OYENTE

P. Larsen

  • 57
  • opiniones
  • 183
  • votos útiles
  • 282
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Why do I keep doing this to myself?

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

Revisado: 11-11-24

So I "forgot" I couldn't finish book 2; for many reasons but one was the narration. Book 3 is taking the annoying narration to level 10 with particular one of the characters spoken with a tone that reminds me of nails on blackboards in the olden days.

I like long books - they are great for travel and tend to be consistent through-out the book. But after about 1 hour of listening I cannot tell what has happened. The story is looooong and slow. It's all "I'm too dumb to do this" and then they go and do it anyway.

I think a different narrator may have made it possible for me to finish the books; but not with this version. And I was dumb enough to get book 4 on a 2:1 sale. GRRR.

If you have a teenage daugther, or just like books from your teenage years I think this will be a good book. I'm neigher and it's definitely not for me. I just need to remember that in 6 months when I find a "juicy long book" with a story line I find appealing.

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Recommend stopping at book 4

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

Revisado: 07-27-24

This book is not like the other books. The storytelling is different and you have blocks of many minutes of stats that really doesn't get used in the story - all but a few of them. Worse, the writing style has changed - you're dropped into a moment, it then goes backwards describing how things got to here, and then moves forward to the end of the event. Very different from the liniar storytelling of the first books.

It feels like someone told Luke Chmilenko to write a 5th book even though he didn't want to. And the result is a non-engaging story. I'm stilll lost in what/who is being fought and why. It certainly doesn't help that the concept of "death" doesn't exist for the main characters - which just prolongs the same protagonist vs antagonist story over and over again.

The bright part is Luke Daniels - as always an excellent narrator.

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Romance novel pretending to be SciFi

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

Revisado: 07-10-24

I like bundled books where multiple "shorter" books that together makes a full story are put together. I like SciFi, I like Space Opera, but I don't like this one. My better half and I have an understanding, that our interest in book subjects are very different; I like fantasy and scifi, they like romance novels. And neigther of us like the other's preferred genre. This book (series) would probably get us both angry - too much of the stuff that we don't care about.

Add that had I known about book 4's narrator on the preview I would NEVER EVER had selected this book. I barely made me through the book as the protagonist explained over and over how she was infactuated by a man flirting with her, and that she didn't understand why she would be attracted. That was basically it for the whole book, read by a narrator that I think does a lot of soft-p0rn romance novels - it made me almost stop the book right there, I lost all track of where this story belonged with the other 3 I'd already gone through (done by Dave Cruse - not my favorite narrator but doing an OK job given he had to talk about "feelings" a lot).

This is a relationship romance. About falling in love, dealing with relationships in the chain of command, how distance can cause disruptions to even the best relationships and how couples have to work on maintaining and growing their relationship. All mixed in with a little "AI personality" battles and battles that I have to admit are a bit hard to follow in the narration. It seems to just be the interludes between the next relationship challenge.

It's not my taste and I feel the (true) genre should have been clear on the Audible site instead of allowing this false label to persist. I may go for other books narrated by Dave Cruse but Matthe Duncan and Caroline McLaughlin will definitely be put on a "do not buy" list.

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Audible needs a category tag "Zombie"

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

Revisado: 06-21-24

This isn't scifi - it's a very traditional Zombie book where the dead lives. It's nonsense, it's silly and I couldn't stand but about the first hour of the audio before I gave up.
Audible needs to tag books for what they are - not sell them using vague descriptions that make them sound like something they aren't.
If you're into zombie stuff this is most likely a good buy. For me, it is just another failed book that I'll never listen to.

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Not my cup of tea - or cup of anything

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-30-24

The preview/sample deceived me. This is a teen-romance about teens falling for, and talking about, the quests of those in love for the first time. Add a very challenging narrator to the mix and you lost me. It's definitely not a coming of age or anything someone "adult" would like. I'm sure this would be a wonderful book for teenagers - they should go for it. The rest of us, not so much.

