Ken Vanden branden

I can't seem to like this book...

Reviewed: 07-23-23

First of all: the core of this book and its topics are very relevant and interesting to me and there are parts of the book that I absolutely like.
I understand that the author tried to make this book understandable to people not coming from a technical background and for me that's where it goes wrong.
I can see the analogies he's making and I can understand the context but they're so tedious and convoluted it just really bores the hell out of me. I just think they could've cut the explanations in half and people would still understand it. Other books have done it before and way better.

If you are somewhat security minded and technical, you will probably get bored out of your mind and if you're not... well I guess i don't understand who this book is for. I've read many other titles that do vastly better than having first doing a 20 minute (or sometimes longer) setup to deliver just a part of the explanation.

Then there's just parts of the book where it seems like entire pages are narrated out of order because of seemingly not connected parts.

It just really feels like Christmas dinner where an elderly family member has a very interesting story to tell, but insists to first derail the story with something absolutely mundane and trivial like going to the shop and go into detail on why they bought every item on their shopping list.

They could've cut at least 1/3rd of this book in my opinion and it would be for the better.

Also, next time when converting a book to audio. Please don't actually make the narrator slowly and painfully speak out code or full URL's. Yes there's a difference between a bitly url-shortener and the actual full url hiding behind it but when he started to spell out every character of that URL i was ready to drive my car into a wall....

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8 people found this helpful

great for dungeon masters

Reviewed: 09-12-22

if you want to get a feel for the nation of cheliax, city of westcrown and the hellknights, this is great source material

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A well needed injection of optimism

Reviewed: 08-14-22

This book breaks down discoveries and research from the past to point out mistakes in research methods and conclusions of world famous truths.

While this book is not without flaws, it's certainly worth reading through it.

Recommended!

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Read the phoenix project instead

Reviewed: 08-14-22

Phew, where to start on this one. Overal it's an ok book but the phoenix project is way better. I know its goals are a bit different, but where the phoenix project had a somewhat believable story this one just goes over the top with every good character being a 10x engineer and the main character being an 100x engineer. Quite some suspension of disbeliief was needed to enjoy it.

Unrealistic timeframe, characters and i don't know what it was trying to accomplish in one of the last chapters of the book where it tried to sell some business kung fu.

This book tried to do too much and failed at everything imo

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A guilty pleasure I guess.

Reviewed: 04-01-22

The premise of this book is so ludricous you have to tackle it as one of those series that you can't take too seriously like doctor who, fringe, warehouse 13 or even the star trek TNG episodes when they are doing a "film noir" on the holodeck.

It's fun to listen to while you're in the car and it doesn't require a lot of focus.

The narrator, James Marsters, tries to emulate the dreariness and the burdens of the main character and this results in the many sighs and mouth noises people complain about. I must say: I too felt it was annoying the first few pages. It was as if he didn't get time to prepare the text and constantly had to grasp for breath in between sentences, but you'll get used to it.

I bought this book via the kindle -> audible book deal (which halves the price). I wouldn't pay the full price for it, but at half the price it seems like a fair bargain. I might continue the series after reading something else first

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decent narration

Reviewed: 03-19-22

it takes getting used to Nigel's voice after having heard Stephen briggs do discworld novels, but after about half an hour I was adjusted to it and really liked his performance

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