Renaldo Matlin

Good story, bad narration

Reviewed: 08-26-22

I've listened to close to a dozen Connelly novels so far. He has quickly become my favorite thriller novelist. My favorites so far are probably "The Black Echo" (masterpiece!) and "The Poet".

I liked his introduction of a new female detective working the late shift, the story is decent and engaging throughout. But as an audio book it is made EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to get through because of reader Katherine Moennig.

I always shy away from blaming the person reading a novel, as I always find that even the lesser ones slowly pull me in as I get into their rhythm and style. However in this case it was made impossible because Moennig (despite her voice sounding pleasant and inviting) keeps reading everything mostly in the same tone. No matter whether it's speedy action or slow parts she rarely makes a change in her tone, and the worst part - what makes it near impossible to get through - is that she never does anything to make different characters sound different!

Now I'm not saying she should go into full blown parody and talk with a deep voice for one character, high pitch for another and so on, but as a performer - when reading dialogue between two or more people - you MUST do something, tiny audible traits that makes it possible to understand who is saying what.

Her constant lack of doing so created so many moments of confusion for me as listener, making focusing on the plot a difficult task when instead I'm stuck wondering which character is talking. It also made it difficult for me to ever get truly emgulfed in the story. The only exceptions are a few long sequences where the main character is alone with her thoughts.

It's a dang shame. I do not understand how the producer/director of this audiobook didn't stop and tell the narrator to do a better job. Hopefully it was a learning experience as the feedback comes in from disappointed listeners, but as things stand now, I will never again listen to anything performed by this reader, but more than anything it's the fault of whoever produced the recording. They should really know better!

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Great ideas, average execution

Reviewed: 05-09-22

John Scalzi is great at coming up with creative fun ideas and concepts, as this whole universe of murder lade impossible is so ingenius it deserves to be explored in a TV show over multiple seasons. But the execution leaves me wanting much more. He tends to write his characters too dumb, where everything needs to be explained long after we the reader already got the point. Also, he is not really that great at portraying suspense in dangerous situation. For comparison see how someone like Michael Connelly or James Patterson can get you on the edge of your seat even with the most mundane situations.

Still, this adventure makes for passable 3 hour entertainment while I'm doing other things like dusting or taking a bath.

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Great idea, ok execution

Reviewed: 04-26-22

The author tends to overexplain a bit, the main character talking to other characters (and us) like they're children sometimes.

Also, although Zachary Quinto is a great actor and at times a wonderful narrator, he tends to read the story in the wrong tone. He throws in a lot of chuckles which is obviously not described on the page, giving us the feeling we are listening to light fluffy entertainment, when it's actually a very serious mystery dealing with murder... Quinto would undoubtedly be a great narrator for a romantic comedy though.

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Terrific fun!

Reviewed: 04-23-22

Sure it's clichéd but damn good fun, and the narration is absolutely perfect! Great quick entertainment!

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Duchovny, master wordsmith!

Reviewed: 04-19-22

Even if this isn't really my favorite genre, as I prefer more thrillers and comedy, I was surprised at how compelling Duchovny's story is.

Starting out as a mystery and then taking on an ethereal quality that was quite stunning. Duchovny writes like a true poet, in such a way that were he ever to try his hand at a different genre like horror, he could very well raise the feverish to the level of Lovecraft!

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Connelly does it again!

Reviewed: 04-18-22

A real page-turner, packed with so much eerie suspense and never losing its footing throughout, as this could have easily derailed in the hands of lesser writers. But Connelly proves himself again as possibly the best US thriller novelist working today. At times so entertaining that I couldn't just listen while doing other stuff, but I had to put down whatever I was doing - even if it was just walking - and just sit and listen, on the edge of my seat so to speak.

Connelly literally feels like the Stephen King of detective fiction.

Narrator Buck Schirner also does a terrific job! After this I would listen to anything Connelly performed by Schirner.

