Stephen

Awful Narration

Revisado: 02-22-25

I first read this story several decades ago and enjoyed the plot and the scientific possibilities explored.
But the person performing the reading spoiled it because he is INCREDIBLY annoying.
His character voices aren't terrible, but almost every sentence is read with an emphasis followed by a pause. Every sentence is like the end of a paragraph or a chapter and the deeper into the story you get, the more irritating the performance becomes.
I will be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, to NEVER get another audio book read by this narrator. I regret I cannot give a zero for the performance. Please spare yourself the waste of buying this book. Not because it is a bad story, but because the reader may well ruin it for you.
I wish that Wil Wheaton (who narrated "The Martin" audiobook), had been the reader of this book also.

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Excellent!

Revisado: 11-13-24

Engrossing story, just like everything that this author writes and the narrator was wonderful. Her accents her cadence and her voice quality is something you can listen to with no problems.

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Great story, lousy reader.

Revisado: 11-10-24

I read and enjoyed this story long ago. Parts of it have not traveled well with modern tastes. But still the story is well worth reading. I own a copy of the actual book, but these days it can often be more convenient to listen than sit with a book.
But the narrator is horrible. His way of speaking is almost condescending and quite unpleasant. His voice is also too deep, and his attempts at voicing a female character are so poor, that he comes out sounding like a cheap budget B movie drag queen for every female voice.
The listening experience was so poor that I will be returning the book for credit. I will check back periodically to see if a different person has redone a reading, but since the book is 60 years old I will not hold my breath waiting for a better version.

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A fine novel by the dean of science fiction.

Revisado: 07-27-24

Story excellent, and the performance first rate! Definitely worth a read/listen for anyone who loves future-history science fiction.

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Lousy narration

Revisado: 06-14-24

The narrator has an odd way of speaking that becomes quite irritating. Most annoying perhaps is his habit of doing over-the-top accents that are quite jarring, and for some peculiar reason, voicing womans dialog with a lower tone voice than the mens dialog.
I won't fault him entirely for the way he pronounces the alien names Heinlein invented, but he could have given a much less overacted recitation that did not sound like he was spitting all over the microphone.
Story gets 5 stars
Narration gets a generous 2 stars at best.

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Decent story.

Revisado: 12-22-23

The reader did an excellent job. The flow of the story was pleasant, and I enjoyed the plot line. But I did find the women characters in the story to be quite annoying when they screamed every time they were startled.
And I do have one very strong gripe when they introduced having an MRI given in the doctor's office in the middle of a power failure, and where the doctor had to wear a protective apron to shield her from radiation. It completely blew a hole in the storyline for me, and then enjoyment of the rest of the story suffered.
Mystery stories, including cozy mysteries like this one, have to be especially good about keeping the details straight, and this author's mistake, was an unforced error. Ten minutes on Google could have prevented that.
Clearly the author has no idea whatsoever, about what an MRI even was, how much technical support service those machines require (among other things they need a barrel of liquid helium and loads of steady power to operate), and how impossibly ridiculous it would be to have one in a small coastal town doctor's office.
This scene could plausibly be altered to make it an older model CAT scanner.
Older models of those do make it into smaller rural areas, and would validate the rest of the writing in that chapter.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Narrator needs to rethink his voicing choices.

Revisado: 09-24-22

Narrator was just fine when speaking in his normal voice, but his voicing of female characters was pretty unpleasant. His voicing however was quite bad when doing characters whose voices (in the story), are described as powerful and "deep", but come out of his mouth sounding like the voices of a weak 100 year old man dying of emphysema. This is so jarring that it hurts the storytelling.

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mixed bag

Revisado: 09-13-22

not thrilled with the voicing by the reader. needlessly strident in some segments, but he does just fine when reading in a normal tone.

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a let down

Revisado: 05-28-21

The first book in this series was great. this one not so much. loads of running around fighting monsters, but little enough of the wonder of a place like Dream Park should be.

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Poor Audio

Revisado: 04-29-21

Narration is muffled and often rapid fire speech is difficult to follow. Audio levels are also poorly controlled.
I have read the series in the past, and even knowing the storyline had trouble. Giving this one a pass.

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