Chris_Chris

A little overwrought, but good

Reviewed: 02-16-24

First: The narrator sounds like a high school friend of yours reading you a book for fun. He's not a voice actor. When he's just reading prose sections, or speaking as the main character (a young boy-man) he's good, but when reading other character lines he's rarely convincing and is sometimes just irritating. If he was indeed just your young adult friend, that would be fun and fine, but as a narrator for an "epic novel" it's disappointing.

Rothfuss is in a long line of authors trying to write epic fantasy that unfortunately comes across as wooden and show-off-ish. His telling is all about grandiosity and formality, which often just isn't very interesting or engaging. It's like he's trying to incorporate his own Silmarillion into the style of a classic mythological tale by creating extensive history, enormous scope, and demi-god heroes, but it's too often just boring. Yes, I thought the Silmarillion, LOTR, etc., were the height of literary art 30+ years ago when I was in high school - and they are indeed magnificent - but at this point in life I am more interested in authors who convey grit and reality in a way that grips you and squeezes the life out of you.

I set this book aside a little less than half way through and was too uninterested to go back to it. I found myself more interested in horror podcasts, which are admittedly awful, than in finishing this book.

Rothfuss is very smart, and he likes to make sure we know that by including things such as long, drawn-out descriptions of arcane practice, complicated historical timelines, etc. That's very impressive, in its way, but it's not "alive," to me.

I guess my new standard for fantasy writing is Joe Abercrombie. He incorporates earthy humor, razor sharp dialogue, and compelling characters and relationships, and doesn't take his stories, or his characters, too seriously. He's perhaps more in the vein of a Coen Brothers movie: unexpected, unique, dark, and yet hilarious. When I read his books, I both can't wait to see what's going to happen, and can hardly bear to see what's going to happen, because things could be magical, or terrible, at any moment.

This book, in contrast, is too often predictable. It's an imitation Tolkien novel with a little more emphasis on demi-god-like, precocious heroes than Tolkien used, but in the Norse mythological tradition. There's a touch of, say, Thucydides in there too: lists of dates and people, but very dry. Even when Rothfuss includes emotional descriptions and scenes of personal turmoil, I just don't feel there's real substance there, somehow. And yes, I still have volumes of Thucydides on my shelves and will always hold a place for that kind of history in my heart, but it's not what I'm looking for in a novel anymore.

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Oh dear ...

Reviewed: 12-08-23

This starts well. It's a unique story, and Bailey develops it and the characters well. It kept me wanting to know what was going to happen next - until the very end. It relies on the tropes of people doing things that are so daft you can't believe that the characters, who are supposed to be intelligent people, would ever do those things. But they do in books just to create silly drama. I immediately lose interest when that happens so I stopped the book with about 45 minutes left and returned it.

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Unique and keeps you on the edge of your seat

Reviewed: 12-08-23

This isn't a thriller, per se, but it was exciting and suspenseful enough that I could have stayed awake all night listening to it, and I had to reluctantly turn it off around 1:30 in the morning. I listen to an audio book or pod every night when I go to bed, and this was unsuitable because it was way too interesting to fall asleep to. As soon as I switched to Ann Cleeves, I was asleep in minutes.

It's a great cast of characters, with complexity in their relationships and personalities from the first moments. It is not predictable, at all, and that's a rare thing. Like all murder mysteries anymore, it's very twisty, but it's much more believable than most, and that's an important quality for me. If it's too fantastical, I just get bored because it takes all of the suspense out of it.

I also find that I love books read by Australian actors. It's just a soothing accent, and it seems like all of the ones I've listened to are narrated in a very natural but engaging style, and they've all been good, engaging, mature mysteries.

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1 person found this helpful

Great for young adults

Reviewed: 11-29-23

I'll start with the good things: First, I thought the narrator was good, and appropriate for the book - and I'm very picky about narrators. Many reviews complain that she sounded congested but I didn't hear anything like that. Second, there are some things about this book that I really like. There's some great creativity where it comes to world-building and introducing concepts about history, power structures and what we think is true that are wonderful food for thought - especially for a young adult audience. There are moments and ways in which she portrays strength of character and bravery that I really appreciate and that are great role models.

