Augustus T. White

So familiar

Revisado: 06-06-23

The MC is an abrasive, unreasonable, pig- headed ass. He is also driven, creative, and fiercely loyal. In short, he is exactly like my favorite clients before I retired. Like it or not, those are the folks who — without any head start in life— can claw their way up and make things happen. That’s probably why I liked this series so much. Sure, it has implausible magic, second grade humor, and silly coincidences; but in its own bizarre way, it’s almost true to life.

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Really, surprisingly good

Revisado: 01-13-23

I was not expecting much. Looked like a standard litrpg from a new author — with perhaps a nod to a Sylvester Stallone-type MC subplot. That’s fine. Litrpg isn’t the sort of thing you turn to for literary innovation. Currently the genre has as many fixed conventions as a standard Elizabethan sonnet. You read those for excellence in how the conventions are combined and colored.

In most respects that’s all you’ll find here. So why was I still reading the damn thing at 4:30 am?

As far as I can tell, it’s because the characters were so consistently engaging that I wanted to know more about them. The MC in particular is conventional, but (as others often tell her) a complete mad woman. Still, she’s a nut case of a recognizable, and not completely unrealistic, kind. Some people really react that way to one-on-one conflict etc.

Maybe the book just hit me on a good day. Still, I hope to see some more of those days from this author as soon as possible. Narration is also high quality — save for the annoying “ding!”s mentioned by a previous reviewer. Andrea Parsneau reminds me a bit of Dina Perlman although Parsneau doesn’t quite have Perlman’s amazing tonal range

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Why the heck did I love this book?

Revisado: 01-18-16

I have no idea. This is Buck Rogers does Horatio Hornblower -- in drag -- sailing tall ships in hyperspace. But for some unfathomable reason it all works, and works well.

In part, it works because Sutherland has taken more from CS Forester's than cultural background. He/she has also been wise enough to adopt Forester's careful plot development. Some of the scenes and conflicts are taken directly from the Hornblower novels, in literary homage. But, more than that, Sutherland (mostly) also sticks with the Stoic, understated characters and characterizations that make Forester so convincing. Relatively little of the whiney, pouting angst that corrodes most current SF.

It's still all so absurd that I hate to admit it, but I really liked this book -- and the (so far) two sequels. Hornblower went on for about ten volumes before it got stale. Here's hoping...

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

See Kathleen's review

Revisado: 01-18-16

I bought this with callous disregard for the 2-star review by Kathleen. I have now paid for my sin -- 1 credit and about 5 hours worth of payment, in fact. Although I have paid a good deal more for various other sins, I usually enjoyed the doing of them them a great deal more.

The only reason for a separate review is my take on Cronin, the narrator. He's really not that bad -- a competent professional brought to grief by a godawful script.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Interesting ideas, creepy people

Revisado: 01-05-15

First, the good stuff. Vaughn Heppner plots exceptionally well. That is, he sets up interesting situations full of potential excitement and conflict. He also writes well enough. Christian Rummel does his usual highly professional, well-paced narration.

But these aren't nearly enough to save this book. The characters are mechanical, but irrational. They don't relate to each other, except by banging into each other like rocks shaken in a bag. They also behave oddly. In the first scene, the main character, faced with a landing by genocidal aliens, immediately abandons all the people he has been hired to protect (we never hear what happens to them) and stands stock still in the open, weapons untouched, while (a) the alien ship lands (b) the hatch opens and a vehicle emerges, and (c) the vehicle sashays over to within spitting distance. A bit slow on the uptake?

As another listener remarked, it does get a bit better as Heppner gets warmed up -- but not a whole lot better. Not enough better. I finally gave up when the magically intuitive Russian scientist suddenly acquires total mastery of a completely alien technology based on zero data or reasoning -- and for the third time. She's, like, a scientist, man, so she knows stuff, see. That's pretty much all the explanation we get.

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The Borgias in a mirror

Revisado: 09-23-13

This is a really nice history of the Borgias, combining lots of crunchy background details with intriguing ideas about the key players. As others have pointed out, this is mainly a defense of the Borgias.

Of course, nobody can make saints out of any of the families that played the power game in Renaissance Italy. Meyer's approach is simply to ask the valid question, "let's just assume that the Borgias were, generally, not monsters -- but just the normal sort of power-hungry egomaniacs who rose to power in that time and place? Can that theory be made consistent with the actual historical record?"

The answer seems to be yes ... or sort of ... more or less. Meyer quite properly rejects the usual fables about incest, orgies, sadism, and the 50 other shades of really, really dark grey which usually pass for historical facts about the Borgias. On the other hand, he can still only make sense of the Borgias by uncritically accepting all the other fables and stereotypes of all the other leading characters of the time, from the Ottomans to the Sforzas. Even then, Cesare comes off looking rather psychotic (but neither depraved nor foolish).

