Rob
I struggled a bit with this at times. My attention would drift. I'd go several days without picking it back up, often opting for a podcast instead. It got better as it went along and I already bought the final book in the series, so I will probably wrap it up later this year, but there are some other books I plan to listen to first.
Stephen Brand once again does an excellent job with the narration. This really helped me get through the slower parts when I was less interested.
I have mixed feelings on this one. I struggled with the characters, including Mickey. His view on people doesn't vibe with my own. His choices that lead to him becoming an expendable are not ones I'd make, but I guess I understand. Most of the supporting characters are worse, except maybe Nasha.
For me the thing that kept me picking the book back up was the story itself. There is a bit of a mystery and I wanted to know what happened. Mickey did grow on me as the book went along. He had some interesting character growth. The book explores a lot of ideas about what is self.
I guess there is a sequel, but I'm not likely to pick it up. I am fine with this as a stand-alone.
I will continue the series, but every time I pick up a new book in this series I'm reminded how much I can struggle with the writing. I love the characters, the world building and the overall plot has me interested. That said there are just huge lulls of infodumps or overexplaining things and I just sort of tune out. I want to see where the story goes. This book finished much stronger than it started.
The narration is fantastic as always. I think it's a huge help to get through the slow parts of the series. I was annoyed when the book got delayed, but I'd rather it be delayed than have a different narrator.
For a while John Scalzi was one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Anytime a new book a pre-order was automatic. However I was mostly underwhelmed by his last two novels The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. Both had fun sounding premises and both didn't end up being as fun as their premise.
So here comes this book about the moon turning to cheese. In the afterword Scalzi mentions how its the final book in what he sort of considers a loose trilogy of unrelated books. I was staring to think that maybe I'd be more selective of which novels by Mr. Scalzi I'd pre-order in the future.
Thankfully this was a book that ended up being as fun as the premise. If you're looking for a hard sci-fi novel, well you must not have read a John Scalzi novel before. The science is hand wavy at best. But that' not the point.
I'm not generally a fan of short stories. This book is almost that, but not quite. Some characters we meet once and never again. The book explores a lot of ideas, characters and parts of the US with the question of "how would they react if the moon turned to cheese?". It's a silly premise and question, but somehow it leads to some really interesting vignettes that worked well together into a novel length story.
Despite my somewhat low expectations and a style of story telling I generally don't enjoy, Mr. Scalzi somehow pulled it off.
Wil Wheaton does his usual good job with narrations. This book has far less snark than other books by Mr. Scalzi but I still think Wil is always a great fit for his novels.
It's been a while since I read the last book in this series. Apparently that one was set on the moon and featured Nicole instead of Elma and the book I loved the most.
This book returns to Elma and Mars. I'm not sure how much was the return to Elma and how much was just the plot not being as strong, but this one wasn't as good as the last.
Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, and would read another one if she writes one, but at points of the book Elma was getting on my nerves and the interactions with some of the other characters did as well.
Once again Mary Robinette Kowal does an excellent job narrating her own book. The audio is a great option for this series.
Similar vibe to the original. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as that one, but it was still a fun read. In general I don't tend to enjoy prequels, but I thought this one worked well enough. There was a good mix of characters and subplots to make this different enough from the first. Everything here feels pretty self-contained apart from maybe the epilogue that makes this feel mostly like a stand alone.
I guess there is now going to be a 3rd book, though I don't know where that falls in the chronology of the first 2. I will check it out at some point, but I won't necessarily rush to pick it up.
Travis Baldree does his usual excellent job at narration for this. Normally I'm not a huge fan when authors read their own works, but I enjoy Mr. Baldree's narration for a few other series so he's an excellent choice here.
It's been a while (3.5 years) since I listened to Heaven's River, so my memory of the characters and where things left off was fuzzy. I did mostly get back into things after a bit without feeling the need to look for recap.
The book was enjoyable enough that it kept my attention, but it also sort of felt like a bit of a transition book. There were like 4 main plot lines, and all of them felt like setup for more books. I'm good with that, I'll read more books.
