surfgoat

Hidden Gem

Revisado: 10-25-24

So, let me start with what this book is not. It's not going to win a Pulitzer, it's not going to keep your dog from humping your leg, it's not going to be the topic of discussion at your grandmother's table. It is going to make you laugh though unless your soul is so dark, jaded, and withered that you are incapable of laughing. I have near 500 titles in my Audible library and this is the first one that I could not listen to while jogging. Literally made me laugh so hard that I stumbled and I'm sure anyone who saw thought I was having some kind of episode.
I'm not going to ruin the book with a description other than it is fun and witty, and it loves to break tropes. Case in point, what does our MC do when he summons a smoking hot sex goddess to be his slave? He tells her to cover herself and help flip burgers. Later she's asked to unclog some toilets which she does in the sexiest way possible. I'm not doing it justice but the humor is fantastic and clean for a change. The good guys are kind of bad and the bad guys are kind of good, and there is zero drama to speak of.
It's not the best book I've listened to in a while but it sure has been the most enjoyable.

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Quit without remorse after 69 hours

Revisado: 09-07-24

First, Kate Reading is always great and narration was spot on. The story itself was just OK. Nothing particularly original or engaging but entertaining nonetheless.

So why did I quit listening with only 6 hours left?
Because at that point, based on the circumstances of the story, I decided that the protagonists were too stupid to survive and that nothing believable would allow them to overcome their opposition.
[Spoiler alert]
To make my point, the protagonists have all gathered for an epic battle with a superior force that they know is marching on their location and that will be there within a couple of weeks. Obviously they have scouts that should warn them of the enemy they know is coming and yet when 3 scouts from the same direction fail to report in, instead of assuming that the enemy is responsible, they blame it on a rain storm that flooded a river. It gets even stupider at this point as the MC and her man head off alone in that direction to check on the scouts. When the enemy arrives only a day ahead of schedule the protagonist's forces are completely unprepared and caught off guard. It's gets even stupider though. They've known this whole time that there was a fire breathing dragon in the mix and the catapults they have worked tirelessly to build out of highly flammable timber as a secret weapon to stall their foes are set on fire minutes into the dragon showing up. In an army of thousands not one person saw that coming? It gets even worse from there but essentially the antagonist has been playing them the entire time and has such an overwhelming advantage that the protagonist's army and characters that have been developed for the last 60 hours fall after a couple minutes of the dragon breathing fire and the rest are captured.
I'm sure the author came up with some heroic way to save the day after all of that but at this point the protagonists were so inept that I no longer cared what happened to them. It's obvious that the author was building drama towards some miraculous climax but I can't relate to idiots and am not interested in drama.

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Dry humor at its best

Revisado: 03-20-24

Just a really fun, enjoyable story. Very engaging and well done touching topics that resonate with all of us.

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In a word, meh.

Revisado: 09-28-23

Having read much of Sullivan's other books I was pretty hopeful when I came across this title. Sullivan's a good writer and narration is great but this book lacks soul. I don't know how else to say it. I never felt invested in the characters or story and the fact that I know much of how things turn out from his other series, means there's little sense of apprehension or discovery here either.
Overall, far from the worst I've read, but nothing to get excited about either.

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Master work of fiction and character development

Revisado: 08-24-23

There are so many poor and mediocre writers publishing on Audible today that most of what I listen to now is pretty terrible. This book broke a long streak of terrible selections and restored my faith in humanity once again. Anyone can tell a good story in a bad way and that's what most authors end up doing; Card is an absolute, utter master of character development though who can take even a mundane plot and bring it to life in way that registers so deeply with the reader that you feel a part of the story yourself.
I honestly don't know how he does it but Card knows people; he knows how they talk, how they interact and how to make them leap off the page into your life. The banter between characters in Lost and Found is witty, refreshing, and oh so satisfying.
Narration by Stefan Rudnicki is also superb. Too often the narrator's pace is off or inflection seems forced; but Rudnicki accents the story perfectly without adding to it or taking away from it.
This is as close to perfection in literature as it comes and as much as I love the Ender novels, I think I love this one even more. No one builds characters like Card; no one.