So, draw your own conclusion on the thesis. The book -- right or wrong -- seems to be a successful attempt to walk the line between fairly serious scholarship and entertainment

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

Fairly awful

Revisado: 05-14-13

Philosophy of science or, more broadly, intellectual philosophy, is endlessly entertaining. Generally, it's about having very bright people attempting to respond to fundamental questions about our knowledge of the world. What does "knowledge of the world" really mean? What is scientific knowledge? How does it relate to theory or to observation? What is a theory and how do we decide which theories are better? True, none of these questions matter a great deal individually. Still, good intellectual philosophy is vigorous mental exercise, and does tend to give the reader a fresh perspective on things that do matter.

So it was with much optimism and cheerful anticipation that I began to read this selection of essays on the philosophy of history. I did not finish it. Unfortunately, it seems that either (a) philosophy of history is radically different from philosophy of science, or (b) the editor was singularly inept.

Two features in particular were discouraging. First, whacking away for hours at a cartoon stereotype of a kind of historiography allegedly practiced about a century ago isn't philosophy. Nobody writes that kind of history any more. In fact, I suspect that no one ever really did. It's a straw man with a painted bag for a head -- not even an appropriate subject for ad hominem arguments. It's trivial and uninteresting to watch an author deconstruct her own construct.

Second, the authors ignore an enormous body of practical and academic study of the critical issues. One really valuable point made (but then ignored) by several of the authors is that the critical issues in philosophy of history are precisely same as those encountered in law: the nature of causation, the reliability of mixed sources of evidence about the past, the requirements for rules of evidence, the accommodation of differing perceptions, the appropriate procedures and substantive burdens of evidence to apply, the proper melding of normative standards with "objective" fact. Frankly, to any thoughtful lawyer, the essays in this collection seem remarkably naive and kind of -- well -- primitive.

But, God forbid that these particular philosophers of history, at any rate, should pay any heed to anything as distastefully practical as law or, for that matter, history. This seems odd since, as a rule, philosophers of science do listen to scientists, even if their aims and methods are different. Perhaps this is because even the Paul Feyerebends of POS have faith in the scientific enterprise. The authors of this book lack an equivalent faith in the enterprise of history. They mostly seem interested in listening to themselves. This is just as well, since it's hard to see why anyone else would want to.

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esto le resultó útil a 17 personas

Good standard Military SF, Terrible Reader

Revisado: 01-25-13

The title of this review is really all I wanted to say. This is workmanlike military science ficton. Not exceptional, but well over the minimum "fair average quality which would pass without objection in the trade." Like all military SF, it's really an extended essay on the stuff that matters in life: duty, sacrifice, competition, friendship, the value of life, and the fear of death, all illustrated by stories featuring the things that entertain us all: violence, sex, and good triumphing over evil. Buettner has his own slant on all of the above. Good for him. What more could we ask?

Mostly we could ask for a reader who doesn't sound like an idiot with a sinus infection. It grates. I suspect Adam Epstein is trying too hard to channel the personality of the first-person narrator, who is a fairly emotional high-school drop-out. But that doesn't make him (or any real-life high-school drop-out) an idiot. The POV character certainly doesn't behave like like an idiot, and the other characters don't react to him as if he were one. The effect is dissonant, and becomes more so as the narrator gains in rank and experience.

Still worth listening to. Hence the three stars, but the paper book would be a better choice.

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esto le resultó útil a 9 personas

Clanking good staempunk

Revisado: 10-09-12

My first steampunk, but it more than met my expectations for the genre. Lightweight, of course, but consistently fun. Narration by James Langton was a wonder, as it skipped about the British Empire from Welsh to Australian to public school English. One critical reviewer is probably right in that Langton's Kiwi accent seems off, but the amazing melodramatic default-narrator voice more than makes up for it. In fact, its the narration that makes this book -- that and the snide references to 19th century British pop culture. I suspect I only "got" about half of those, but they do add to the fun. The plot? Uh ... why, yes, I suppose it does have a plot. But it doesn't really get in the way of the other stuff, and it does move along in a sprightly sort of way, with appropriate quantities of flash bang -- like the deadly battle of assassins fought out on stage, with prop weapons, during a performance of the finale of Verdi's Macbeth. Definitely worth the price of admission.

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See Shawn's review of #3

Revisado: 08-24-12

A reader named Shawn wrote a review of #3 in this series entitled "Mediocrity I can't stop listening to." His comments on Book 3 are precisely my reactions to Book 1, except that I give Mark Boyett 5 stars for the narration. The series seems to be worth listening to so far. To summarize quickly, the characters are paper-thin, but Larsen has a real gift for plotting. I may not finish the series because I don't like the main character much. Still, Larsen does keep me in the game wondering what will happen next, and his writing is workmanlike. Part of my willingness to keep listening is probably the narration of Mark Boyett, who does a very creditable job.

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