D. Neill

insensat

Revisado: 10-22-24

When an author learns a new word and shoehorns it in everywhere it leaves you insensat. I fear insensat will be the next susurration and we're going to hear it everywhere... blah.

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Marvelous

Revisado: 03-21-24

This rendition of the adventures of Robin Hood is delightful. The characters are lively and complex. Robin Hood lives a noble life that contrasts the perception of Good with what it takes to do Good in a subtle way. He inspires a desire to do what is right in the face of public condemnation.

This story is a breath of fresh air!

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Weird narrative decisions

Revisado: 02-21-24

For some reason,certain key words are dubbed in rather jarringly. It is an aesthetic choice that really distracts from the performance. It is unnecessary and baffling. It seems to be a Nick Podehl thing, as it occurred in another recent story he read. I’m probably going to be skipping Podehl narrations for a while.


Edit: misspelled Nick

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Youthful Idealism

Revisado: 01-22-24

I have been enjoying this series, albeit less with each installment, until this book. The author's naivety regarding life has become egregious to the point of intolerable. Lip service is given to frailty of Man's ego and our fallibility, but a real understanding of humanity's Pride is lacking. The author's lack of insight to the broken nature of academic endeavor's, consistent belief that the bureaucrats are pure souls with the exception of elected officials, and persistent demonization of private enterprise was cute in the first couple of books, boring in the third and fourth, but intolerable in this fifth offering.

If you're able to turn your brain off, or like the author, young and naïve, this book will be fine for you. If you've had any experience beyond being a student and pay even a modicum of your attention to politics, the world Mr. Greif has built will eventually drift into the absurd.

Kudos, Mr. Greif, for writing a book, for making something, but please, go out and live a little before writing any more. Your storytelling has grown stale and your worldview is shallow. Talk to someone you think is reprehensible, engage with ideas that you think are dangerous, go spend some time where poverty isn't shoved into the corner and ignored.

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Proof Reader Needed

Revisado: 12-22-23

This book fails at the basics of character consistency from one paragraph to another. A great example is when the Trio arrive in the city initially and Kara (sp?) is quickly trying to leave the Dynamic Duo (DD). DD talk her into getting a drink with them and as they walk to the tavern Kara forgets she was trying to ditch DD forty-two seconds ago and goes on and on about how she has a duty to look after them. Then there is the very random interjection of world relevant knowledge by the Glasses directly contradicting DD's claim of ignorance about the world they find themselves in. The level of knowledge the glasses give the li'l scrappy dude should have made Kara exceedingly suspicious of the DD but she just accepts everything as she needs to based on the minute to minute state of the Trio's interaction. There are dozens more major and minor failures of character and story coherence in the first three chapters alone, far too many to list in a review. Doing so would, in effect, be recounting the majority of the offending chapters.

If you want a poorly run D&D adventure narrated by a great actor, this book is for you. If you can just be in the moment and not give any thought to what was done or said by any character less than thirty seconds ago, this book is great! This reads like a very rough draft that is in desperate need of refinement. It feels like the author was in too big a rush to get to the main course and forgot to set the table, cook the meal, or even prepare the ingredients.

Michael Kramer was the only reason I made it as far as I did.

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Jeff Hays is very good

Revisado: 12-04-23

Soundbooth production is not. The audio flourishes in this book are tolerable, but still overdone. Jeff Hays’ performance needs no aid (though his howl was a bit off putting).

The book is entertaining, solid second chance story with good character development. My biggest worry is it is a soundbooth production and future books may be ruined by too much audio garbage.

If the author reads this, please ensure that Mr. Hays performs the next book without any of the soundbooth extra that makes great stories miserable experiences.

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Difficult

Revisado: 10-24-23

The world is fine, the action scenes are well written, but the characters are hard to believe. Adults that fail to lead, highschoolers that act like middle school children, a big bad that isn't as smart as he should be, and clunky dialogue, these all brought the book down.

There wasn't anything especially bad, this book is a strange example of the sum of its parts being less than the individual components. I had a difficult time believing the players in this story could be real people. Their reactions to circumstances and each other felt contrived at the best of times and nonsensical at the worst spots.

This book needs more polish before I can recommend it.

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What a slog.

Revisado: 09-09-23

This was hard to finish. The combination of first person story telling, labored anecdotes from the characters life on earth, and the unending exposition combined to make a truly boring experience. I found myself tuning out and my mind wandering for minutes only to come back to the story and discover I missed nothing.

This would have been far better as a short story of maybe 2 or 3 hours.

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sex

Revisado: 07-08-23

ugh. too much sex. not sure why it's so graphic, maybe jez doesn't get much. it detracts from an otherwise decent story, if I wanted porn, I'd watch porn. I listen to litrpg for adventure, not a dude fantasizing about something he can't get.

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Low Stakes and Thoughtful

Revisado: 05-24-23

This book is a departure from the standard immersive VR gaming story. It's refreshingly low stakes and character driven. The characters are messy and a bit thorny but feel like real people, and will frustrate you like real people.

In short, this is a slice of life meets online gaming story that finds a good balance of self aware depreciation and serious story telling. I recommend this book if you want something a little different in the online gaming literature.

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