I also really like the way she portrays physical intimacy. It's really positive and affirming of healthy sexuality. In fact, the main reason I stuck with this book for as long as I did is because Yarros does a great job of building up sexual tension as the story and character development progressed. The main characters have enough complexity as individuals and in their relationship, and there is enough build up in their story, and the plot of the whole book, that it's very stimulating. I was certainly turned on and anticipating more for them.

Unfortunately, this book is fundamentally a Young Adult novel, and there are things that go along with that that just irritate the heck out of me and I couldn't finish it - in spite of great bones for the story, and some very interesting characters and world-building, and some great sexual tension. When that first sex scene finally arrived, she ruined it - for me - with loads of emotional processing and narrative. It would have been a super hot scene if that emotional aspect had been toned down or left out altogether. In fact, I was so turned off that I turned off the book during that scene and had to make myself go back to it later. Thereafter, the book is consumed with sort of contrived romantic-emotional processing and narrative. I have zero patience for that. Young people like that more, I think. I tolerated it better when I was younger. Now, I find it boring, melodramatic and trite.

I would say a lot of the dialogue, all throughout the book, is totally predictable and unsophisticated - which goes along with it being a YA novel. It seems like, as far as the emotional-relational-dialogue landscape, this story could be taking place in a high school in the USA today, and that scene does not appeal to me. A lot of the relationship and story arcs are predictable as well. But there are some good moments and substance mixed in there too.

I would say that if you are, in fact, a young adult, you'll probably really like this book. As someone nearing 50, I found it a little too trite, predictable, unsophisticated (in some ways) and focused on emotional processing. I have always loved fantasy, and I love some good sensual scenes - which were never part of the fantasy novels I grew up reading. I thought this was worth a try to combine those things - and while Yarros does a great job with some aspects of it, she's just written it to appeal to a different audience than me.

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This is straight up porn. Be aware.

Reviewed: 11-28-23

If you're entertained by cheesy 1980s porn, which is comprised of utterly contrived, corny scenes poorly cobbled together for the purpose of degrading women for pleasure of the infantile, narcissistic male gaze, then this book is for you. The writing is juvenile, the narration is fine.

I believe we need more openness and less shame about sexuality in our culture. But immature, mean people can't celebrate sexuality without making it misogynistic. Nikki St Crowe is one of those people. The kind of sexuality displayed in this book promotes shaming women for sexual freedom, perpetuates the primacy of male pleasure, sexualizes submission of women to men, suggests that the hottest sex naturally results in physical pain and injuries for women, and promotes a culture of male domination which includes violence towards women and violation of their human rights. If Nikki St Crowe is a woman (I'm not sure), then she's got a lot of internalized misogyny and is under the mistaken notion that choosing to degrade one's self before others can do so is somehow empowering and will lead to being desired and respected. Either that, or she's just willing to exploit those ideas for profit. Yes, she wraps the actions in language that purports to say that all of this is empowering to the main, female character, but you'd have to be about 15 years old or younger not to see through that immediately.

If the only way you can figure out to be dark and sexual in your literature is to essentially treat women like shit, go back to high school and start over. That trope has been told 20 billion times. There's nothing intelligent or interesting about that. I'm a fan of dark tales, horror, fantasy and erotica. But this is the kind of thing my high school classmates were writing 30+ years ago. Juvenile and corny.

I know, I know: it's fantasy. But our culture is well saturated with all of these ideas, and promoting them perpetuates a culture that continues to deny women full personhood, equality and human rights. I want a culture where women's sexuality is more celebrated, and where women's pleasure is just as promoted and valued as men's, and this book leads us in the opposite direction. Men will never know the depths of possible pleasure either, as long as they believe it's found in domination, subjugation, submission and power plays.

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Enjoyable

Reviewed: 11-22-23

The narrator's easy Aussie accent makes this a relaxing listen, and it's told with a sense of humor. A fun mystery that doesn't take itself too seriously.

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Terrible narrator, but engaging writing

Reviewed: 06-27-23

There is only one narrator I've encountered that annoyed me so much I made myself remember his name so that I would never listen to another of the books he narrates. That narrator is Frank Muller, who reads this book. I never would have listened to this series if he had read the first book. But, he didn't, and I liked the first book enough that I got careless and bought the second one before screening the narrator. I almost returned it just because of him several times, but made it through and here I am. So, the story must be pretty good to make me willing to tolerate him, because he annoys the stuffing out of me.

