Shane
The story is well done, moves along, interesting characters and kept my interest. The problems I have are: 1. audiobook is read like reading an instruction manual. dry, matter of fact, unemotional. The book is written that way but it may come out more in the audio. 2. I know the character is a navy seal and highly trained soldier trained to avoid emotion and get their mission done. However, that lack of emotion makes all attempts at him adding emotion about his family, friends seem just a distraction and doesn't come off sincere. 3. This is the most annoying. The author in preface talks about how cool of a soldier he was with top secret missions and the book had to be reviewed by DOD. Well then in the book there are hundreds of “REDACTED” inserted into the middle of the reading. This is STUPID and ruins the flow. If the DOD said a place/person was to be “REDACTED” then just make up a fake name or generic location. e.g. “.... there were 2 dead. Steve and REDACTED trainer. The REDACTED trainer did not deserve this as the REDACTED was a black site that...”
I got a pre-release version in exchange for an honest review. This novella story follows Saint Peter as he takes a little break from the pearly gates. The usual mixture of pop culture, mythology and humor made this an entertaining read. It is well paced and did not feel rushed. Strong recommend for any fan of Circles in Hell. Actually if you haven't read any of the Circles in Hell series you could read this and enjoy the story.
This book was overly verbose and strange sidebars. For example, right before a big confrontation Harlan goes on a long sidebar on the science around why people think time slows down during intense moments then during the confrontation describes our characters doing just that. There was no need for the science lesson. It ruined the flow. Similar situations though out the book. I listened to audiobook and I bet you could cut an hour out and not miss a beat.
oh dear god. I don't care about authors dating habits and sex life. “barbara and I took to the cinema in the evenings. I did not think anything of it until one of my students said the thought barbara liked me. I did notice it until our knee's touched one evening...” OMG this type of drivel keeps cropping up. I don't care about authors personal life, I want to hear specifics on his research. Did not finish.
This book may has well been called “The Gospel of Beelzebub” or “The World according to Beelzebub”. It is a fun ride through history mixed with mythology. The author really did his homework. The number of mythological characters/event and historical events were too many to count. Several events were new to me. I paused a couple of times to go look them up. So this book is not just funny but educational. Keeping the same sense of humor as the rest of the Circles in Hell, this book delivers a fresh story through the Circles in Hell universe. It provides a great backstory to the rest of the series.
This book is a hot mess. It started with 1.5 hours (audiobook) on “detecting life” experiments on earth then jumped to Russian Luna 15 and Apollo 11 moon landing then back for 3 hours of Russian moon background. Skipping between US and Russian and different programs was very confusing. We spent over 2 hourson Luna 16 moon rover from its design/creation and the main engineers life from 1917 to 1960's (blah blah blah. don't give a shit if they designer liked soccer and enjoyed fish). The want back from 1970-71 Luna 16 back to Apollo (not sure why) then jumped to Vera Venus missing the forward to Voyager then backward to Mars Viking. I quit 50% through. that's 8 hours. So I felt I gave it a good shot.
OMG. When an audiobook has to spend 15 minutes at the end to describe the motivation and plot then you know it's a crappy book. I am ok with twists and surprise endings but this one had to hold our hand through the whole plot. I am also quite irritated that patterson has chapter breaks right in the middle of discussions. Does not make sense and its very maddening when listening to a character comment then narrator says “chapter 101” then a character replies to the previous comment. ARRGH.