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Mediocre. Not terrible, but not great either

Revisado: 08-24-23

I did finally finish this one although it became less interesting as the story progressed. Overall, it wasn't terrible. The mimic idea is fun and well executed but the rest of the characters are bland and not a little cliché.
The narration was also just OK. I liked that there were different voiced for each character but some of them just didn't resonate with the characters. The elf, in particular, sounds like a valley girl and not a beautiful enchantress.
Finally, the dialog in this book is terrible. It's so unsophisticated that you'd swear it belonged in the children's or young adult reader section but the frequency with which they author drops the F-bomb makes it very clear that was not the intention. Ultimately, the writing is just not that good even if the idea is fun.

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Absolutely nothing noteworthy here

Revisado: 08-02-23

First, I really enjoy Dinninman's other series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and was expecting something on par with that when I started this series. I made it to chapter 15 before stopping as nothing was improving. If you like Dinniman's other work, don't assume you'll like this one. I hated it.
One of the most annoying aspects of this audiobook is the narration by Andrea Parsneau. The MC is a guy but she doesn't modulate her voice so it always sounds like the story is coming from the wrong perspective and it gets confusing. The accents she does do for some of the characters are also terrible. She tries to do a Brooklyn accent for the little barbarian girl and for some reason the ogres sound like hicks from the deep South, although just barely. It's like she's only ever heard those accents from someone making fun of them on TV and it just sounds ridiculous.
As for the story, there nothing worth mentioning here. The LITRPG elements are cliché and unoriginal and the characters themselves are unrelatable, and unlikeable. It was a slog getting through the 15 chapters and in the end, there's nothing here that makes me want to listen further.

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Meh. Didn't make a lot of sense

Revisado: 07-23-23

They came highly recommended but even at the end I had a hard time caring about what happened. The characters just don't relate and the story was like a bunch of fantasy fever dreams thrown together.
Narration was fine and I did like allusions to mythology, but it just wasn't very engaging.

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First time ever that the TV series was better

Revisado: 04-03-23

In my experience, the TV adaptation is NEVER better and I always read the book first. In this case though, the story was so much more enjoyable to watch than to read. I think it comes down to the nature of the story which takes place over centuries and from the viewpoint of many different characters. It can be incredibly difficult to follow the story when reading but is brought to life so well with superb acting and a visual interpretation that for once adds to the storyline rather than detracting from it.. I didn't realize how much I had missed listening until I saw the series.

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Author betrays his own characters and the reader

Revisado: 04-03-23

This series has been OK, not amazing, but somewhat enjoyable; until half way through the third book when the author introduced a plot twist so incredibly contrived and stupid that it literally made me so angry that I threw my headphones across the room.

Spoiler alert, I'm going to provide details here that ultimately mean nothing to the overall story but are the source of my rating this title so low. At one point the MC, Alexander, descendant of a super-computers, finds himself facing a hoard of barbarians who summon 10 giants to assail his city. He pretty easily takes out two of them but then turns to see that a couple more have made it to the city walls despite his people opening a can of whoop ass on them. What does our super intelligent, powerful hero do at this point? Why he freezes up in despair of course. With all the power at his disposal and having just killed two of them, he's still so distraught at seeing two of them break some walls that he floats dumbfounded ABOVE his fallen foes. That "above" part will be important. So while he's floating ABOVE in despair his most loyal follower leading the armies of the city decides that the only way to turn the tide is to unleash a powerful blast at the opposing army; a hard decisions only because Alexander is still out there ABOVE the hoard. He looks into her eyes as she makes the call "fire" and then he's torn apart by his most loyal follower because she couldn't think of anything else to do. With that one blast the enemy is defeated and Alexander becomes a casualty too because he was somehow unable to get out of the way. Drama!
There are so many ways that this stupid scenario could have been avoided. Aim lower, fly higher, wait a minute, maybe use the all powerful weapon at the start, etc., etc., etc. Such complete crap. The author betrayed his own characters and the reader and I can't help but be disgusted with this ridiculous plot line. I finished the book to confirm that there was actually no point to the dramatic scene and there wasn't. This wasn't a turning point in the plot and had no long lasting impact on either character. It was just a little drama to break up the action I guess. I've read a lot of books and I've seen this type of contrivance before but none as blatant and pointless as Mathews.

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