DT Campbell

Why 3 narrators?

Revisado: 05-13-24

At least it was all narration, unlike the audiobook of Dune. But why three? It threw me out of the story each time the narrators changed. It wasn't like there was a change in point of view to go along with the change of narrator. Otherwise, the book itself is quite good - just as compelling as the first three in the series.

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Much better narrative approach

Revisado: 04-03-24

This audiobook uses one narrator, mostly, and the second in ways that are not odd or jarring. Aside from that, the book is as gripping as the first Dune novel, but in very different ways.

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Another odd audio production

Revisado: 03-24-24

At least it's not like the audiobook for Dune, which alternated (with no logic) between a full cast and a single narrator doing all characters. But having three different narrators trade off chapters of Dune Messiah is still discomforting and occasionally jarring. It's particularly bad when one gets used to the delivery of a character by one narrator (e.g. Stilgar by Simon Vance) and then hears the same character voiced by another narrator.

Aside from that the audio is good. Each narrator is fine on their own. And the book is good - though it feels like an in-between story rather than a second novel in a series.

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Very enjoyable and more complex as it develops

Revisado: 05-19-23

The book starts - after the opening based on the SWVisions short - fairly typical Star Wars. But it gets more complex and compelling as it goes. There are a few transitions where the characters actions seemed out of character, but otherwise a very satisfying journey.

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Excellent deep dive

Revisado: 05-05-23

...into how & why US food system is the way it is - and how that relates to other structural patterns in US culture and history.

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Dramatized?!?

Revisado: 06-01-22

I would love to know what led the producers of this audiobook to have it *sometimes* be fully dramatized, with multiple voice actors, and more often be a single voice actor performing all parts.

Both approaches are excellent, but the switch between them is jarring - occasionally even contradictory for the delivery of some characters (e.g. Fenring).

It's tempting to say they started to produce an abridged audiobook, but that doesn't hold up in terms of what was dramatized vs. not. There are scenes which switch between the two approaches at natural pauses during the scene - and sometimes the more "important" part of the scene is only performed by Vance, including all characters.

The audiobook would be fantastic if it has been fully performed only by Vance and very good if fully performed as an audio drama. But the performance is neither of those things, in trying to be both.

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Fantastic!

Revisado: 12-04-21

One of the best SF series I've ever read, from world-building to character portrayal to narrative framing. And T. Ryder Smith's performance is amazing in nuance and grip.

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Unflinchingly honest

Revisado: 05-26-21

One of the best books for characterization I've ever read - especially the villains. Everything in the story is driven by motive, and all actions (or intended actions) make sense from each character's vantage point, poured through the lens of their prior experience with other people.

There's also a keen sense for how one's frame of reference affects both one's own understanding and how others perceive one. The way that the Outside is experienced reminded me - as if through a twisted, dark glass - how all the many possibilities of time were experienced by Muad'dib in Herbert's Dune. How transformative such a loss of self can be, how dangerous it can be, to everyone connected to the one transforming, losing themselves.

But Hoffmann's rendering of that consciousness is more exacting and feels more real, rather than imagined, more drawn from the terror, ecstasy and horror of perception altered - not by psychoactive substance, but by extreme experience and ordeal.

And, gods, that last conversation is so on point for lived experience.

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Best science/history I've heard in awhile

Revisado: 11-11-20

Perfectly balanced between close adherence to facts and evocative description of what Neanderthal life could have been like.

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This is the Viking history I've been wanting...

Revisado: 09-11-20

...for 20 years, told from a personal, lived-in perspective as much as a bird's eye view of structural patterns. Price does a good job of weaving together the fated contours in which people lived during the Viking period with the choices they made, against or along the grain. This is also the most honest portrayal I've read, unflinching in showing the social hierarchy, from sexism to slavery, while still celebrating the art and genius of the same people.

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