Anonymous

Not the best, but still fun

Reviewed: 11-11-24

This story dragged during the first half. It"s not that the events weren"t interesting, they just didn"t need that much time spent on them. It left the plot feeling a little thin and stretched. The relentlessly cartoony flatness of the world building in this series where people and societies are either utopian saints, evil money grubbers, or ignorant clods who don"t know what"s good for them begins to stale. I keep waiting for it to mature into a more nuanced, believable universe, but it hasn"t yet. Perhaps that is why I frequently struggle to care about any of the human characters in this series, because they all feel so similar, not so much individual people as archetypes of "good" or "bad".

All that said, I love Murderbot. The delightful way MB"s character and POV is written is why I come back to this series over and over. Even when everything else falls flat, Murderbot and Art have more than enough personality, chemestry, and pathos to carry the show and make you care about "their humans" simply because they care so much in their odd, endearing, unique ways. I continue to applaud the author"s wonderful handling of MB"s character and voice and look forward to future installments. The action sequences are also very well written, intense, and gripping. Once the action started, I was on the edge of my seat. The tension was well crafted and maintained and I really enjoyed that whole part of the book.

Also want to give an appreciative shout out to the awesome narrator who always reads MB"s inner monologues to perfection and plays a huge role in my enjoyment of this and the other books in this series.

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Sociopathic rich guy gets away with everything - what else is new?

Reviewed: 11-08-24

I was genuinely shocked by how much this book repelled me because I *love* Win, or at least, I did. He was hands down my favorite character in many of the Myron Bolitar novels. But apparently it"s better not to get too close a look at your favs. Spending an entire book in his head left me quite happy to get out again and I don’t plan to return.

This book has shown me that vigilante justice really only does work in comic books where you have outsized, larger than life villains. Otherwise you just have real life where a rich guy goes around threatening and beating up the little guys with impunity because he"s rich. Some of them may have "deserved" it and some didn"t but that doesn"t matter because Win is content to play god and consider himself always right, even as he insists he doesn"t.

Just because he acknowledges how gross some aspects of the whole thing is doesn"t excuse his going ahead and doing it all anyway. In fact, it kind of makes it worse. He spends many diatribes on how the rich abuse their wealth ... as he goes ahead and does exactly that. The level of both hypocrisy and inherent self loathing that implies is disturbing and makes him very unsympathetic. Mind you, I don"t think Win or the author is trying to make him sympathetic. I don"t know what they were going for, but if it was someone that you could totally see turning into a very successful serial killer with the slightest puff of wind, they succeeded. That could be an interesting direction, actually, but the whole internalized self loathing of the rich and men in general that he has going on makes it all feel more depressing than edgy. He"s so focused on trying to find socially acceptable reasons to vent his violent narcissism (I beat up people who hurt women because men are pigs!) that he doesn"t even feel like a compelling anti-hero, just a sociopath who paradoxically has somehow had a healthy helping of social talking points hammered into his psyche and is attempting unsuccessfully to use them in lieu of his missing moral compass. Maybe that is exactly what the author wanted to get across. If so, well done, but I have no desire to read any more of it, so I will be stopping here.

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Thoroughly Enjoyable

Reviewed: 10-21-24

A satisfying finish to the events begun in the last book! This was an engaging, careful dance of intrigue by characters we"ve come to know well against a foe that was worthy of them. It"s nice to feel that Pendergast and Constance actually had someone who was a bit of a challenge for them, at least for a moment, and the 1800"s setting was delightful. It was a wonderful change of pace, and I enjoyed the solid adventure in a period bereft of modern technology and the simplicities and complications that it brings.  

As always, the authors have obviously put a great deal of research and thought into everything, and I deeply appreciate the masterful balance they strike between giving enough detail and surrounding information to engross and immerse you in the world of the story without giving so much that it becomes tedious or draws your attention away from the plot and the characters. That is harder to do than it seems, and once again they have pulled it off with aplomb!

I feel a mild consternation about some inconsistencies in Diogenes" characterization over the course of this series, but not enough to detract from the enjoyment of the ways he was utilized in this story. The fictional Lokis of the world are always interesting. How he went from where we last saw him to where he is now seems to me to be missing a chunk of intervening development, but the underlying framework was definitely there, so I"ll just assume it happened "off screen". 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, this book reminds me once again how much I love D"Agosta, and why. Even if his role in this story was not extensive, he was absolutely necessary to maintain a feeling of heart and soul. He has been such a rock throughout this entire series and is used here to good effect to keep the grounded, warm, human element in place when surrounded by the often chilly heights of the Pendergast crew"s semi-sociopathic genius. His interactions with Joe were some of my favorite parts of this book.

The narrator also did a fantastic job. Mr. Mays has developed a really good handle on voices, tone, and inflection for Pendergast, Constance, and the rest of the crew. Absolutely excellent narration! I felt immersed the whole time listening. 

