Matt

Obvious ploy to sell IP to Hollywood

Revisado: 01-23-23

More of a pitch to Hollywood than a novel, the writing is merely adequate to tell the story in a compelling enough way to garner cross-media interest and income from option money and the possible bigger paycheck from this IP entering production and being released either theatrically or on a streaming service. Pandering to agents and deal-makers.

That said, it’s not all bad. At times it’s engaging. Voicing sounds authentic for each character in the text, though as has been pointed out, the voice actor attempting to do that Dad voice is god awful. Still, the writing of those characters’ voices is convincing. Character interactions are believable, particularly the relationship between sisters. The voice actor is great for the female characters, for the most part, though the blog scenes made me want to throttle her.

The craft level of the writing is mediocre at best. Sadly, this seems another example of genre writers not spending enough time on revision. Awkwardly phrased sentences and tons of close proximity repetition of words, but worst of all is that the basic premise of the entire story does NOT work. He has written convincing characters, but then has those parents make the decision to allow cameras into their house to do a reality show. I don’t want to spoil a bunch of stuff, but that is totally unbelievable with these characters. I didn’t buy it for a second that these parents would make that decision. The writer tries to rationalize it with their need for money, but that’s a weak, forced plot element that is there because he knows these people wouldn’t do this. And it just doesn’t work.

This book is certainly not worthy of awards. A good example of why when you read that book X won award Z, that it’s often something that is worth as much as a handful of warm spit.

The intercut blog posts are also terrible. First, they’re annoying as hell. Who wants to listen to that, let alone read it? And, they’re an exercise in the writer explaining his own story to the reader as if his storytelling is so weak that we might have missed something.

The book is not ALL terrible. But, given the choice to have listened to this or not, I’d have opted to listen to something else. Not worth the time.

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Poorly written, though wildly creative

Revisado: 01-13-23

Of himself, Moorcock once said, “I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I’d rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.” This is pretty much spot on.

I read most of these books as a teenager in the 1980s and loved them. Haven’t revisited them since, and thought this audio rendition offered a chance to re-immerse myself in this world. Moorcock has a wild imagination and is a worthy successor of the pulp novels that preceded him. The stories are fun, but they don’t stand the test of time and are a male teenage power fantasy throughout, with paper-thin characterization and stereotypes running rampant. Laughably melodramatic at times. Descriptions are handled as info dumps with massive spilling out of description of characters and settings. Expositional world building and backstory dominate the opening (the first 22 minutes are all info dump backstory) with no sense of peril and no attempt to engage the reader in any kind of drama.

On the sentence level, the writing is mediocre. Every noun has an adjective or even two or three stacked up. Adverbs are handled similarly with such golden dialogue tags as: “said banteringly”, “asked wonderingly”, and “Back,” yelled Elric warningly. “Feelingly” was maybe the oddest adverb I heard here, and used more than once. This leans heavily toward purple prose.

Some elements here have loads in common with Roger Zelazny’s work, though the timeline of their publishing schedules overlapped, so who’s to say who influenced who. Both of them, though, clearly influenced Neil Gaiman in a major way, which would seem to be why they’ve chosen to include his story to open this. Likely he feels a debt of gratitude to Moorcock and wanted to help increase sales. Gaiman's story is not at all offensive to these ears, though it does seem out of place.

The reader is mostly great, though loads of supporting characters seem to be Scottish and some tend to sound the same. And yes, as people have pointed out, he does slip into saying Eric. Still, he does a great job for the most part.

All in all, it was fun to revisit something I loved as a teenager, but hearing this was enough to make me realize that it’s best to leave it at that and not try any of the follow-up books.

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Terrible

Revisado: 10-04-21

While there might be some useful information buried far in the recesses of this book, the pompous nature of the reading is very off-putting. The text is delivered in a sort of accusatory second-person. "You learned how to write incorrectly." Loads of that. The writer assumes an awful lot about what we have and have not learned, and in most cases, with me personally, he was incorrect. The writer did himself a disservice by reading his own book for this recording. Filled with arrogance and a droning monotone that sounds like he drank too much wine makes this something that is difficult to listen to. Further, he should have followed his own advice and revised this a bit further. Lacks clarity, structure and direction. I didn't finish it. Not worth buying, not worth listening to.

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Typical HST

Revisado: 10-25-20

Decently done but nothing new here as HST seems like he was treading water and rehashing ground he has already covered more capably in other books.

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disappointing

Revisado: 10-06-20

The narrator is horrible and the book sounds too much like a fanatical self-help book. Too much history and background info and not enough practical, day to day practices. Not very useful. Not recommended.

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Highly overrated

Revisado: 09-17-20

The voice actor is overly plaintive, monotonous and boring. The writing lacks style and takes what is probably actually a good story and makes it a difficult slog. I couldn't last more than maybe 90 minutes before I bailed out. Not recommended.

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Great book, great reader

Revisado: 09-14-20

This was an unexpected gem. Nicely fleshed out story, well thought out and realized. The author does a great job of using different voices to achieve each character. You can tell who's speaking simply by what they are saying. And the voice actor reading this did a great job. Highly recommended. I'm gonna go download the second one now.

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Great!

Revisado: 09-01-20

Great follow up to the first book. Loved it, absolutely, not only for the plot but for Margaret Atwood's writing style which is just a pleasure to read or listen to. Fulfilling, satisfying and a must for anyone who's read or listened to the first book.

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An awesome book badly narrated

Revisado: 06-25-20

I love this series and have read it multiple times over the years. The narrator does a good job with the main character, but a very bad job with all other characters. He adds inappropriate accents, he changes the feeling of the characters, he gets the flavor wrong and in so doing changes the feeling of those characters and this, sadly, impacts the experience.

These books deserve better. Audible should have these redone with a different reader.

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Great!

Revisado: 09-05-12

Having just come off listening to a few bad audio books, this was refreshing. The plot and characters are engaging and the use of language is great. Ron Perlman does a very good job.

This was a pleasure to listen to, all the way through.

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