I thought it ended in a fine place where I'm looking forward to the next book but not going to be impatient for it to come out. There are lots of loose threads but nothing I'd call a cliffhanger.
Audio narration was fantastic as usual. Ray Porter is excellent.
It was quite good, but not quite as good as the last book. It did finish really strong though and I can't wait for the audio version of the next book to be out next month.
I've been binging this series in audio now for the past 2 months or so and I'm sad I'm not able to jump right into the next one.
The narration continues to be fantastic. I guess they are redoing the series as an audio drama with multiple narrators, but I'm good with just Jeff Hays. He's one of the best narrators I've listened to in quite some time.
This series is a lot of fun. The humor can be a bit sophomoric, which may turn off some folks, but it works pretty well for me.
If you haven't checked this series out yet and you like RPGs/heavy action fantasy series give this one a look.
You know a book is great when you will stare at a wall just to get some extra audiobook time in. Easily the best of the series so far. He's been building up the "6th floor" since early on in the series and he didn't fail to deliver. I really love this series. It's going to be hard to top this book though.
The quality of the audiobooks has gone up with each one. I'm generally not a huge fan of the music and sound effects in audiobooks, but they do a good job of it and don't overdo it.
Very uneven. The first half of this book was painfully slow and I went days and weeks without being interested in picking it back up. The second half was far more engaging, but still slow at times until probably the last quarter or so.
I'm not sure what to rate this book, the first half was 2.5 or 3, while the second half was 3.5 or 4. This book is so long it could easily be 3 books. I'm inclined to just go with it ending strong and give it a 3.5
I'm not sure if the series has just simply grown too bloated (like many epic fantasy series before it), or if it's simply that my tastes and reading habits have severely changed since I first started reading this series.
Some character arcs were far more interesting to me than others. I'll be curious to see how interested I am with his planned break between this book at the next. Likely I'll be excited to pick it back up again, but probably far less excited than I was after the first three books.
It's a fine story with the typical Scalzi humor. It may be that later entries in this series (assuming it continues) will be a bit better without needing to take up so much time world building. The world building would have been fine for a longer story, but it felt like the story took too long to get started.
Audiobook: The audio is fantastic. Amber Benson does a fantastic job with a variety of voices. As this is currently the only way to consume this story, it's a nice benefit to get such excellent narration.
This is my first time reading Zelazny. I hadn't heard of this book before. The more popular pick seems to be Lord of Light.
Someone in my book club suggested doing a chapter/day starting on September 30th because each chapter is a day. This worked well for me because most of the chapters were short and could easily be consumed while doing a simple task around the house like making lunch. There are a few exceptions to this including the final chapter which was by far the longest.
My interest in the book was up and down, with some day's events keeping my attention more than others. I'm not a classic monster/horror/literature guy. So while I mostly followed who the various unnamed characters are (The Count, the Great Detective, etc) I'm sure there is a lot of stuff that I just didn't get.
Overall the story was fine, but didn't really grab me. I think if I had tried to just listen to this as my normal book and not doing 1 chapter/day I might have enjoyed it less.
I listened to the audiobook version of this because it was included with my audible subscription. I thought the narrator did a pretty good job with a variety of voices for the different characters.
I liked this one quite a bit more than Nolyn. Farilane is a great character. She has some flaws, but those mostly just serve to round her out. She also seems to grow quite a bit as the book goes along.
The opening chapter was really good at drawing me in. It was almost like a scene out of Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider.
The only issue I have with this is how it ended. It's hard to elaborate without spoilers, but I'll just say it didn't felt earned. It didn't ruin the book for me, because overall I enjoyed it, but it did knock a star off the rating.
I really enjoyed the original Ryria books so I was pretty excited for the First Empire series when it came out. I enjoyed the first few books in that series, but I felt like it lost steam by the end. So when this series was announced, I wasn't as excited.
I did want to read this eventually, but wasn't in a rush. I finally got around to it, and I found it another strong start to a new series. I thought the new characters were interesting, especially the titular character, Nolyn. Some of the supporting characters were reminiscent of characters in Ryria or First Empire, but the main characters felt more flushed out.