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Another one falls to narration

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

Revisado: 04-29-24

I found this book that was one of the ones I bought during my first year as an Audible member. I could not recall anything from the summary so I thought I should give it a whirl. Now I realize why I don't remember. I'm more than 2 hours in, and I still have no clue what is going on and I cannot tell if that's due to the book or the narrator or both.

This is a narrator that technically is very good at speaking and pronunciation. But what he doesn't seem to have learned is emotion. If it wasn't for how long ago this book was published, this could be a bad AI narration. At best this is a good sleep-aid; the same sing-a-song way of reading every sentence, same pauses - very forgetful. Regardless of what is happening it's the same tone, same inflection, same speed. The positive part is that every word heard is easily understood - although get used to having every character talk the same way. It's a pure reader experience - it's not about giving you an interpretation of how a story could be seen if it was for real; perhaps we get too used to super-stars like Ray Porter; perhaps we just need to aim for better - which this is not even an attempt at.

As to the story - I still like the idea of the story. But 2+ hours in, I am fairly sure I'll put this back on the shelf and mark it as unreadable. I should have been caught and into the story by now and I'm not. And unfortunately I don't think it's due to the book - but how it's presented. I'm just not sure.

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A book by and for teenagers ....

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

Revisado: 02-26-24

I'm only about 1.5h in and I think this will go back; I am pretty sure I won't last the whole 43 hours. And I really have to admit that I expected books for kids/teenagers to be marked as such; I barely remember the time and worse I do not identify with the drama and social foopars and "cool things" that teenagers would be interested in today. In contrast to a lot of other books in the universe of wiccans and the ocults, this book is more about relationships between young adults/teenagers than the universe of magic, powers and more. The first seems to be the focus, not the latter.

While this may change later on, every character is immature - is fighting to know themselves and be liked, particular by the opposite sex. Remove the magic and you have a high-school drama. So many other books do a better job at describing the world view of wicca and the superstitions around it trying to answer the question of "what if this was real?" and lots of great stories and long series have been created based on that. But this is not it. 1.5h in, and I don't think I'll last long enough to see if that changes in the next 40-some hours. I'm really not looking forward to know if "those sexy 6 abs" will result in teenage love.

Stepping a bit back, I think the narrator is a good choice if the goal is appealing to teenagers. She's either at that age herself or very good at speaking the language. That makes it a bad choice to me - even though the preview indicated the speech-pattern to be like this, it seems to get worse particular when voicing teenage characters. That makes me grade the narrator as I do - but if a teenage drama is what you want, I think Vanessa is the perfect choice.

I may come back if I manage to get much further into the book.

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For LitRPG this is a great story

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

Revisado: 12-07-23

I don't get the reviews here - do people really think that to like a fictional story the politics, social commentary and more have to fit our current world, AND popular views, to be a good story? It's a story - in a universe with magic, monsters, potions, lords, wizards, cannibals and a lot more, and "you" feel it's a bad story because the protagonist isn't religious or "for social justice"? I like LitRPG, don't necessarily love it, but they're often good stories that generate good fictional universes, some have good character building some not so much, but most of them allows you to build characters that would NEVER work in the "real world" and that makes the genre unique. Why in the world it's expected that current social norms should be applied to a universe that pretends to be centuries or decades behind our modern society (but they have magic) would not follow the norms of that time is beyond me to understand. If anything, it seems to be one of the few areas where the author actually follows the norms of a society of the middle ages - if you ignore the speech.

With that said - this is an interesting universe created - well balanced and coherent. The voice/character that leads the book does so with inate humor, perhaps not humor that fully falls in with the readers taste, certainly doesn't for me all the time, but it's not taking itself series. It's a book that's supposed to be fun to read, and it is. It challenges society norms breaking down walls that exist between your born rights towards earned rights all while not taking itself too serious.

