Badger McBadger

Nothing really happens

Reviewed: 05-15-24

It’s just like old Russian novels with people sitting around and talking about nothing much in particular. The author gets too caught up in his own sci-fi inventions that starts to get like gibberish and doesn’t contribute to the overall effect. Too many trees not enough forest. Kind of pointless. And basically nothing much happens. It’s hard to invest or even finish.

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Who on earth thought the piano was a good idea?!

Reviewed: 06-25-20

The piano break at each chapter drove me nuts. I almost couldn’t finish because of it. And talk about a dramatic reading! Holy Moses! Toward the end I just wanted him to get it over with and die already.

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Got through it but

Reviewed: 12-16-19

Having been through many of Sanderson series maybe I’ve grown too accustomed to certain things but this one seems pretty cliched by and large. Movie script type deus ex machina ending and that kind of stuff. Seems like he’s styling the heroine after Robert Jordan being an “assertive” woman. One of my least favorite, seems young and cheesy relying quite a bit on didactic/misplaced LDS doctrinal stylings.

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Relies on weirdness

Reviewed: 03-19-19

I read Robbins quite a bit 10 years ago and it captured my imagination more as an early 20 something. Now, he seems to rely on sophistry and strangeness to make up for a lack of real substance. His prejudices are apparent in this one particularly and there is a fair number of new-liberal propaganda and cliches throughout. What is left after attacking politics and religion and tradition is basically sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I was left feeling uniformed and kind of hollow. I will say, he has some good metaphors though. And there are some funny parts in the details

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Cheap movie script

Reviewed: 08-03-18

Nothing more than a cheap movie script designed to sell. Crude and crass. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people

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Quality

Reviewed: 07-25-18

The narrator is as good as I can imagine being possible. The story is wise and funny if requiring patience to get through

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Overall pretty interesting but sex laden

Reviewed: 06-07-18

The title says it. It’s a vaguely sci-fi/surrealist/philosophic journey but lots of pretty graphic sex scenes that detract from the overall story and strike me as either self indulgent of the author or pandering to popular sensibilities- sex sells ya know? Good reader. It doesn’t grant any great wisdom and is mostly confused modernism.

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6 people found this helpful

Stand Out Review

Reviewed: 03-14-18

Without getting into a long review, the one particular snag I had with this production is the narration. While its not bad - and could be quite good in a different book - in this case its simply poorly cast and changes the personality and character of so many of the characters. They should have used a male reader for the male characters. The male characters are not well served by the feminine softness of the narrator and at times I struggled to continue listening because of this. Maggie does a good job with Anna and her friends and its nice to have a female reader for these parts. Also, there is no attempt to differentiate voices, as I've gotten used to in other excellent readings. The only reason I got this version is because it was cheap.

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Well written manual for misery

Reviewed: 07-26-17

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Interested because of all the hype and not wanting to watch the shows because of their vulgar, sex driven content (as I understand it) I thought I'd give the books a try. With hopes that this would be worth all the hype I feel like a sucker after having listened to the first book. A sucker, vaguely disquieted, and a little dirty. Like I've just been listening to the fantasies of a misogynistic, renaissance faire larper, kind of couch potato pervert for the last 33 hours. And when I say fantasy I don't mean the genre. That is one thing this book is short of - fantastical/mythical people, places or things. Its simply a political thriller but without any wisdom imparted or moral being taught. It is, like most art forms these days - think Transformers - a well executed manual for hell where we are brought into all the miseries that can be inflicted on men and women without any of the heroic or beautiful. I feel worse for having read it and somewhat angry with myself that I finished the book at all. And let me here concede that it it written in such a way to keep you moving forward slowly and therefore wanting to know what happens next. Always waiting for something that never comes. However, after the first book I don't care for more. The book struck me as essentially empty of real or true content, allegory, satire, morals, or soulless in other words. Much like a gift most beautiful wrapped with all the trimmings but inside is nothing but whipped cream fried up with sprinkles of sex and dripping with the honey of violence. I suspect these books will be forgotten in the next 50 years.

What could George R. R. Martin have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Given it a soul. A worthy point for existence.

What does Roy Dotrice bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Well narrated

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Game of Thrones?

the gratuitous sex that serves no function but to titillate the glands of the reader and I assumer the author got his kicks from as well

Any additional comments?

Not destined to be a classic

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