Chastened
- 14
- reviews
- 16
- helpful votes
- 517
- ratings
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The Insider
- By: Matthew Richardson
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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A Russian defector is found brutally murdered in a London hotel. Only four people knew he had turned - the four most important and powerful figures in Whitehall. There's only one conclusion - a mole has infiltrated the highest levels of the nation's security. Operating in secret from within Westminster's darkest corners, former spy Solomon Vine must uncover the traitor. Because Britain's future hangs in the balance. And with it the fate of the whole world.
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A TRUELY EXCEPTIONAL YOUNG AUTHOR
- By Brian D. Baird on 12-02-21
- The Insider
- By: Matthew Richardson
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
Trite is being generous
Reviewed: 11-07-23
Solomon Vine is a grizzled veteran of every element of espionage. Just ask him. Even so, despite his decades of experience, etc, he misses the solution so poorly idem within the author’s clumsy plotting and leaden prose. It is a poor tale, filled with poorly conceived characters, poorly told.
I pity the narrator.
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Angel Station
- By: Walter Jon Williams
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 16 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Orphans of deep space... They're outlaws now. Created to serve a function grown obsolete, haunted by the holographic ghost of their father, Ubu and Maria have lived their entire lives skating along the edge of extinction. Now they and their ship, Runaway, are in flight both from the law and from a predatory clan of competitors. They're going to come back rich or not at all. But what they find in the depths of space isn't wealth, but a secret so startling that Ubu and Maria will need every last reserve of guile, cunning, and intelligence just to survive.
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Boring
- By Zach on 05-12-18
- Angel Station
- By: Walter Jon Williams
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
Meh
Reviewed: 08-14-23
Meh and mehly performed. Tedious plot and plodding narration. And six other words to fill the quota. But still just meh.
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1 person found this helpful
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Stormblood
- By: Jeremy Szal
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Vakov Fukasawa used to be a Reaper: a bio-enhanced soldier fighting for the Harmony, against a brutal invading empire. He's still fighting now, on a different battlefield: taking on stormtech. To make him a perfect soldier, Harmony injected him with the DNA of an extinct alien race, altering his body chemistry and leaving him permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression. But although they meant to create soldiers, at the same time Harmony created a new drug market that has millions hopelessly addicted to their own body chemistry.
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Rip-roaring Military Sci-Fi
- By FanFiAddict on 06-05-20
- Stormblood
- By: Jeremy Szal
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
A mess
Reviewed: 07-29-20
What is StormTech? It is the only plot device Mr Szal knows, apparently. Need drama? StormTech. Character development? StormTech. A catchy adjective to finis the though? StormTech!
Mr Szal is the print equivalent of Uwe Boll.
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Europe in Autumn
- By: Dave Hutchinson
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Rudi is a cook in a Krakow restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career - part spy, part people-smuggler - begins. Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities, and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line goes wrong, he is arrested and beaten, and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue.
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Almost. But not quite.
- By Chastened on 08-25-19
- Europe in Autumn
- By: Dave Hutchinson
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat
Almost. But not quite.
Reviewed: 08-25-19
If only Mr Hutchinson we’re as clever as his mother supposed, then the novel’s premise might have matched its execution. Alas...reality intervened. This was a trite, wandering, morass of a novel executed semi-competently. An editor and some actual revision might have saved it.
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1 person found this helpful
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In the Presence of Mine Enemies
- By: Harry Turtledove
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 21st century, Germany's Third Reich continues to thrive after its victory in World War II - keeping most of Europe and North America under its heel. But within the heart of the Nazi regime, a secret lives. Under a perfect Aryan facade, Jews survive - living their lives, raising their families, and fearing discovery....
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One of his best works
- By brian on 03-31-19
- In the Presence of Mine Enemies
- By: Harry Turtledove
- Narrated by: Michael Page
Meh
Reviewed: 05-30-19
A novel of odd choices narrated by a man who makes equally odd choices. It’s a pastiche of historical episodes painted nazi and told half by Brits and half by pirates. Both author and narrator have done better. Much.
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1 person found this helpful

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Mother Land
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 23 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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To those in her Cape Cod town, Mother is an exemplar of piety, frugality, and hard work. To her husband and seven children, she is the selfish, petty tyrant of Mother Land. She excels at playing her offspring against each other. Her favorite, Angela, died in childbirth; only Angela really understands her, she tells the others. The others include the officious lawyer, Fred; the uproarious professor, Floyd; a pair of inseparable sisters whose devotion to Mother has consumed their lives; and JP, the narrator, a successful writer whose work she disparages.