I've seen/read other LitRPG that does this better - but having an Aussie and not an American lead the book is a wonderful difference. Jason can bring you to laugh or cringe, all while building up a universe that slowly makes sense. If you know the genre then a lot of the initial parts of the book is "too long" explaining how RPG works - that said, it's one of my problems with the genre - ALL the books seems to want to explain the genre as we (the readers) didn't know what it is. This does that to the excess as our protagonist supposedly doesn't know about it. If you're new to the genre, this will take you there with a smile on your face. You certainly won't come away taking the story serious.

One part that I really like is the theater of characters is limited - at least in book 1. It really gets hard to like a book where you follow a dozen or so different characters and story lines. This is a rather "simple" book in that regard - but it's still full of action and movement. Not boring - and part of that is due to the narrator. My only ding is that who-ever produced this recorded so when you play back at higher speeds, words go missing or get garbled -I'll definitely recommend finding other books narrated by Health Miller, it's an easy voice to listen to and the narration supports the story well with inflections, accents etc.

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My first bad "Luke Daniels" book ... darn it

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

Revisado: 10-04-23

I've come to expect top notch on books read by Luke Daniels. So many times his involvement has resulted in me discovering new authors and series. But this one is not it. Not because of Luke Daniel's performance, but this book series seems to be written by a graduate from a seminary trying to justify his belief in gods. It totally destroys a good idea/concept.

Books 1-3 were in my plus catalog, and I would have been returning the books had I purchased them. The 3rd book was the "it's turtles all the way down" book as the simulation universe gets injected with recursiveness as simulations inside simulations - you see your gods being born/started.

And that's what this book is about - discovering and respecting deities - everything goes well when there's "belief" in something bigger. The whole complete screwy society that forces participation, and for those who cannot afford gets bottom of the barrel education, slums and more. They created a simulation, where if you're successful you can live full lives in while your "real life" only goes forward by a few weeks as you lived 70+ years in the simulation. But if you don't do well, you won't be able to afford to go back in and "reality" is as dystopian as it comes.

As a theological book, it sure does challenge the idea of good vs. evil, who's who, and so - but I'm sorry the sci-fi/fantasy part of this is lost in that mess. Luke Daniels isn't able to make it a good book - but he makes a very good try at it.

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Shogun Audiolibro Por James Clavell arte de portada

Not the story I knew and loved

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

Revisado: 05-25-23

Shogun was one of my favorite TV series in the 80ies. At that time I really didn't think about getting the book(s) - so it's about time I catch up I guess. Everything in the 80ies was about Japan and it's influence in the tech-world. This story was my first introduction to it's rich culture, language and history - although a very dramatic and not exactly true in all cases. As a European it was a very interesting introduction to something new and exciting. I could not wait to hear it again - I have the series on DVD, and was looking forward to more details and background.

But what a snooze fest. If I should highlight a positive part, it's that it will cure insomnia. It's really hard to keep attention going. While I recognize the main line of the story, the narrator's idea of Japanese is not that of the movie where our hero's love interest was a real japanese woman. It feels forced and eventually gets really hard to keep up with. It's not easy to tell if it's a bad pronunciation or what - but I don't recognize words later on, even though they were supposed to be covered. And worse, the book covers a much bigger vocabulary than the movie does - you need some kind of dictionary to keep up, and it just doesn't feel like a book you can just enjoy and listen to.

I cannot believe this may be one of the few audio-books I have to return. The story has it all - heroes, betrayal, tricksters, good vs evil, a historical foundation, a respectful description of the Japanese culture of an age long gone, romance, fighting - and a lot more. It should be worth a read/listen - but this production just doesn't do it for me. Twice I've put the book away to listen to other things. I feel I can only play it when I want to go to sleep. I thought the length would make a story I love even better - but not with this production. It's really hard - I'm about half-way through and I no longer think I can make it.

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