Overall I found this a fun listen and will be continuing right on into the second book. As usual, Tim Gerard Reynolds does a fantastic job with the narration. However there was one chapter where there was a lot of repeated text and it made for an agitating listen. If I had been reading the text instead I would have skimmed over that section.
I first heard about this book thanks to an article on Ars Technica. What I found strange was it was the time I heard anything about this. Given the timing (2020-21) of the bulk of the story though, it's not too much of a surprise. I had other things on my mind back then.
I've read a lot of computer history and cybercrime books. I find the topic fascinating. This book is really more about more traditional crime (drugs, guns, money laundering) with a technical aspect (encrypted phones). From a technical perspective I didn't enjoy this as much as other books, but it's still a fascinating story.
It poses a lot of issues as technology and specifically encryption techniques continue to evolve how do you balance our right to privacy against the needs to prevent crimes? I don't have any answers and this book doesn't attempt to answer that question. What it does it instead is to tell a fascinating story that seems like it's right out of a movie.
I think this could turn into a great documentary or possible a movie, but it's probably not flashy enough for the latter. Staring at computer screens reading messages is not exactly big screen cinema. Overall though I found this a great read.
Another fun entry in this series. I still don't enjoy it as much as his cradle series, but still a drop everything and read book for me. As someone who has watched a lot of Gundam over the years, I always enjoyed the Raion/giant mech subplot. As the title suggests, this book focuses heavily on him and Varic's relationship to him.
The audio is great. Travis Baldree does his usual excellent job with the narration
Pretty solid ending to a mostly fun series. After his reckoner series, I had decided I was done with any non-Cosmere books. However the first one in this series changed my mind and for the most part it's been a fun holiday road trip book series for me. When this one came out I was busy with other books and am only now getting around to it. I don't like it as much as the Cosmere books, but still worth the listen.
I enjoy pretty much everything John Scalzi writes. This one was fun, but nothing special. I probably liked it better than his last book, but not as much as some of his others. It was slow at times, and the dolphins were a bit too much. The cats were great though.
As usual Wil Wheaton's narration is a great fit for Scalzi's snark.
This one took me a while to get into. It's been a really long time since the first book came out, and I don't read enough anymore to spend the time rereading. Eventually I got my bearings and I enjoyed the book overall, but not as much as the first one. Maybe if they had come out closer together I would have enjoyed it more (or if I do a reread of the series sometime). I will still pick up the next book as I'm a huge fan of Jim Butcher.
I did the audio and I thought the narrator was excellent, in particular their cat voices.
3.5 stars probably, rounded up.
So this isn't exactly a book. More like an audio program I guess. Each “chapter” is an episode. There is sound effects and music. Each character is played by a different actor.
As a format, I think this is great, and would consume more stories this way. In my early days of getting into audiobooks I borrowed some BBC Sherlock Holmes stuff that worked the same way, and I'm surprised there haven't been more like this. If I was rating just the audio portion, it would be an easy 5 stars.
One improvement I'd love to see is some kind of full cast list posted somewhere (ideally in text, not audio, but I'd take an audio update over nothing). There are so many characters and I recognize some of the voices but not all. I was only able to find some partial lists on various sites, but nothing on audible or Felicia's website. I'm not sure if this warrants an IMDB page, but I love how IMDB has pages for TV Episodes because I often use them to look up someone and try to jog my memory as to what else I've seen them in before.
With regards to the actual story, I had mixed feelings. Some of the humor was great, but a lot of it didn't work for me. That's always going to be subjective though.
I also didn't find any of the characters very likeable though, which is my bigger issue. I thought they were interesting characters, but I like to have something to “root” for. I guess I was rooting for Laurel, but often I was just frustrated with her.
My favorite character was probably Robicus (not sure I'm spelling that right). It may be that I'm partial to Wil Wheaton, or maybe it's just you're not supposed to like him, so I thought that was well done.
Overall, I thought this was enjoyable but not amazing. I do love that it was a self contained story. That's so rare these days. Everything is a series. If you like fantasy, and nerdy humor and/or are a fan of The Guild this one is probably worth a listen. Probably closer to 3.5 stars than 3, but not quite 4 for me.