Timothy

Great, but Probably Better as a Video

Reviewed: 12-16-19

While this is another great Kenneth Harl course from the Great Courses, there were a lot of moments of audio cuts (normally when one suspects that he mixed up a name) and directions towards images and relics (all of which are provided in the PDF, but hard to access when listening mobile without internet or roaming data). Overall, while this was great in terms of story, it probably would've been better as a video.

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2 people found this helpful

Ugh...

Reviewed: 09-10-19

This was the Audible Original that ultimately led me to give up on expecting anything other than mediocrity (at best) from Audible Originals.

Things didn't get off to a promising start when "ominous" music played for close to a minute, presumably to set a "spooooooooky" mood but which put me more in the mind of a Middle-School Halloween play.

The few minutes of the first story were all i needed to pull the plug. An academic writes a rejection for a magician/alchemist who submitted a paper to her journal. And immediately i knew that the author of said paper would proceed to induce "terror" upon the poor editor for her hubris that led her to reject an obviously evil and powerful magician/alchemist.

Honestly, i don't know where Audible is getting these originals from but it's a good thing they're giving them out for free, otherwise I suspect a lot of people would be demanding their money back.

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Oh Father, My father, father father father

Reviewed: 05-22-19

Oh father, oh father! Father. Father father father father father...

Imagine lines like that being repeated ad nauseam by the most annoying woman you've ever met. She must've dropped the word "father" at least twenty-thirty times within sixty minutes. She's like a Scottish puppy dog whining about not getting a treat. That sums up the whole as to why i only got an hour into this before i had to stop. That's not to mention all the "ums" "ers" "whats?" and "huhs?" that absolutely shatter whatever levity the dialogue has. I get that the writer was going for a realistic style, but it falls flat because nobody in real life talks like this.

I can't comment on the actual story since i only got an hour in. For what its worth, i found the premise interesting and i do wonder how this all plays out. Shame the voice acting is dreadful. (shrugs)

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Stellar Performance, Boring Story

Reviewed: 05-16-19

The Narrator, Janina Edwards, did a phenomenal job. I write this now because it's about the only thing i'm going to praise.

In terms of story, "Black Crow, White Snow" is an odd mish-mash of stories with a general fantasy bend. It's got a bit of Dan Simmons' "The Terror," with an arctic expedition gone wrong; a bit of NK Jemisin's "The Fifth Season," with the strong female characters and the dying world; a bit of Phillip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" with polar bears and the mystical north. As a result, "Black Crow, White Snow" has almost no identity of its own.

The idea of a matriarchal society is fine, i suppose, and i appreciated the lesson that men and women working together is preferable to either one dominating. However, this is basically telegraphed from word one. And any world-building falls by the wayside pretty early on as well. Maybe if this were a novel it could be explored more deeply, but the 2.5 hour length doesn't give the world enough room to grow or expand.

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Strong Start, Dragged Towards End

Reviewed: 05-15-19

I like this well enough. Certainly well researched (at least i assume. Not like i know anything about asteroids or inertia), and well written, with great, memorable characters and a fairly engaging plot. Got me hooked early on with the idea of a conspiracy to cause interplanetary war. I thought it was cool, but then it turned into a novel about corporate villainy and bioweapons. Still, pretty strong. The ending seemed to take forever, though. Once the villains are dead the audiobook is left kicking its heels together for a good 5-6 hours.

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4 people found this helpful

Great in the Moment, bad as a whole

Reviewed: 04-24-19

Taking this book as an anthology of short stories, chronicling the life of the witch Circe through her unhappy childhood to her lonely adulthood, this novel is phenomenal. If you approach each new chapter and setting as its own individual story, its own, individual myth, then everything works very well! Perdita Weeks wonderfully narrates this, giving a calm, seductive, and sinister voice to one of the most famous villainess(?) in all of Greek mythology. In a sense, if you view this as the way that Circe affected other mythological stories it's really interesting. Circe is a big part of a dozen stories, some big, some small, and her involvement leaders to a picaresque journey through Greek myths. This reading of the novel works remarkably well!

However, if you take the book as a coherent novel in which the stories combine to tell a greater one, it's all a bit of a mess. Parts of Circe's character are continually brought up and then completely dropped. For example (SPOILER) in the beginning of the novel, it is implied that Circe gets off on violence and torture. "Huh..." You may think, "Could this serve as motive for all the shitty things she does later? Or the basis for her solitude?" Nope, it's never really brought up again. No closure for Circe's relationships (her family, he son, her lovers, etc.). even the ending's a bit of an anticlimax (END SPOILER) Circe goes on and on about the mistakes she's made and the wrongs she's done, but the villains of the story all turn out to be so cartoonishly monstrous that any doubts Circe has can be brushed off by the reader. And I find myself thinking the same thing i thought after finishing the BBC series "Troy: Fall of a City": "Why is it that Odysseus is always the most interesting character in stories that aren't even about him?"

But I digress.

Overall, you enjoyment of this will depend on how you listen to stories. If you treat it like a collection of myths, meant to be told one at a time and retold around a campfire; it's phenomenal! If you treat it like a modern novel and try to get through it all at once: it's average, at best.

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Interesting Topic, Better Paced

Reviewed: 04-17-19

I listened to the first book, Collision of Empires, and thought that it was great in terms of narrator and content, but found it difficult to finish nonetheless. I think i found this one a bit difficult to finish as well (this took me about one month, rather than two), but it's a marked improvement in terms of pacing. No set up, the narrator jumps right into the frontlines and details Germany's rather impressive maneuvers against the Russians. I recommend for fan of WWI and military history.

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2 people found this helpful

Was that it?

Reviewed: 04-17-19

This is a nice little proof of concept, showing that you can have a solid detective novel revolving around the eponymous "dispatcher" with the (SPOILER) ability to save people he kills from certain death (END SPOILER). But this is barely a complete story. It posits itself as a mystery, but considering there's only about two main suspects, the mystery isn't that difficult. You could probably accurately predict the ending by the close of the first hour.

The narrator was fine. I've certainly heard worse narrators on Audible Originals. But he did have a bad tendency to deliver certain dialogue lines with an emotional flatness.

I don't know, maybe i shouldn't expect much from an Audible Original, but i found this to be a pretty malnourished story, over before it had a chance to explore any of its unique ideas.

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Great, Unbiased History

Reviewed: 04-04-19

A fantastic and comprehensive record of China's history from the late 1800s-ish to modern day. Certainly a time commitment, but the knowledgable narrator makes every moment feel fulfilling and interesting. Certainly recommend to anybody who has not taken a Great Courses track before, this is them at their best.

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Good for a chuckle, but nothing special

Reviewed: 03-19-19

Phillip Roth's works have always been good for a quick laugh or two, and the personality he showed as a writer in his books made it in here. The narrator bugged me. It felt like he had a slur or something, and didn't emphasize much, giving this whole thing a flat emotional tone. Not sure if the narrator can really help that, but it made this difficult for me regardless.

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2 people found this helpful