It's Bad Bad Awesome

Pawn store guy, junkies, assassin nun, crooked cop, serial killer porn couple, occult weirdo, a Rhodesian, and more. All willing to kill each other and more to get these two swords that may or may not be the fountain of youth. My favorite is the assassin nun, Sister Michelle, you got to love Kevlar vestments. But there are no good guys in this book they are all bad it is just which is the not as bad as the rest.

This book is definitely filled with a ton of action and suspense. Every time you think you have this story figured out the author calls squirrel and takes you off on a different and wonderful direction, it really keeps you on your toes. All of his character are well put together and you will find something to like even in the ones you don't like.

Audiobook narrator Fred Wolinsky takes this book and makes each and every character different and unique. He gives them different voices and different attitudes, Mr. Wolinsky makes you feel as if you are there in the story either helping your favorite character and hindering his enemies, but you are there with them in the story, seeing, hearing, feeling, everything and that makes for a awesome performance.

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1 person found this helpful

A cast of characters that will blow your mind!

If you could sum up It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World in three words, what would they be?

Character-driven, intriguing, plot-twists-galore.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

The characters were very engaging. Some had you rooting for them while others were downright despicable and had you hoping they get everything they deserve! The story took 90-degree turn after 90-degree turn, while never losing my interest. Every character arc came nicely together without jumping through hoops or over sharks. Mr. Curtis M. Lawson had evidently put plenty of effort into the backstories of each character and it shows (in a good way). I'm sure his background work has made some interesting virtual footprints on Google. :-D The references to pop culture were done very well and added a nice extra spice.

Have you listened to any of Fred Wolinsky’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Fred Wolinsky is obviously extremely talented. He has full command of accents and voice variety. However, his voice combined with his mannerism of stretching out the last word at the end of every other sentence had me feeling that he was just on the edge of going into a 1930's trans-Atlantic accent. Also, though well performed some of his characters were borderline cartoon. His female voices really jerked me out of the story and I felt like I was listening to either Norman Bates or Edith Bunker. :-/

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Being a father of 3, I naturally found all of the scenes that had children suffering kind of disturbing though I understood fully (and agree) that they were important to the story.

The piece where we learn of the Rhodesians backstory was very well put together. The overlap with another character and the story device used to give us all this backstory was ingenious!

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed this very much and would read other books by Curtis M. Lawson. I will gladly refer his books to friends as well. Thumbs up Mr. Lawson!

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Murder Most Artistic

This was definitely one of the strangest books I have ever encountered. It features the Bonnie an Clyde of the murder for fun set, a psycho warrior nun, a pair of cursed knives, a lady cop with a sick son and, by the end, a whole lot of dead bodies. If you're at all squeamish about violence or bad language, this one's probably not for you, but it' alternately funny, horrifying and oddly addictive, to the point where I really wanted to keep listening to find out where it was going.
I you're a fan of stories about psycho killers and really twisted plots, this one has almost an early Stephen King feel to it.

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Good story with mediocre performance

Fred Wolinsky performance was laughable. He's large men sounded like the principle from Beavis and Butthead and anyone Italian sounded like Mario and Luigi. So in my minds eye I imagined those characters dressed up as a nun or Mr. Rodgers. It took away from a good story.

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It's a good, good, good, good book!

At first the speaker was hard to enjoy, but once the story got rolling, I enjoyed it. Cool story, I would love to listen to more!

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It's like a popcorn movie but in book form

A dirty cop, a pair of serial killers, and a nun assassin walk into a bar...

This was a fun book, Curtis Lawson brings together an insane group of people all gunning for a set of demonic knives that can suck the life out of their victim and give it to the wielder. This brings a bunch of zany lowlifes into a no holds barred fight for the prize as everyone scrambles to be the ultimate victor.

I thought the book was decent, Nothing that changed my life but a fun romp with some scum bags. I kept thinking of that movie Smoking Aces throughout the listen.

I personally didn't like the narrator though, He was weird and kind of robotic, like an autistic speak and say. His voices were decent but the overall narration was just... strange.

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A wild ride!

Super fun, fast-paced, really well-written story. Not a boring moment. This could seriously be a Tarantino film. I love the way the eccentric characters' storylines work together. In the end, it gets pretty wild.

Highly recommend this book, and the author's other work-also awesome!

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It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World

This was a pretty fun book. I would have given it a higher rating if it had not tried to develop a heart towards the end. The plot was really fun, sort of like the movie Smokin Aces if you are familiar. I liked that there were no real good guys and everyone was available to be taken down. The blades that were the focus of the hunt were a nice touch introducing a level of supernatural to the base desires for money and murder.

I was given a copy of this book on request for my unbiased opinion.

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Awesome Dark Thriller

This book is hard to sum up into one category. It is a combination of dark thriller, police procedural and a little dark magic to tie it all together. I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but it turned out to be a gem!! Everybody in the book is pretty much a bad guy, from the detective, to the Rhodesian Mercenary, and even the nun!! It's not very often you find yourself rooting for a bad guy, but this book actually makes you like some of the bad guys and want them to succeed. This book will take you on a wild thrilling ride through multiple lives all tied together with dark magic!

Fred is one of my favorite narrators! He has a vast amount of different voices and does an amazing job on the different accents in this book! I highly recommend this audiobook!

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3 people found this helpful

Loads of Fun!

This is a tale of two magical daggers that act as vampires, transferring the life, vitality, and soul of the person stabbed to the person doing the stabbing. Old people become younger and stronger. Injured people heal instantaneously. Sick people become healthy. All at the small price of being turned into a crazed homicidal maniac.

Naturally, most people don’t believe the legend behind the daggers is true. They just see extremely valuable artifacts of an earlier age. When the knives are sort of accidentally stolen, lots of people become interested in possessing them. Most initially want to claim the reward, but just about everyone gets seduced by the very real power of the blades. This makes for a madcap adventure in which large numbers of people are seeking the prize in a very dark parody of the famous comedy, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

The truth is, I expected to like this book, but was surprised by just how quickly I fell in love with it. Lawson’s characters are fantastic—quirky (if not outright weird)—and many of them are really, really, bad. All of them are in over their heads. Watching people struggle to obtain or regain possession of these magic items was fascinating. Wondering who would ultimately survive made for a gripping and extremely fast-paced storyline. Honestly, my only problem with the tale was that it came to an end.

Fortunately, there’s a sequel.

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