magoosmom

Narration is William Shatner level

Reviewed: 05-20-23

Will I remember this book? Probably not. It just kept going on and on. When you thought there was ending, there was another twist. But it wasn’t satisfying however the hardest part for me listening was the male narrator. The over emphasizing of words, dramatic pauses…I still don’t know why. And I feel like I’ve listened to the narrator before and not had that thought. The female narrator was good.

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1 person found this helpful

Boring and Wil Wheaton narration irritating

Reviewed: 03-18-23

I honestly don't love Wil Wheaton as a narrator, but I have listened to other books narrated by him and not been as annoyed as this one. I'm about 3 hours in and between his narration and the story being so basic, I'm looking for my next read already. Wheaton emphasizes words that don't need to be, shouts in parts, and then drops too low in others. There are so many people who narrate audiobooks very professionally, but Wil is definitely more of an actor than a narrator and it shows.

As for the story, it seems like it would be interesting but the three hours I've listened it's been mostly about banter, clever remarks, the novelty of a parallel world with Kaiju, and that's been it. Nothing of significance is really happening.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent Trilogy

Reviewed: 03-18-23

I enjoyed this trilogy very much. The pacing is great, the story is imaginative, and the narrator(s) do a great job. Worth the credits.

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Pace Was Slow, Ending Predictable and Trite

Reviewed: 05-24-21

I'm like others...saw the great reviews and even as I'm listening and thinking oh for heaven's sake, will something please happen already? I stuck with it because of the great reviews. Only to get about 3/4ths in and figure out the ending. Surely not. They surely won't go there. It's been done to death. Sure enough, there it was at the end. The author even points out how often it's been used and how unlikely it is! Gah. Waste of time.

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1 person found this helpful

Not the worst, but could be better

Reviewed: 02-29-20

The reviews for this book are amazing, so when I was feeling a bit frustrated with certain aspects, I actually came back to look at them and see if I was the only one struggling with parts of this. I saw some that really disliked it and some that picked up on a few of the things that were bothering me.
Good stuff first: the story as a premise is a good one and overall, the story was engaging enough for me to buy the sequel. I didn't hate the book (obviously) but there were some areas that drove me a little nuts.
Writing: This was one of the harder aspects to like about the book. The author uses SO MANY WORDS to say simple things. You know in English class when your class had to make a boring sentence more "vivid and interesting" so you add a ton of adjectives? That's what it feels like in a lot of this book. It also feels like he brainstormed a list of similes, metaphors, and expressions and kept it by his computer to insert in the writing. It's awkward.
Narrator: I was not a fan of the voices the narrator chose, especially for the women. With the exception of 2-3 female characters, the majority of female voices are just obnoxious. Other than that, the narrator does a decent job with performing the book. There's also a few male voices- particularly for the nerdier males - that are just obvious and overdone. One of the main characters is like listening to Eugene in Grease.
Pacing: The pacing is just off. Some books slow down to a slog (particularly romantic interactions and fight scenes) and other parts seemed to just gloss over several weeks with nothing happening. Because of this, I might have spaced out a few times, because there were several times when the book mentioned some aspect of a character's past that I could have sworn hadn't been brought up before.
Overall: Someone said this is like Harry Potter for superpowers. Um. No. This is nothing like Harry Potter. In fact, the only parallels I could draw is that it takes place at a center of learning. That's it. The length of the audiobook was a draw, but then with the pacing being off, it felt a bit like a curse (never good when you're looking at the time to see how much longer it goes on). But even with all of that, the plot is engaging and interesting enough that I wanted to know more and the faults were not enough to keep me away from listening to the next volume. We will see where my patience lies after book two.

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The word for this performance is STRIDENT

Reviewed: 02-17-19

If you're sensitive to loud noises and yelling, you're going to want to give this performance a pass. It's tough to leave a bad review, because I can see where the producers and performers were trying to do the best job. However, the end result is a LOT of screaming and loud sound effects.

