N. J. Simicich

While the ideas were great, they weren't new, performance made it superb

Reviewed: 11-04-24

The performance deserved six stars. Every character was unique and was described by their voice as much as the words they spoke. The ideas,while old science fiction, were well executed, just not new. Having a Scalzi story not ready by Wil Wheaton was worrying, but, well, this was the right reader for this story.

I could see this as a TV series. I'd watch it.

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Trite and kinda sucky

Reviewed: 09-14-24

I kept listening to this train wreck of trite sports sayings and jumbled, misunserstood quantum physics hoping it would get better.

It never did. I kept imagining better endings in my mind. None of them were correct.

Only the performance saved it.

Maybe Clara Bastone is AI or writes with AI? Because it just seemed to be bits and pieces of unoriginal stuff I'd heard before.

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horrid by any measure

Reviewed: 08-01-24

The reader made an uninteresting story even worse. I listened to a couple hours, went back, listened again....and gave up. I'll save it for when I need to sleep. I've given many positive reviews on audible, but I can't give this putrid pile (wait, a real putrid pile might be interesting) any more than my worst recommendation.

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Horrible production detracted from a so-so story

Reviewed: 09-20-23

The story was ok, not horribly compelling, but the acting was so-so and the actual production was miserably bad. My wife opined that it would have been better had a single reader just read the story. Many lines were mumbled, inaudible, or too quiet to hear unless you turned the volume up so loud that the normally spoken lines were ear-splitting.

It was difficult to tell which character was talking.

The story was neither compelling nor believable. The ending made it clear that this was a set up for a series. My wife and I love police procedurals, and had no desire to look for a second in this series.

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Not Ms. Summers's greatest, to this litRPG fan.

Reviewed: 06-04-23

I was introduced to Ms. Summers writing through the Stonehaven League series. For me, that was 5 star work. Performances were topnotch, and while litRPG has conventions, they were handled really well. The protagonist was likable, her actions were logical within the frame of the game and her life, and so forth. Very enjoyable, well performed. and something I wanted in my library so that I could listen to again.

There was also a strong element of "girl comes of age and learns to live and love life". But it was balanced and you didn't smell like fish from being slapped in the face with it.

That was my experience with Ms. Summers's work. With that as background, this series was a disappointment. To try to synopsize without spoiling, lower caste poor slum girl thinks she is magic, isn't magic, is fake magic, is real magic, is unique magic, and finally is world saving magic.

Through all her magic shifts she fights all sorts of people and saves the world, and learns to live and love life.

To me, this was kind of a rehash.

As to the performance, the reader spoke clearly, enunciated well, didn't get hetronyms jarringly wrong and the levels and miking were good. My wife put it best, though. The reader sounded like an author reading their own work, and not a professional performer, or part of a cast. These days, in my opinion, a five star performance has to either be multiple cast members with (minimum) a reader for the male voices and a reader for female voices, or a professional actor (Wil Wheaton comes to mind) who can put verve into a story.

This performance was workmanlike but not sparkling.

I buy audio books I like. I get others from the library. I have many in my library because I want to listen to them again. I feel that way about the Stonehaven series. I recently had a brush with death and as I lay in the hospital, recovering, I thought about the Stonehaven books and I was happy that I would get to hear them again. I got this series from Audible on the strength of that series...but now I wish I had gotten it from the library.

If you read Stonehaven and your favorite parts were the coming of age bits, I think you will like this book more than I did. But I'm going to shower and wash the fish smell off.

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I just didn't care about the protagonist

Reviewed: 12-24-22

At no point did I care about the main character. Not a whit. The story was well crafted, but it didn't matter. Yeah, it was free, so I didn't feel too ripped off. I described it to my wife, she said "chick lit". Not my thing, but really, nothing happened.

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I liked it

Reviewed: 12-20-22

oh, shart, I like this series. Jim tries to decide if he is a hero or not after the events ending the last book.

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Horrific stories of Japanese Atrocities in WWII

Reviewed: 10-31-22

I had just listened to a litrpg series with "Bushido" in the title so somehow Audible matched me with this book. I knew, intellectually, about the war crimes that the Japanese had committed during that era, but I guess I didn't realize how common the horror was. This book recounted truly horrific practices, including:

Doctors who executed prisoners, sometimes for surgery practice, who would then disassemble them and deliver the pieces for cannibalism.

Horrific beatings for minor infractions.

Hundreds of instances of torture.

Starvation of prisioners.

Withholding medical care.

Simple violation of the rules of war and what was allowed, including forcing prisoners to work on military projects. Beatings and torture (executions, too) to those who refused.

Beatings, beatings, and more beatings.

Corruption, reprisals, bullying, all condoned at the highest levels.

If you have ever entertained romantic thoughts about the Japanese Bushido culture in the late 19th and early 20th century, perhaps you need to listen to this book.

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well done

Reviewed: 10-29-22

This is one of the novella length productions that you can grab for free. I enjoyed it. I don't want to talk about the story, except to say that it is a fictional story about a True Crime podcast. it is well done, and I didn't solve the mystery.

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unresolved

Reviewed: 03-03-22

The performance was fine. Clear, precise, easy to understand and just, in general, good. The story, however, left you hanging, for no good reason. Buildup, anticipation, suspense, was all done well.

The problem here is that when a writer tells a story, they are making a contract with the reader. The first clause in the contract is that the story will have a point.

I'm going to put a major spoiler here. There is no ending. Did the writer simply get tired of writing? Was it an attempt to appeal to the English Majors of the world?

It seemed more like an exercise from a writing class than an actual story. "Create a scene that would be a chapter in an actual story."

Had the performance not been as good as it was, I would have only given it a single star.

Violating the reader contract really should be a shooting offense.

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1 person found this helpful