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The Inner Dynamics of a Large Massachusetts Family
- By jon orourke on 10-21-18
- Mother Land
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
Why?
Reviewed: 04-22-19
I can only guess it was written to propitiate the porcelain god. There seems no other point.
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The Danish Scheme
- By: Herbert Sakalaucks, Eric Flint
- Narrated by: Bill Brooks
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Something new is brewing in the 17th century! Fans of the 1632 series have often asked “What's going on in North America?” Herbert Sakalauks has set out to let you know in his short novel The Danish Scheme. Christian IV, King of Denmark, Sir Thomas Roe, the English Ambassador to Christian's court, various elements of the extended Nasi/Abrabanel family have arranged an unusually well-funded and well led expedition to North America.
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a disappointment
- By Michael D. Stuart on 05-23-15
- The Danish Scheme
- By: Herbert Sakalaucks, Eric Flint
- Narrated by: Bill Brooks
Awful narration spoils the tale
Reviewed: 12-08-18
I could never decide whether the accents the narrator adopted were an homage to ‘Talk Like A Pirate’ Day a drunken Goofy. Whatever his intent, it ruined the story. Avoid this 1632 audible offering is my recommendation, and read it yourself instead.
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3 people found this helpful
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Black Chamber
- By: S. M. Stirling
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1912, just months before the election, President Taft dies suddenly, and Teddy Roosevelt wastes no time in grabbing power as he wins another term as president. By force of will, he ushers the United States into a new, progressive era with the help of the Black Chamber, the mysterious spy organization watching his back.
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a new old world
- By Sean Dustman on 07-17-18
- Black Chamber
- By: S. M. Stirling
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
Awful.
Reviewed: 08-31-18
This book suffered from two problems: it was poorly written and poorly read. The story was probably 30% interior monologue, half of which is questionably useful exposition, the other half of which is implausible and overwritten internal narrative. The rest of the story is essentially a badly written spy novel with all of the normal faults thereof (ridiculous feats, bad dialogue, extraneous detail-Mr Stirling did lots of research and included every last thing he found in the story, narrative coherence or pace be damned-and an outsized hero. That the outsized hero was a bisexual woman of immigrant parents didn’t rescue anything. It just made the fact it was a badly written, bad story all the more obvious. Fortunately, the narrator was able to further illuminate that as well. Featuring wandering accents for the main characters (a California born hero who’s Cuban mother somehow so affected her daughter’s English that she, in a single conversation, can speak with an Italian, Mexican, Canadian, and mid-Atlantic accent) and a comic voice for the 20-year old Boston Irish love interest-think A constipated Mr Magoo and you’re. It far wrong-he really brought the story to life. As much as I wanted to like this story, I just could not. It was awful.
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The Force
- A Novel
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He is the "King of Manhattan North", a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force". Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest - an elite special unit given carte blanche to fight gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the 18 years he's spent on the job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps.
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The Fire THIS Time
- By Darwin8u on 06-24-17
- The Force
- A Novel
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
A good Winslow but not a great one
Reviewed: 02-02-18
Not his best but still a master at work. The narrator was good but too much: Winslow’s prose is spare, his descriptions terse, tense and focused. The narrator’s breathy whisper was too much;’not bad
as much as just unnecessary. A bit less might have improved the whole thing but it was still a good car ride.
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Divorcing Jack
- A Novel
- By: Colin Bateman
- Narrated by: Glen Murrant
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Dan Starkey is a journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife, Patricia, an appetite for drinking and dancing. Dan meets Margaret, and things begin to get out of hand - terrifyingly, she is murdered. Before long, Dan is a target himself, racing as fast as he can against time to crack the mystery.
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This Belfast Gal was unimpressed
- By Barbarama on 09-30-23
- Divorcing Jack
- A Novel
- By: Colin Bateman
- Narrated by: Glen Murrant
Awful narration ruins fine tale
Reviewed: 08-20-17
What would have made Divorcing Jack better?
The narrator's fine turn as Willy Loman in High Prairie, Alberta does not, unfortunately, equate with the ability to bring to life Colin Bateman's Dan Starkey or his Belfast milieu. Rather than give life to Bateman's writing, Mr Murrant's milquetoast performance eventually just gives listeners a headache. Skip and get the version with Adam Moore.
Would you recommend Divorcing Jack to your friends? Why or why not?
Nope. Because I like my friends.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Glen Murrant?
Adam Moore.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Divorcing Jack?
The ones where Glen Murrant read the text.
Any additional comments?
I'm sure he's a nice man...he sounds like a nice man...but he's not a very good narrator.
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