The book has a lot of transitions, so different sound effects are used to convey this. Most are fine, but fair warning: there is a whistleblower sound effect that startled me very badly. It was super loud and almost sounded like a scream rather than a whistle. In addition to the sound effects, there are a LOT of times for the performers to just scream their heads off. There's one annoying character who basically yells for no reason. There's another who gets worked up and there's these long drawn-out segments of hollering. Then there's the whistleblower guy who basically yells his entire segment. After listening to hundreds of audiobooks, this literally was the most strident book I've ever listened to.

First, a quick review of the novel itself. The book is very segmented and fractured at first, seemingly disconnected, as others have said. As you read through the book, it slowly (sometimes too slowly) pulls together. I spent the first half of the book spending more time trying to figure out where this was going--particularly when a very poorly written (on purpose) make-believe story is added in there--than I was in actually enjoying the book. Was the end result worth it? Meh. It landed pretty much where I thought it would and I wasn't overly shocked by any outcomes. I'm not motivated to read a sequel if there is one and that's without the added issue of the performance. I definitely give the author props for trying to do something different. It might translate better in book than it did for me on audio.

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3 people found this helpful

Fun Listen But Not 100% There Yet

Reviewed: 01-19-19

Like others have said, You're Going to Mars! is clearly inspired by a few sources, with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory being a major influence. In my opinion, that's not a bad thing though. The story may have the lucky winner element, but the details are different enough to be its own story.

The part that needs work, however, is developing the relationships. While I enjoyed the main character's personal journey in the competition and all the details about the competition, relationships were forced on her by the author in ways that didn't make a lick of sense. For some reason, she trusts the one person in the book she should clearly never, ever trust based on the girl's actions. Somehow, despite all the trickery, these two bond in such a way that they would do anything for each other--but there is no indication as to WHY they've reached that level of friendship. All the interactions described don't give us a reason for their bond. Another relationship is the romantic interest. There is brief mention of a character and the next thing you know, she's madly in love with them.

The relationship building was just so off that I was pulled out of the story by the amateur feel of it. The plot and the details are enough to keep this a 4-star read, but either leave the deeper relationship stuff out of it, or work on figuring out how to develop it so it feels real and not just thrust upon the characters.

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4 people found this helpful

Slow to Warm Up--But Then It's Great

Reviewed: 01-19-19

My previous experience with Sanderson was through his Reckoners series. In that series, there's a sense of humor right from the beginning with the main character and his interactions with the others. I missed that aspect at the beginning of Skyward and it made it harder to connect with the character at first. But as the story unfolded and she interacted more, her character developed and I began to really enjoy listening to the story. By the end, I was glad I had given it a listen.

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Excellent Sequel--Very Little Like the Movie

Reviewed: 11-18-18

Before deciding on this book, I read a review that said that only about 5% of this book made it into the movie. That convinced me to buy it and it was completely true. This book and the movie are not much alike at all. However, I didn't think the book was all that much better than the movie either. The book was a little flat, even with all the adventure thrown in. Crichton's transitions between lecture time and adventure and trying to space out the scientific knowledge and the conclusion were just not good. Most of the time it was--hey, there's dinosaurs coming our way. This is a PERFECT time for a lecture on this scientific theory. Or hey, I'm talking about my ideas, but there's still a lot of book left to go, so I can't reveal my big thought yet. So here's a mysterious sound to distract the lecturer ... this speech is to be continued in 100 pages.

I still enjoyed it overall. It was another chance to see the dinos in action and think about dinosaur theories while enjoying the simple plot.

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Great narration, almost great story

Reviewed: 03-30-18

After revisiting The Talisman, I moved on to listening to Black House. Listening back to back, I really appreciated that the narrator was the same in both books. It gave continuity.

With the story, it was great to visit with Jack again and see him all grown-up. The storyline is interesting and moves along *pretty* well.

I wish I could give overall and story 4.5 stars, because the only thing that kept it from being 5 stars was a tendency to write the same scene over and over again but from different perspectives. While I appreciated the detail, it just seemed to be overdone and not really necessary.

Overall though, this is an easy listen--good narrator and mostly keeps your interest.

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