DRS83

Interesting world building and curious moments interrupting the author's tiresome social commentary.

Revisado: 04-20-25

I was hoping the second book would contain more story and less tiresome social commentary, moaning and whining from the author. Unfortunately not. The world building is interesting and the plot has some real promise but the story keeps coming to a grinding halt so the author can go on boring, tiresome and illogical social justice rants about how much they hate the very system that makes writing these stories possible. I thought it was just a character flaw from the protagonist, but it's happening so often and is presented in such a positive light in the book, I can only assume at this point he's just a mouthpiece for the author's own opinions. Again, just skip ahead any time Jason (the protagonist) speaks and you won't miss a thing about the story because he never focuses on the story but rather just goes on social rants and whines about how horrible his life was before the books. Focus on the side characters, at least they're interesting.

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Very slow start, disjointed organization, overly preachy but finds its legs towards the end.

Revisado: 04-17-25

This is a very, very hard book to start. I almost gave up on it several times at the beginning. Clunky writing, pointless dialogue, unlikeable characters and odd prose. I got the book for free so I figured I'd hang in there. It did get better as it went along but there are a lot of things that can be improved. I don't know if it's a character shtick or if the author actually believes the clap that comes out of the protagonist's mouth, but feel free to skip ahead every time Jason opens his mouth. He never says anything of value and his long winded but pointless monologues are not only ignorant and illogical, they're boring. Fortunately the side characters are interesting and likeable enough to carry the story on in spite of the boring protagonist. The books did finally pick up steam towards the end when there was less talking and more doing. The last dozen chapters focused a lot more on other characters beside Jason and that helped a lot. I don't know that I would buy any further books unless they were on sale, but if cheap enough I might. The narrator, while limited in range, did a fine job and the production quality is fine. This is a very mid book, some good and some bad. Maybe the author will improve as they go on.

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Desperate need of better editing. So much could have been trimmed.

Revisado: 02-14-25

The vocal performances were perfectly fine.

The writing suffered from bloat and lack of vision. There was so much fluff in this that was not needed. So many pointless scenes that didn't advance the story. Several story lines that should have been left out as they added nothing of value. The last third of the book was just lazy exposition dumps where the author tells us about what is happening rather than telling a story.

Several character and arcs might have been better off as novellas or just written into another book, or even better cut entirely.

Very disappointing. I hope Sanderson tightens up the next book. This was bloated. Sanderson likes the sound of his own voice too much.

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Silly, hard to believe, unrealistic

Revisado: 11-03-24

The performance is good. The story wasn't great. While the idea behind the story is decent enough, the author keeps asking for too much suspension of disbelief with the horribly unrealistic way the world responds to everything.

The author's hatred of religion comes out as a cartoonish caracture in the story forcing unrealistic responses from a society that makes no sense. The very thin pseudo science of the world disaster setting was illogical and hard to swallow making it hard to get into the story as well. The story felt like it was written by someone who has heard of people and society but has never actually met any people or been part of society.

Lastly, there were events in the story that, after having occurred, you realize didn't have any impact on the overall plot and were just added in to pad out chapter length and word count. It's as if this was originally a short story but an editor insisted on trying to fill out a whole novel.

OK concept. Unbelievable characters, illogical and unrealistic world setting and random social commentary shoe-horned into the plot make this a 5 out of 10. Not his best work at all.

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More like a collection of short stories

Revisado: 10-25-24

This is easily the weakest of the series in my view. It felt like the author had a lot of story ideas but couldn't flesh any of them out to a full novel, so instead they wrote a collection of short stories that have nothing to do with each other and spread them out over a full novel. Only one storyline really mattered in this novel and it was comprised of maybe 10 of the chapters.

The novel felt a little pointless and rushed.

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A bit slow and padded with an outstanding performance.

Revisado: 12-03-23

I found the story starting off well and ending on an interesting note, with the main part of the story being a bit drawn out and slow. There was a lot of time spent on the romantic relationship between the characters and it's just honestly not interesting. I found myself not really caring about the romantic angles at all. I don't really see how they add to the story beyond forcing one male character to make dumb railroad decisions due to someone being rude to his girlfriend and thus forcing a plot point on. The rest of it was filler disguised as "character development"

The political storyline is much better and I wish it had taken up more of the book. Along with additional bits and pieces to the world building puzzle being provided, this novel does advance the story well.

The narration performance is excellent as always. If I'd had to read the romantic parts I'm sure I would have skipped them. At least the narrator made it tolerable.

TL:DR

Advances the story with good world building and political intrigue. The romantic parts are pointless and do nothing for the story. The narration was excellent. Not Butcher's best work, but not his worst. Solid 6/10.

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Difficult to follow, horrible narration.

Revisado: 06-30-23

I made it to the end of chapter 4 and gave up. The story probably gets better though the intro was quite a slog of confusing names, forgettable dialogue and confusing action scenes. However, the grating, distracting, and poorly paced narration makes this very unpleasant to listen to. The silly, cartoon voices with the awkward phrasing and tone make it sound like everyone in the story is a toddler and it just doesn't work. Maybe I'll buy the book and read it but the terrible choice in narrator makes this a failure of an audio book. I would really like a refund to be honest.

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Expertly read, but not one of Simon's better works

Revisado: 06-28-23

I really enjoyed the first book in the series and felt like the caper genre could be a lot of fun in Simon's world. However I felt like this one was just too short to really do the story justice. A lot of holes and deus ex machina. I know that happens a bit in the Nightside and Drood books, but they're more drawn out and harken back to previous books so the plot still works. This book was just too sudden in the resolution. It's more of a short story than a book.

The narration is excellent, the characters are fun, but the plot is really simple without much mystery to it and when the story is a caper novel, you need a bit more than that.

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He said... He said... He said... He said...

Revisado: 08-23-22

This is a really interesting concept for a story and the telling goes along quite nicely. There's a good sense of humor, some interesting Sci-fi concepts and the characters are likeable enough.

I really enjoyed the story, but if I have to hear

"he said"
"she said"
"he said"
"he said"
"she said"

one more time, I'm going to rip my ears off. The poor author needs an editor who knows how to use words like "replied" or "answered" or "commented" or anything other than "said"

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Dull, repetitive, stretched thin and sadly, boring

Revisado: 10-23-21

I found this book to be a horrible disappointment. It felt like a 10 chapter story that was stretched out into 100 without having enough needed content to justify the length.

Many of the chapters just repeat the same thing over and over again, with the characters doing the same thing over and over, making the same unrealistic choices over and over again with the same depressing whining over and over again.

I seriously believe that 80% of this book could have been cut and the reader wouldn't have missed anything important from the story. It was really hard to finish. What happened to Sanderson's editor?

Add in the imbalanced narration with way too much Kate Reading and her monotone, dull, dragging performances and it was a real slog fest of an audio book.

Toss in the standard Sanderson deus ex machina ending pulled out of nowhere and I just don't see the point of this book. It should have been a short story.

It was dull, repetitive, long winded and lacking direction. I I may be done with the Stormlight books after this.

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