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A bit over the top but engaging

Reviewed: 04-11-22

The story goes a bit overboard, with so much wild stuff happening. At one point Dr Cross is chasing two sets of serial killers, one a child killer and the others political assassins, and so much is happening that it would be difficult to make this into a movie without it feeling borderline preposterous. But Patterson writes in a very easy listening style, and BECAUSE so much is happening it definitely never gets boring.

The reader does a good job, although I found myself giggling a couple times at the over-dramatic way he often ends every other chapter, by suddenly raising his voice like there was three exclamation points at the end of the chapters.

Enjoyable experience.

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1 person found this helpful

Well-intentioned but immature

Reviewed: 03-14-22

Talky, naive and written by someone who maybe has the best intentions but who in reality seems surprisingly immature.
Also, where did the comedy from the first ten pages disappear to? It was the mix of seriousness and playful comedy in the opening scene (which is teased in the audio excerpt) that grabbed me and lured me in with promise of much more of the same, only to discover that it vanishes for 99% of the novel and is instead replaced with uneven drama that doesn't make sense half the time.

For example little things like the fact that the main character supposedly stays in a small tea house for several weeks before even entering the upper floors?? This type of nonsense makes me wonder whether the author has ever stayed in a confined space for more than a day, let alone lived through actual life and death situations.

Also, the characters here don't seem to know anything. "I don't know" is uttered a million times. They're all searching for answers, but eventuelly I get the feeling this is because the author himself is searching and so he wrote this whole book as personal therapy.

In the end I feel more like I've been an unpaid therapist listening to someone's endless ramblings, then I've been a reader entertained by a good story.

At one point the main character is ranting because someone just told him they can't stop death (duh), and he responds
"what's the point, then, if nothing we do matters?" So basically the notion is that the fact you can't overcome death means life itself is pointless?? Wtf?? That's about as deep as the thinking goes in this novel.

I've gone through so many close deaths in my family that I ran out of tears (my five closest all died over 5 years, many of them way too young and sudden). So I have spent plenty of time thinking about, and dealing with life and death, and I get the feeling author T. J. Klune has barely experienced anything much at all related to what he is writing about here. Even if he means well.

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Amazing narration, nasty novel

Reviewed: 02-11-22

I never imagined anything by the great Stephen King would disappoint me this hard. For 40 years I've loved everything else I have heard and read by him. As far as screen adaptions go, I even liked the infamous "Maximum Overdrive"!

I also never had a problem with violent and grissly films or books. So why was I so totally turned off by the violence in "The Regulators"? Because, boy, this is some demented form of entertainment. I don't know what dark corner King crawled into when he wrote under the pseudonym 'Richard Bachman' but "The Regulators" feel like an idea conceived in the bowels of Hell.

For starters the plot takes place over just a couple hours, but these hours are stretched into a book several hundred pages long and an audio book 12 hours. All that could be fine when you're a writer as good as King. The man knows how to have a field day with words. But literally 80 percent of the text is dedicated to describing brutal murders. And many of the victims are kids.

After the second detailed description of defenseless people being maimed or killed, I started hoping we were moving on to something with actual substance. Instead it never lets up. It's hour after hour after hour with barely any character development or plot except descriptions of how a large gallery of people are terrorized, screaming, crying over loved ones slaughtered, only to be slaughtered themselves. And don't get me started on how difficult it is to keep track of all the multiple characters when they're all just caught up in the same endless chaotic mayhem. Geez louise.

After a few hours of this, everything started feeling almost perverted, not to mention frustratingly repetitive. The whole experience got so excruciating that on one hand I needed to force myself to get through it, because I can't handle just quitting something when I already listened the first hours. But because the text was so soul-destroying, it took me several weeks to get through it! It became maddening. I just wanted it to be over with, so I could find something better, more giving to listen to.

The sad thing is that narrator Frank Muller is an incredible audiobook performer, absolute world class. Such a shame then, that I found the text itself to be pointless trash.

Spoiler alert: This is basically a violent mass murder fantasy where the villain can only be defeated by giving an 8-year-old autistic boy diarrhea! Wtf...?

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Perfect

Reviewed: 01-25-22

Great narration and "Later" is Stephen King's effortless storytelling skills at its best. Loved it!

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