Patrick Bowen

one of the worst narrations I have heard

Reviewed: 05-24-24

this was a good story line in a much anticipated series. I gave been waiting for years. but this was quite possible the worst narration I have heard. forced over dramatic male voices, and then falsetto female voices that screamed of a badly done antebellum south. the narration was cringe worthy and honestly would have been fine if he hadn't tried so hard. very unfortunate.

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Great series, until you get to the last 45 minutes

Reviewed: 03-14-23

Great series;, neat, interesting, and original concepts. (spoiler alert) until you get to the last 30 minutes. totally makes you feel like you just read 10 books for no reason. It was a dream sequence? really???? come on, do better.

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Great Author that completely failed on the details

Reviewed: 03-30-22

What do you say when you have a great author, whose book series you really enjoy and who has a great narrator, that absolutely blows it bad on a book. The story in itself was promising, but he failed constantly on details that are easy to get right. I mean, did anybody proof read this, or are we just trying to pump out books for the sake of making money?

Some will say these details are minor, but they are what makes a great book, well great. I promise you Clancy would never mess these up. I will give examples.

The leader of a 'Seal Team', which is a US Navy Unit, would NEVER be a Lieutenant Colonel.
H-60 Blackhawks don't fly off US Carriers
The Commanding Officer of the USS Carl Vinson would NEVER be an Admiral (it is actually prohibited by law)
The Admiral would never 'run down' to the Seals berthing area to tell them to 'suite up', there is a chain of command and a 1MC for that.
The bridge of a cruiser is not the tactical nerve center for combat operations and radar. That is the Combat Information Center, which is buried amid ships. You navigate and command from the bridge, you fight from the CIC.
Admirals would not typically be on a Cruiser, they are on the Carrier as the Battle Group Commander.
Rifles to not have a 'manual' mode and a 'semi-manual' mode. What is this really?
The launch sequences for executing a missile launch and strike were completely made up BS, this is easy to get and would have been very impactful if correct.

These are just highlights. but the book constantly missed on tiny details. The plot was a bit of a rewash that I have read in other books, NYC under terrorist attack, with the 5 tunnels blown up. I have read at least 3 other books with this plot. There were some promising features of the plot, some weren't fully baked out. But at every turn, details were completely wrong. I don't get it, Ben Coes is a very good author that I like. Did someone else write this for you? The publisher REALLY needs to have a military person read this stuff first. Very disappointing. Any more books like this and I will set this author aside.

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2 people found this helpful

Good Story, Very poor narration

Reviewed: 04-11-21

the story was good, but failed to live up to the quality of previous book in the series. Of great disappointment was the narration. bad guys and female voices were forced with a deep low guttural sound that made the story sound awful. the women all sounded like life.long smokers suffering from lung disease and throat cancer. completely distracting and unnatural. took much away from the book.

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Great story, Narration lacked

Reviewed: 05-09-20

The story overall was very good, especially once it got going. The first bit was a bit disjointed and never made a great connection to the rest of the book. However, the narration quality swung wildly in quality. The real issue is that the narrator tried to force accents on characters, both Korean, Chinese, and Southern US. These forced accents came out almost as slap stick quality, turning into a bit of a distraction and almost a joke. If it was not for the forced accents (which were no where close to accurate, just very stupid, then the narration would have received a passing mark.

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1 person found this helpful

Narration did not match the quality of the writing

Reviewed: 04-20-20

Narration did not match the quality of the writing. great story, but the narrator kinda made it feel like a high school reading in drama class. i liked it overall, but i should have loved it.

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Did anyone proofread this book?

Reviewed: 02-03-20

the author of this series obviously has no experience with guns weapons, or the military.

Consistently calling a weapons magazine a clip is going to annoy greatly every weapon user out there. he demonstrates an ignorance of the navy, calling every ship a battleship regardless of size, discussing the launching of SCUD missiles from the USS Pennsylvania battleship at iranian gunboats ( where do i even start with this one, wow), Perhaps that we dont have battleships anymore and the Pennsylvania was decommissioned in 1947, or that SCUD missiles are a land based ballistic missile that belonged to the Iraqis and if we did have them would be incapable of hitting a moving target at any range.

The lack of understanding of the difference between a missile and a torpedo, what they are used for, and when to use them. Really, 6 torpedoes to attack a gunboat? Later he called these tomahak missiles, which even then would not be the right weapon.

Calling a ships XO a commanding officer... really? Or even entertaining the thought that all a CO has to do is walk on the bridge a say "Fire Torpedos" and it would be done.

The lack of understanding of military protocols, titles, procedures rakes what could have been a great series and made it into a complete mockery. This is what Tom Clancy was so good at, the details and getting them right. Invariably this author gets so many details wrong, and to such an extreme degree it makes you wonder how he possibly made it this far. This entire series could have been saved with a simple military liason proof read. Sad. I am officially done with this author.

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Need to perform basic research prior to writing

Reviewed: 01-11-20

This was a decent story that could have been a best seller, but the author and narrator completely failed. When writing a story, it is so critically important to perform basic research and get favts at least close to accurate. But glaring mistakes annoy and distract readers. Items such as repeatedly calling a 'magazine' a 'clip'. Any user of a hand gun would know this is an egregious error. Calling. US Navy Destroyer a "Destroyer Class Battleship", then calling the ship a battleship throughout the book. Uh hello?! By the way, Destroyers are named for people, not cities, LPDs are named for citiies. Big error in the story. Also, radar is not used under water, sonar is used underwater. the constant errors show the amateurish stature of the author. The narrator was new for this book in the series, and completely changed the persona of the main characters, giving them unique accents that were over the top. Would it have been a good idea to familiarize yourself with the previous narrators work on these characters? extremely disappointed. Only read this book series if all other options have been exhausted.

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