James Endicott
- 3
- reviews
- 5
- helpful votes
- 22
- ratings
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Heaven's River
- Bobiverse, Book 4
- By: Dennis E. Taylor
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 41,215
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36,675
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36,512
Civil war looms in the Bobiverse in this brand-new, epic-length adventure by Audible number one best seller Dennis E. Taylor. More than a hundred years ago, Bender set out for the stars and was never heard from again. There has been no trace of him despite numerous searches by his clone-mates. Now Bob is determined to organize an expedition to learn Bender’s fate - whatever the cost. But nothing is ever simple in the Bobiverse. Bob’s descendants are out to the 24th generation now, and replicative drift has produced individuals who can barely be considered Bobs anymore.
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5 out of 5 stars
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BOB-tastic!!! 🛸
- By C. White on 09-24-20
- Heaven's River
- Bobiverse, Book 4
- By: Dennis E. Taylor
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
Too much groundwork for interesting followup books
Reviewed: 11-27-21
The first three books in the trilogy felt like a single cohesive story despite the many threads running through them. This one has a much tighter focus narratively but still feels like more of a jumping off point for a dozen sequels.
It's an interesting universe to explore and some of the directions hinted at certainly seem fascinating but too much time is spent laying groundwork for things in future books instead of letting them naturally spring up.
All that having been said, I'm glad that the author has a road map of future book topics because I look forward to returning to the Bobiverse.
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The Design of Everyday Things
- Revised and Expanded Edition
- By: Don Norman
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,650
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,317
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,306
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious - even liberating - audiobook, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Designers Start Here (missing visual references)
- By sammy k on 09-01-19
- The Design of Everyday Things
- Revised and Expanded Edition
- By: Don Norman
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
Still a must read
Reviewed: 10-22-19
There's a reason that this is the definitive book on design. The book will give you a new perspective on things you design as well as an understanding of why you find things frustrating.
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5 people found this helpful
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Out of Spite, Out of Mind
- Magic 2.0, Book 5
- By: Scott Meyer
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,038
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8,346
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Story4 out of 5 stars 8,331
When you discover the world is a computer program, and you figure out that by altering the code you can time travel and perform acts that seem like magic, what can possibly go wrong? Pretty much everything. Just ask Brit, who has jumped around in time with such abandon that she has to coexist with multiple versions of herself. Now, Brit the Elder finds that her memories don't match Brit the Younger's.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Scott, how do you think women are supposed to act?
- By Joel on 07-01-18
- Out of Spite, Out of Mind
- Magic 2.0, Book 5
- By: Scott Meyer
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
Disappointing entry from an otherwise good series
Reviewed: 09-07-19
The setting and characters are mostly the same that has made the series great so far but the time travel is painfully bad. I've enjoyed time travel stories that use multiverse theory, closed loops, paradoxes, purely mental time travel, and more. They can all be enjoyable in their own way. But the entire premise of time travel here is that timelines are immutable, everyone knows it, and their only motivation for taking any action when interacting with their past or future is because they remember it happening or they are told it is going to happen.
It results in no suspense at all for both the reader and the characters. That makes everything boring.
He doesn't even revisit the same scenes again with time displaced people that have new perspectives or added information so that we can see scenes in a new way. That is the bare minimum needed to tell a good time travel story in a universe where the past is immutable.
Lamp shading the bootstrap paradox without any explanation is also a problem given how often it is used without any explanation whatsoever. We are just supposed to shrug and ignore that things only happen because they already happened based on tools and information that come from nowhere.
Finally, I hate the changes that were made to Brit (all of them). Someone beat her half to death with an idiot stick, made her a jerk constantly, and made other personality changes that aren't consistent at all with the justification provided at the end of the book.
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