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2 people found this helpful

Terrible, inspiring, and cautionary

Reviewed: 08-29-24

I appreciate the balance the author struck between the often incredibly grim circumstances of the tales being related and the inspiring and hopeful examples of those who rose to the occasion and spent lifetimes cultivating the beauty of kindness and humanity among the ashes of tragedy. This book left me feeling devastated, but also peaceful, which is an odd but compelling balance to create.

I"d like to say that we humans have moved on past such things and they"d never happen now, but after seeing how the COVID-19 Pandemic was handled and the responses it elicited from the masses, I fear we haven"t actually come very far at all. It was really eye opening to read this and see how little certain parts of human nature change. If leprosy was still untreatable and considered highly contagious, would the tragedies in this story still be only in the past? I hope so, but I don"t know.

This book is a prime example of why humanity as a whole could stand to exercise less fear of our own mortality and more courage and compassion. Thankfully, there have always been those who stand against the tides, even if they are only capable of being appreciated in hindsight, once the press of years finally makes meaningless the passions and politics that seem so important in the moment.

I will be forever impressed by the courage and resilience of the people who lived through these ordeals. Thank you to the author for helping me get to know them.

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Peril in numbers

Reviewed: 07-20-24

Sometimes there isn"t strength in numbers, apparently. It seems possible that any one of these teams alone might have been fine, but too many people on a mercurial mountain spelled disaster. This was a very interesting look at the 2008 K2 disaster. I enjoyed the book and the engaging way it was written. It did a great job of making you feel the fragility of life in a situation where every step, choice, and chance could spell disaster.

My one complaint is that I was surprised how little effort was made to give any information or perspective from the South Korean climbing party. We only get scant details about two people from that team, and almost no background information at all on the three who died—nothing about their lives, their families or even where they were from—while many of the western climbers in the book are given many details about their ambitions, love of climbing, home towns, families who where waiting for them, and so on. None of what happened is told from their perspective, which is a shame because the author does such a good job of narrating from the perspective of several of the others who perished. Lacking those humanizing details, the South Korean team"s presence in the story takes on a slightly uncomfortable whiff of stereotyped otherness that I can"t imagine the author intended.

Everything else about the book was very good, though, and it definitely held your attention all the way through.

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Solid stories well told

Reviewed: 07-02-24

These were interesting mysteries nicely told in Watson"s familiar voice, with nothing that felt out of place, anachronistic, or out of character. Exactly the kinds of Holmes stories I like best! Well worth a listen.

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Interesting and well written

Reviewed: 05-20-24

I found this an interesting and enjoyable book that expanded my knowledge of the people and events it covered. Some parts I knew, and some I didn"t, all were well rendered and well researched. The story held my attention all the way through and the narrator was perfect. A great listen.

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A little repetitive

Reviewed: 05-09-24

Some of these stories were enjoyable, but there was such a sense of sameness to them all in tone and characters that it felt repetitive after a while. I think they would have benefited from being mixed into anthologies with other stories from other writers to provide some contrast and variety.

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Medieval Food Diary

Reviewed: 11-21-23

80% of this book is Hugh eating maslin loaves and pottage, or occasionally eel and eggs. He spends far more time thinking in detail about food than he does with no detail about the young woman he wants to marry, which I don"t think was *supposed* to be funny, but it kind of is. Aside from the intensely repetitive descriptions of every meal of the day, and occasionally flat characters, this was in general a pleasant and enjoyable book for background listening. Great for listening to while doing chores or running errands. (I genuinely mean that as a compliment, good background books are something I look for a lot and are not always easy to find).

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Good book, good narrator

Reviewed: 09-02-23

This was another solid entry in the Nora Kelly / Corrie Swanson series. I enjoy that the authors always find something new to give us and the blend of mystery and action was perfect. Being very familiar with the real life dead mountain case that much of this was drawn from was at the same time both an enhancement and a distraction for me and I have mixed feelings about that part of things. I very much enjoyed the interesting and clever fictional tale that Doug and Linc wove, and it was fun to see different explanations for a famous mystery, but for me personally I think I would have preferred if they had a little more distance between the details of the actual tragedy in the Ural mountains and this fictional one. That said, I enjoyed the book and look forward to the next. The authors" abilities to create a plethora of distinct, three-dimensional characters and to make you care about and feel interested in so many of them continues to amaze and delight.

I notice several people taking issue with the narrator, but I"m genuinely not sure why. Ms. Farrell has done all the recent books in this series and I think she"s done a good job them. I find both her female and male character voices to be good and her narration style easy to listen to. For me, the mark of a good reader is when I don"t spend much time thinking about them at all because they"re bringing the book to me so seamlessly and vividly that I almost forget they"re there. This narrator definitely has that talent she and enhanced my enjoyment of this book.

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