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This book was surprisingly good

Reviewed: 05-23-24

First, the Virtual Voice narration was surprisingly, even disturbingly, adequate.

The book was actually good. I didn't expect it to be bad, but I hadn't known what to expect. It's just a few short stories, all centering on Porter Rockwell. Good characters, good story telling, creative.

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funniest line

Reviewed: 08-21-20

the funniest line of this book is the last sentence Adam Baldwin reads at the end of the credits

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Loved the book but would have liked more Myfanwy

Reviewed: 06-26-16

Myfanwy was in the book, and though she was more of a peripheral character, the two main characters for this story were also very easy to care about.

Moira Quirk did a fantastic job narrating, but I while listening I realized that Susan Duerden's voice was Myfanwy to me and, so even when Myfawny was part of the story I didn't feel connected to her like I did in The Rook.

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Life changing!

Reviewed: 04-02-16

I laughed. I cried. I raged. I napped. My life will never be the same.

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4 people found this helpful

Wow!

Reviewed: 11-02-15

Just wow! Story is fantastic, characters are fantastic, narrator is fantastic. I'm impatient for the next book in the series to come out.

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1 person found this helpful

Satisfying

Reviewed: 04-24-15

The previous version, read by John Glover, was very well done. But Ghost Story is the 13th or 14th in the Dresden series, and after the very first book it was already too late for anyone in the universe besides James Marsters to be Harry Dresden.

Glover did an especially great job with some of the other characters and I appreciated that version for what it was, so I am surprised how much of a difference it made to hear the story in Marster's voice.

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Great Story

Reviewed: 03-22-15

I noticed a few people mentioned they didn't like the narration. I thought it was fine, but I don't think Nelson's voice is a good match for the genre. I think his voice would be perfect for non-fiction, business, or something like that. It helped to increase the pace to 1.5 speed.

The story was great. At one point the plot seemed to twist so much that I found myself a little disappointed that the story I had become invested in seemed to no longer be the focus. But it ended up getting all tied together. I'm surprised that the average rating is under four stars. I recommend giving it the book a try.

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Prostitutes and Mormons in Space

Reviewed: 03-06-15

James S.A. Corey peered into a distant future where humanity had spread itself across our solar system and found that it is mostly populated by prostitutes and Mormons. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm not saying the story is about prostitutes and Mormons. It isn't. I'm just saying that when a denizen of the belt is not surrounded by the cold vacuum of space they'd be hard pressed to swing a cat without hitting a saint or a sinner.

I know what you're thinking, "That sounds a lot like Las Vegas." Exactly. It's exactly like Las Vegas if it expanded to fill the immensity of space. There are even casinos everywhere.

This of course brings up ethical questions surrounding cat swinging. On earth it is nearly always a cruel act. Perhaps if you were trying to save a cat from the roof of a burning house and had to throw it all the way to a neighbor's pool to save it it might be justified, but less than 10% of all cat swingings in the U.S. happen under such circumstances. In Russia the percentage is higher, but surely it's still under 20%. Ethically speaking, then, on earth nearly all cat swingings are cruel, and debates tend to center on the topic of whether or not the cat deserved it.

Null-g adds additional variables that must be considered in such discussions. Cats don't cope well with null-g. It takes away nearly all of their abilities, such as being able to land on their feet, or their ability to fall when misjudging the distance of a jump.

On earth, if you're holding a cat that is freaking out and trying to scratch every exposed bit of your skin, you can simply drop the cat. The cat will land on its feet and be content to exert its autonomy by running away rather than continuing to attack.

Not so in null-g, which would be both the initial cause of the cat freaking out and thing that maintains the cat's desperate behavior. You must dislodge the cat with no help from gravity. You'll eventually get it off you, but it will take longer and every second counts.

And then, instead of landing on its feet and ceasing its attack, the cat will continue to flail in its search for control. You might as well tether a set of Ginsu knives together and set them in a perpetual spin. Who is going to volunteer to retrieve the knives? Even when the cat hits a surface, it has no thumbs so its attempts to gain purchase will simply propel it back out into the middle of the room again. You'd have no choice but to wait until it bounced into an airlock and jettison the cat into space. That would be very sad, depending on the cat. They really need to rethink the whole cat in space thing.

My hypothesis is that cat swinging in space is probably an act of kindness as much as anything else due to the felt gravity provided by centrifugal motion. The cat may feel soothed due to the seeming reappearance of gravity.

Space mom to her daughter: "Sweetie, have you swung the cat yet today?" Child:"No." Mom launches into a lecture about how the kid promised that if they got a cat she would feed it and play with it and swing it by it's tail every day, after which the girl grudgingly grabs her cat's tail and starts swinging.

The book was very good, and apparently a television series based on the series is going to play this year on Syfy.

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Excellent!

Reviewed: 05-07-14

I have no idea what the Warmachine game stuff is all about that most of the other reviewers mentioned (apparently it's the universe this book originates from). I'm a fan of the author, though, and this book did not disappoint.

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1 person found this helpful

Perfect Narration

Reviewed: 03-08-14

Just listened to this again and was reminded how awesome Oliver Wyman does with this story.

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