC would have survived more than a day or two in her new surroundings. She’s weak, knows absolutely nothing about survival, and is overly dramatic/moralizes too much about some things. Girl, you were dang near raped and murdered a minute ago and now you’re near death, why are you spending time and energy on berating yourself for how bad a person you are for killing the baddie? She also seemingly doesn’t even give some other things a second thought, when any other human would be freaking out about them. It’s not as preachy as some of the other works out there that fall into this category - I’m looking at you, He Who Fights With Monsters - but it is certainly irksome, at times.

This one is really stretching my ability to suspend disbelief and get into the story, which is saying something when you’re talking about an isekai fantasy that starts you off in a completely unbelievable situation.

I’m going to keep plugging away and see if things clean up as the story moves along — which certainly can and does happen as these web authors get their storytelling legs under them and fall into a groove. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the series, so here’s hoping…

I’ll pop back in and edit this review if I get to the end of book 1 and there are any major changes in my opinions.

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Boxxy at his best!

Revisado: 02-24-21

If you’re contemplating the 5th audiobook in the ELLC series, you likely already know what your getting into. Teresa is an excellent installment in the series—lots of murdering, collecting shinies, more murdering, and a lovely bout of adventure with Minic. Well worth the listen.

Soundbooth Theater has refined the experience, as well. The sound effects and music are more subtle, which adds ambience without making it hard to hear character dialog or narration. Thumbs up, guys!

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Good, but some flaws keep it from being great

Revisado: 06-19-19

The story is vintage Alanson, and will keeps you entertained while fitting nicely within the ExForce universe. There are a few small story issues that are more personal pet-peeves than major flaws, but it did have me yelling, “Come on, Craig, think this through!” a few times, which is not something that has happened much in this series.

There is too much that I liked about the story to write here so, Craig, if you’re reading this, please don’t hate me for publishing my nit-picks.

Spoiler alert: how the heck did a Kristang troop ship get to the Sol system without anyone noticing? A Thuranin star carrier would have been required to get them there, and you can’t tell me that in the almost two decades since Columbus Day someone didn’t pick up the gamma ray burst from that star carrier jumping in to drop them off. Also, did the Blood Fangs really pay the Thuranin for a single ship to get a ride all the way out to Sol? It’s a small continuity thing in the grand scheme of the series, but still, I’ve come to expect better from a Craig Alanson novel.

Also, STAR Teams are made up of the elitist of the Elite Tier 1 units across the planet, and the series has done a great job of keeping those characters feeling like warriors... so how did a borderline incompetent putts like Chandra make the team? I kept having flashbacks to the Archer episode where Cyril starts training as an ISIS agent.

Small story issues aside, the overall production was pretty good, but the SFX director needs to tone it down a bit; there were a number of times where the dialog was washed out by the SFX or music, and other times where the choices of sounds were downright distracting or even annoying. Overall, the ExForce series has balanced being ridiculous SciFi (asshole beer can) with a serious tone (The human species is on the line, after all), but I feel the production of the audio drama pushed a bit too far into the ‘campy’ realm of the genre.

Clean up some of the SFX choices and the couple of minor voice actors who sounded bored while reading their lines, and this is an excellent audio drama. Until then, it’s just good.

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Stolen ideas detract from excellent writing.

Revisado: 04-06-16

The writing was excellent, but was overshadowed by how many characters and plot points seemed to be ripped directly from the Battlestar Gallactica reboot from the early 2000s. An old enemy shows up and takes humanity by surprise, the modern military isn't prepared, and only an aging relic of a bygone era crewed by misfits can stand up to it. Oh, and guess what? The aliens had help from the inside, well intentioned though it may have been. There is an old warhorse captain that has somewhat fallen out of favor with command, a drunkard XO, etc. etc.

Overall, it's a good military space opera, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't trying to figure out how the publisher let Nick Webb get away with what at times seems like a direct rip-off of someone else's intellectual property. I intend to go through the rest of the series because I suspect the BSG parallels will diminish going forward, and I really do like the writing style. I would have rated the story 5 stars if I didn't have that 'I feel like I've been here before' feeling for the first 3 hours.

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