Andrew Pollack

Great story, narration style doesn't match MC

Reviewed: 12-09-24

I've been listening to several books by Mammay and while I didn't think this was his best, it was certainly good. The story is full of perspective that I find rare in military SF and I enjoy that when I find it.

My only real issue was that I didn't feel Campbell's narration style matched the main character well. Something about the voice was weak and dreamy more than decisive and strong. That's just my opinion and others may disagree, but this is my review so that's what you get.

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Dumb fun.

Reviewed: 10-09-24

Robinson released his inner 14 year old with this one. The taking dog thing is already getting old. Being done by several authors already.

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Way too drawn out.

Reviewed: 06-29-24

You could see where this was going to go fairly early, but it takes forever to get there. Ray Porter does a decent job, though I personally find some of his voices grating. I don't see a direction for this to go as a series, but we'll find out I guess.

The story line and action itself is like a weird cross between a Kaiju manga and a Lovecraftian horror novel. I don't mean that in a good way.

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The least believable Reacher story yet. Really.

Reviewed: 06-29-24

I don't know if these are being written by someone else now or what, but Reacher himself in this one has gone complete psycho and left any semblance of his moral code behind. Not only that, but he has no trouble finding other people to go completely psycho with him without objecting. There are so many technical plot problems it's not even worth listing them, and the whole story line is so unbelievable that it's silly. Several times, especially later in the book, I kept thinking to myself "That's not how any of this works!"

It's fun enough to read, and it's still Reacher (barely) but this is not a great example of the series.

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Great morality tale. Whimsical about series things

Reviewed: 06-13-24

It's not the easiest book to describe. Imagine if Cormac Macarthy had written "The Road" in the style of Douglas Adams with a few teaspoons of Asimov and just a very light whisper of Aldus Huxley mixed in. Yeah, that.

It is beautifully read by the author, which is always a treat.

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Good old Walt -- and that's the only problem

Reviewed: 06-04-24

Old Walt is a comfort. He deals directly with things and doesn't over complicate anything. There's right, and there's wrong. This is a story that's pretty much the same in those regards.

The problem is most of it is meant to take place with a young Walt in his 20s before going off to war. That's where it kind of fails. It just doesn't track that both Walt and Bear are pretty nearly the exact characters in their 20s before military service and wartime as they are in their later stories. They have the same slow, wise, approach. They have the same juggernaut approach to problems. They make decisions the same way. The banter is the same. If you didn't explicitly say "These are younger versions" it would be impossible to tell. Even Guidall's reading of their dialog comes off the same.

In all other regards, this is a great addition to the series. Guidall does his usual perfect narration of Walt and Bear.

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Fantastic. Maberry channeling Stephen King.

Reviewed: 12-01-23

I've read nearly all the Joe Ledger novels, but not anything of the Pine Deep stories. "Ink" stands alone without any knowledge of previous works, but is distinctly different. Most of Maberry's work that I've read has a more military or special-forces plot, even if the bad guys are supernatural in one way or another. This is much more in the line of traditional horror like you'd get from a Stephen King novel. I say that as a compliment. I found it much more fun than lengthy descriptions of one kind of gun or another and which kind of military speak is the most macho.

Like a lot of horror, there are some horrible acts described that can be hard to hear. Maberry is able to tell the story of these acts without crossing the line into that stomach turning level of description you get from some authors who seem to enjoy that part of their story a bit too much.

I've seen a few reviews with complaints about some kind of agenda relating to the sexuality of a couple of the characters. I think that's more about the person reviewing than the story. People exist with a range of preferences, that's life. If you can't handle that being your novels, it's not the fault of the author. There isn't any preaching going on here, just a couple of people struggling in the same way many people do every day -- and while I know very little personally of that culture, the descriptions are well written and sensitive and seem plausible. So get over it.

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1 person found this helpful

Monsters next door. King's opinions are evident

Reviewed: 09-14-23

Great addition to the Holly story, though her quirks are a little less evident in this one. Like any King story, you're along for the ride, just enjoy it.

If you follow King at all, you know where he stands on politics and there's some of that in this book, but it's the position of his characters for the most part. Also, I don't care because I generally agree with him.

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Stop. There's no political nonsense here.

Reviewed: 09-07-23

A solid addition to the series. Personally, I'd prefer if Ms. Penny would go back to cozy detective stories full of character development and didn't need to go the all too obvious path of wider conspiracies, epic mortal danger for everyone, or arch super villains with brilliant plans. Still, the story is consistent even if some of the coincidences are a bit far fetched.

Overall, it reads a lot like most of the series, except that in this case the characters we already know are given treatment as background or even furniture, and made secondary to the tall tail of the story itself.

Lots of the reviews I read took issue with the "politics" in this book, but frankly, I didn't see any politics to speak of whether that be one "side" or the other. The other issue people have complained about is that it is "anti-gun" and "preachy". It's neither of those things. There are a few sentences, total, in the 13 hours of audio that even talk about the choice Gamache makes to not carry a firearm most of the time, and that's NO DIFFERENT from the character's stance starting with the very first book. There's another character who as part of the background, is a member of an anti-gun group in Canada, but that is only mentioned briefly and not a significant part of the book.

If you've gotten through 17 previous novels with these characters and anything in this book about politics or gun control is new to you -- well, you're not telling the truth about reading the other 17.

My own detective reasoning suggest that some of the people going out of their way to write about this being "preachy" or "too political" have a big problem with Ms. Penny's politics and the fact that she co-authored an entirely unrelated book with Hillary Clinton. I haven't read that book, but it's irrelevant to this series.

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1 person found this helpful

Cautionary review: not an action story

Reviewed: 08-25-23

I hesitate to give this a review below three stars because clearly I'm not the target audience. I struggled a bit with how useful or relevant a review from me would be, so I decided to just lay it out there like this....

It's all angsty longing and no plot, story, or background worth discussing.

I picked this one because it looked like a cool action story built around a romance. I don't care one way or another what the gender preferences or identity of the characters in a novel are so I figured that wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately for me, what little there is of action or plot in the story is treated as set dressing and mostly implied or skipped over, while the book is completely given over to the internal drama of a young woman pining away after an unrequited love. What few scenes there are in at least the first third of the book that get past just thinking about romance, aren't very steamy if your interest in the book is more prurient. If you're into what to me feels like the wish fulfillment fantasy story of a 14 year old, maybe you'll like love this book. Again, I recognize that I'm not the target audience here, but please understand that I never expected to be into that aspect of the book. I just expected there to be more substance beyond that based on the glowing reviews.

I have to conclude that novels targeted to this demographic must be really limited for this to get such glowing reviews. If there was any substance to it at all beyond the angsty longing, I'd have stuck with it. As it is, it will be my first ever return to Audible.

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4 people found this helpful