OYENTE

Mark

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Great Characters, Decent Plot

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-03-25

I generally read SF for the new ideas and the plot, less so for the characters. That said, I love these characters, and will be listening to the next books in the series.

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Relevant Again

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-03-24

Blue-noses have always been with us. The unthinking reactionaries have always assaulted non-conforming members of society. This is an important history of one of the times they won.

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Not Your Latest D&D Adventure

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-27-23

The characters seem familiar, almost. The setting seems like your D&D party adventured here, but it didn't turn out this way, because it's not quite the same. The decisions are not the ones you would have made, both for good and for ill.

This story is as comfortable as a pair of warm socks and a cozy blanket, until it's life-or-death. And wouldn't you like to believe that you'd make the right choice?

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Even Archetypes Can Have Human Problems

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-28-23

An African goddess becomes unstuck in time. We see the plight(s) of women of color, even from the perspective of a goddess (loa) who rides them. We also see their perspectives on the "dominant" culture of white Europeans (who are dominant by force, a fact that those of us who are descendants of them frequently forget).

This is a great narrative, for all that it wanders, it always orbits the same ideas until they're fully fleshed out.

And Bahni Turpin does her usual brilliant job of possessing the characters for us.

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Allowing a Fantasy to be Science Fiction

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-14-21

We all know telepathy can't be real, but as a fantasy, it shows up in a lot of tropes. But here, it isn't "radio" so much as "telegraph", and the "science" is presented as "some alien stuff that we humans don't really understand". And as such, it allows us to see into the mind of someone who can see into minds.

There were a few things that seemed to be dropped in just to establish them for further books in the series, but if you pay close enough attention, you can easily ignore that.

I love the settings, the food, the characters, and a government which doesn't even pretend not to be the Bad Guy. I also like the Nigerian mindset presented here, that aliens are seen as just another colonizer (and the human colonizers that came before are the ones who can't handle it).

The narration is brilliant; I loved hearing his voice.

Because I loved this so much, I'll be getting to the rest of the series, but you don't have to. This story really does stand on its own.

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Lovely Fairy Tale with High Stakes

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 08-10-21

When we think of fairy tales, our memories are clouded by both nostalgia and Bowdlerism. Many stories have had the edges filed off, and villains are never taken seriously because we remember that they always lose.

Victories here come with costs. Evil subverted still has lasting repercussions. And even Good and Necessary things have unintended ripple effects. Those whose every intentions are Good can still make horrific mistakes.

And all of that just makes this story more engaging.

While the narrator does a great job with the female or juvenile characters, I'm afraid the male characters aren't credible voices. This _almost_ doesn't matter, as the acting and emotional delivery is always on-target, so the story may just make the occasional jar instantly forgettable.

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Genes Alter Behavior?

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-09-21

Before he became too crotchety to be allowed to speak in public, Richard Dawkins was a brilliant zoologist/biologist/geneticist. Here, he does his best to eschew dense academic language to present the modern (1976, 1989, 2011) theories of genetics, constantly reminding us when words like "intention", "purpose", and "desire" are being used metaphorically. As a listener, I found it very easy to remember the metaphors when he was talking about plants or fungi, but less easy when he was talking about animals, so I'm grateful for the reminders.

Both Dawkins and his (then-) wife Lalla Ward enunciated perfectly well, and both were able to make the potentially dry text compelling. However, I found the transitions from one narrator to the other confusing frequently, even as Ward was mostly reading the original 1976 text, and Dawkins was providing the footnotes, end-notes, and other post-first-printing clarifications.

But the most important thing I got from this was not the genetic roots of evolution (which I mostly understood coming in), but how genes demonstrably compel certain behaviors. One look at the peacock's (or lyre-bird's) tail demonstrates that sexual selection can drive the next generation's genetic make-up, but the notion of "evolutionarily-stable strategy" (altho today, we might better say "algorithm" than "strategy") is a fascinating theory that genes also drive (or alter) behavior.

I just wish that Dawkins could see that his own theories of ESS and even memetic replication provide an understanding of our trans neighbors, and that he would stop railing against them as if he were a genetic determinist (of the sort he decries in his own book).

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Occasionally Cringy, but What Do You Expect?

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-03-21

There were times in Carrie Fisher's telling of her life during and after Star Wars (on the "lap-dance circuit") when her descriptions of some fans were cringe-worthy. She immediately explained that she loved those awkward people, being an awkward person herself. But any of us who can see a bit of ourselves in those not-quite-stalker fans will be quite uncomfortable. As we should be.

Her account of her affair with Harrison Ford when he was married and she was 19 is likewise uncomfortable, but at least open, honest, and ultimately understandable.

If the journal itself, as read by Fisher's daughter Billie Lourde, comes off as a teenager's angst-ridden poetry, that's because it _is_ a teenager's angst-ridden poetry.

This was worth the listen just to get her subjective view of what happened, in what appears to be a forthright, honest delivery.

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Astonishingly Close to the Original Comics

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 05-12-21

It's not easy to translate a story from one medium (silent, wholly visual) to another (audible, no visuals), but this is a brilliant job.

I was also worried about whether one would need a lifetime of immersion into comic books to follow this. I needn't have worried; all of the comic book history that came before these stories is included in a perfectly natural way. Those who don't know the history might even play a game at guessing which characters are original to these stories, and which came from older comic books.

One thing that is somewhat disturbing, but correctly so, is Morpheus's vocal delivery. In the comics, this was represented by white words in black word-balloons; here, it is McAvoy's dispassionate reading, wholly appropriate to an Endless character.

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Adulthood Rites Audiolibro Por Octavia E. Butler arte de portada

The Middle of a Trilogy: Almost Stands on its Own

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 05-21-20

This second book of the "Xenogenesis" trilogy shifts the point-of-view from Lilith to her "construct" son; she bears him, but he has five parents. It takes place on the revived Earth, but the humans who want no part in becoming a new species are devolving into depression and violence. Again.

Butler did a brilliant job of making us empathize with Akin, instead of the fully-human people.

I am indeed looking forward to finishing this trilogy.

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