Valerie Shane

Had to put it down.

Revisado: 01-12-16

First, it seemed like this man did no research at all to prepare himself for the "adventure" he plunges himself into. Then he hangs around a Native American village with no plan until they take pity on him and try to get him started. Next he mistreats the poor dog he was given. If he knew anything about dogs he would have known that yawn-whining is a sign of stress. (And can you blame the poor dog?) So he sends the dog away, alone into the wilderness, the dog that was given to him by the generous people who try to help him?! It was bad enough he left his poor wife home to deal with two small children without him, one just a baby.

I don't know if he somehow redeems himself further along in the book but at this point I don't really care. I'm betting I can find a similar story with a much more likable character.

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Hard to stick with.

Revisado: 10-19-13

Although the performance by the narrator was great, the story was slow and hard to stick with. I couldn't bring myself to finish listening. I didn't mind the day to day description of life as some of the other readers seemed to. I enjoy knowing how people lived back in those days. But I may have been more compelled to stick with it had there been a single likeable character in the story. Well into the book I still didn't feel like I knew Henry and just wasn't engaged enough to care what happened to him or his money-hungry girlfriend.

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Interesting but disappointing end

Revisado: 08-22-12

(Warning: spoilers) The writing was excellent and the characters were fairly well developed but the book disappointed me. I realize that life doesn't always finish every human situation with tidy little endings but it seemed like every single aspect of this story was left unresolved. We'll never know what really happened to Mason or to the Indian houseboy, Yosh, who you come to adore. You never even know what happens to Gin in the long run. The reader leaves her mouldering away, depressed, in an apartment in Rome (or was it Venice?.) Too bad because the story was gripping and at some points I couldn't put the book down. I realize now that I could have put it down at any point and gone away with as much a feeling of completion as I had at the end. Yes, some, or maybe even most, people's stories have incomplete endings, but are they worth writing a book about? All I can think is that this story was supposed to leave the reader with a hint at the shadiness of the oil industry. If so, it succeeds, but I think most of us were already aware of this. All I can say is I hope she writes a sequel.

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I couldn't even finish it.

Revisado: 07-15-12

I read all the other books in this series and looked forward to this one. I was very disappointed. The story, like other reviewers say, was a repetition of some of the other books. I kept waiting for something new and interesting to happen but it never did. Still, I might have made it through if not for the narration, which is some of the worst I've ever heard (I've been an Audible member for years.) It sounded like the narrator was reading to a class of first graders, so slowly it made me want to pull my hair out. The accent she gave Ayla was horrible. It made her sound like a prehistoric bimbo. She sounded so childlike. Actually, every character sounded childlike with the slow and tedious way she read their lines, as if they all had just learned how to speak and were struggling to find the correct words. I tried hard to finish this book but just couldn't do it. This series has jumped the shark in a big way and the narrator made it all the more painfully obvious.

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Good book, worth a listen.

Revisado: 11-17-11

If you loved the Outlander series, you may also enjoy this book since it's set in historic Scotland. But the humor and sarcasm that Gabaldon generously sprinkles throughout her stories is missing in this book. Still, it's a very good story and the author is masterful at descriptions of the surroundings. I felt like I was standing on the edge of that winter sea. Some other reviewer's did not like the narrator's accents. Not being from the UK, I thought the Scottish accents were good. It was Carrie's voice that grated on me. There was something very stiff and proper about her voice that turned me off so much I had a hard time getting into the story. It was not the voice I would have cast as a romantic heroine. And similarly, the friend/agent Jane's voice sounded more like she would be the main character's hoity-toity old grandmother than a young, new mother. Once into the story, though, I was able to get past that and enjoy it. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more with a different narrator or just as a book, so I could imagine my own voices for the characters.

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