Matthew Staehle

Fun, but pretty short intro.

Reviewed: 10-02-24

This is not my normal genre, but I found the writing solid, and enjoyed the characters quite a bit. This felt like the opening half of a full novel due to a pretty short duration of a bit over 3 hours. That issue aside, it certianly got my attention, and will likely check out the next entry in the story.

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1 person found this helpful

A good conclusion

Reviewed: 07-03-24

Wow, did the other reviews really over play the change in who performed the book. I was expecting it to be a major issue. It would have been nice to keep tbe same performer for the final book, and it was a slight downgrade. That is it, a slight drop off in narration, but it has negligible impact on the enjoyment of the book. If you are on the fence after seeing the hand wringing over thise change, go ahead and get this final chapter. It is well worth it.

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Reads Like A Rough Draft

Reviewed: 04-08-24

I was expecting some entertainment with moderately good story telling. I ended up forcing myself to finish it to see if there was a payoff. There wasn't.

The premise has the potential to deliver good action, and some interesting sci-fi. The problem is in the execution. The dialog is terrible. Rather than give any narration, or preface to set the stage, the characters speak in long speeches to provide context, often after the relevant event is over. Why is France firing on US spacecraft? Well after it is over, a character will recount the geopolitical history needed to understand why it just happened. Scientists do not actually spend their time recounting lengthy theories to their peers who are already familiar with them while facing imminent death.

There is also a lot of convenient plot armor insertions. We've been with a character for over 30 chapters when they are suddenly bailed out by an equipment feature that we are told they have had strong opinions about for the entire story. That feature and those opinions were never mentioned once before it saves their life. Once would be a slip, but this reads like the author ran into repeated continuity issues, and rather than fix the narrative earlier in the story, just keeps applying lazy fixes on the spot.

The narration is good, and certainly provides nice vocal variation for different characters.

There is an outline for a solid book in here, but this militsry space adventure detonated on the launch pad.

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2 people found this helpful

A Very Enjoyable Florida Tale

Reviewed: 10-18-23

Swamp Story is a perfect blend of Florida type nonsense and Dave Barry humor. The story has characters on par with Hiaasen's best, and his influence is clearly felt. The story has some drama, but never takes itself too seriously.

The performance is quite good. Sometimes the author reading their own work doesn't pan out. Barry has been in the limelight before, and is actually a great choice to deliver the proper flow, tone, and pace to the reading of the book.

Highly recommended.

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A Fun Adventure

Reviewed: 01-31-23

i wasn't sure what to expect, but was very pleasantly surprised with this work. There is enough adventure to add some tension, but this is still a comedy at its core. Sherman Holmes is a great twist on the historic Sherlock story, and I am excitied to see where he and "Watson" go from here.

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A Very Good Spanish History Overview

Reviewed: 05-08-22

This is a well done overview of Spanish history. Mrs.(Dr.?) Salisbury is an excellent instructor. The material is already interesting, but she ups the engagement with very good narration, clear enthusiasm for the subject matter, and some nice personal touches.

The one area the course falters in, is one I have seen repeatedly across many instructors. The 24th chapter is modern/current history and becomes a mix of the instructor's personal travelogue, current politcal topics instead of history, and trying to predict the near future. In short 23 chapters of grear history, 1 chapter of mostly personal experiences, and guesses on what lies ahead.

Overall, an excellent course, and is well worth the time.

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Meh..Cartoonish Characters, predictable story.

Reviewed: 03-01-22

The reading performance was good.

i really wanted to like the story, but it was flat and silly. There is no arc for the characters beyond "finish one improbable task, then move on to next improbable task". There is zero character development, and "Anya" is like a 12 year old boy's idea of a femme fatal secret agent. She is the proverbial 130 lb woman taking down rooms full of 200 lb special forces operatives by hand while wounded nonsense you see everywhere now. Actually that's what this comes accross as: An afternoon of playing out childhood GI Joe scenarios in the yard turned into a novel. Surprise twists designed to be dramatic reveals at the end were predictable from the earliest chapters.

The book is also about 40% longer that the story supports. For some reason the history of every item must be explained with end result being like an action movie that pauses to read the Wikipedia page for each item used in the scene. It also gets locked into phrases that get recycled with abandon. In this world you can predict actions, read minds, deduce history, and probably predict the stock market by watching if someone's neck muscles tense.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I do. In the end, I kept checking how many chapters were left, to see if it was almost over.

Not the worst novel I've read, but mediocre at best. The only qualifier I'll grant is that I'm pretty sure this was the author's 1st work. Hopefully it has been uphill from here.

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Entertaining Case

Reviewed: 08-06-21

This is a well done and informative story. Some audio is marginal quality when playing recorded conversations, but that is a minor issue.

As an American, I had not heard of Peter Foster, and this is a very well put together investigative series of both his fraud schemes, and the family dynamics that are likely a key source of his near compulsory running of ornate confidence scams.

Definitely worth the time to listen.

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Well done until almost the very end.

Reviewed: 06-25-21

This is a 5 star course, right up until the last couple of lectures. Please do not misunderstand, I highly recommend this course, and it was both entertaining and informative, even as a 4 decade student of history.

Where it falters, and Professor Bucholz is by no means unusual in this aspect, is when historians try to study recent events as "history". First the biases of 1st hand recollections go way up in their evaluations. Second, the predictions based on the current trends at time this was recorded (about a decade ago) have not aged well at all.

A great selection, just take the history from the 1970s on, and the predictions with a hefty grain of salt.

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1 person found this helpful

It was free, and worth every penny.

Reviewed: 06-30-20

This was not a bad story, it just wasn't notable either. For as short as it is, it takes a long time to get going. The characters were voice acted well, but aren't very deep or relatable. The villian is a mix of dime store comic evil genius and a TV movie of the week stalker. Once the story gets to it's reveal it moves along for a decently entertaining 2nd half. A fun if generic story, with a solid performance. It was a diversion, but I doubt any details will stand out about a few weeks from now.

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