I have a love-hate relationship with King's storytelling. He is a master of it, in many ways. He paints potent imagery, and is fantastic at creating word and thought hooks that repeat throughout the story, and intertwine to draw situations and characters together with a sense of supernatural fate. He crafts intricate individual scenes, so you feel like you're there, feeling what his characters feel. He imbues his (male) characters with complex, human internal dialogue, so that you can't help caring about what happens to them and being drawn into everything they do.

Yes, I did make the caveat that he does that for his male characters - and it's unfortunately true. Just based on his writing, I suspect that Mr. King likes and appreciates women, but he doesn't know how to flesh them out as actual people. They do not have nearly the same amount of internal dialogue, they play primarily a sexual role, and mostly just respond to what his male characters do. That's one of the things I hate about his writing - though it's common for men of his generation. Even though the one female main character in this series is portrayed as desirable (first and foremost), strong and admirable, she is not fleshed out as a human character to nearly the extent that his male characters are. She needs the men to figure things out for her much of the time, they do almost all of the talking, and she does a lot of responding. That's pretty consistent across the several books of his I've read now. If anything, this is the best one, in that regard.

I think it's King's ability to craft small scenes that keeps me coming back for more. When it comes to the overall arc of a story, what ultimately happens, he often disappoints me, but in the immediate scale of crafting scenes, he keeps my attention, and that's all I need at this point. I want to be distracted and entertained with things that don't have to do with current socio-political issues, and he does that - though it's amazing how prescient the themes of some of his books are. He is a master story teller, even if the stories themselves sometimes leave me shaking my head.

I definitely like this series more than I liked The Stand, which started out good, but ended up as vapid nonsense. I'm not sure I like it as much as Dreamcatcher, but it's good. I'd recommend.

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Beautiful story

Reviewed: 06-15-23

Beautifully narrated by the author. What a life he’s lived, and rich insights gained. I love his authenticity.

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Excellent

Reviewed: 06-07-23

Until now, I thought Stephen King was very overrated. I've listened to a few other books of his, and thought they were so-so. There were things I liked and things I strongly disliked. This book shows a new level of maturity, human insight, depth and craftsmanship, in my experience of his work.

King is a great word smith. He's a master of creating individual scenes that come to dazzling life, with long descriptions that draw you in, instead of getting boring. In this novel, he also manages to tie those scenes together in such a way as to create compelling characters, deep relationships, heart wrenching pathos, gripping suspense and actual humor. I found other books of his to be too comic-al to really engage or care about the arc of the story or what happens to the characters, but with this one, I cared deeply. It made me want to cry - and that's high praise.

I really liked Jeffrey DeMunn, narrator for this book. I'm not an expert in the accents of the far North East, but he sounded very convincing to me as he slipped into voicing the ordinary men who lived the extraordinary action of this story. He sounded earthy, natural, and authentic, and made this fantastic story believable. He was enjoyable for me to listen to for all 23 hours.

There are basically only men in this story - which is ok. I really appreciated seeing how King portrayed the relationships of men here; how they genuinely loved and cared for each other, even while at times their language and actions were juvenile and shallow (mostly while the characters were actually juveniles). In his older books, at any rate, I have a really hard time with how King portrays women, so it was almost better to barely have any in this one. You can tell he likes women, even appreciates them and wants to treat them well, but as a young author, anyway, he also doesn't seem to know that women actually have brains and personalities. They represent the idea of sex and that's about it. He was a man of his time; I can't blame him for it, and the books I read that were like that were 30+ years old. This book represents a lot of growing up, in general, and I imagine he has grown up in other ways as well.

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Beautiful observations

Reviewed: 04-22-23

This is a really beautiful work of observation and writing. It requires some attention and patience from the listener, which I like. Scenes and thoughts and observations are worked out over time, and the words, imagery and characters are worth careful notice.

Robin Sachs, narrator, has a soothing and very pleasant voice. He seems a natural fit for this book, which is all about appreciation for the natural, the slow, the thoughtful.

Bonus: It's also perfect for bed-time. The narration is not monotone, or boring, but there are also not drastic changes in volume, and there is certainly nothing suspenseful about the tales told. It's interesting, which it has to be to keep my mind from wandering to unpleasant things, but soothing at the same time.

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2 people found this helpful