Charlotte Ward

completely fantasy as borne out by current events

Reviewed: 05-29-22

listening to this audiobook while keeping up with the current russian invasion of ukraine is interesting.

i guess i see the wish fulfillment & fearmongering in the story, as russians deftly move from cunning ploy to cunning ploy.

it’s good cotton candy but definitely not realistic. i’ll go on to the next one because i need predictable fluff.

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Great

Reviewed: 05-08-21

It’s like one long episode of Revisionist History. I thoroughly enjoyed it, listened in one sitting while at work. Glad to have stumbled on this in audible; will sign up for future releases on the site.

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Narrator is very, very, very slow.

Reviewed: 03-06-21

I found it hard to focus on the book due to the incredibly slow narration. I listened to most of the book at 1.5x, and the last bit at 2x speed without issue beyond the narration sounding strangely urgent.

The story was a story within a story, the final act taking forever to wrap as it closed the tale of representation, inequality, exploration, history, and epidemiology.

This 2017 book couldn’t know it was warning of 2020 but I found the mention of Dr. Fauci (and his warning about disease) rather prescient.

Overall I enjoyed the book despite itself.

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Fantastic, unsettling

Reviewed: 03-02-21

Great listen! Happy to have got it just as it was released.

One quibble, though: the last half hour repeats itself.

Great ending, though a little confusing to hear it twice.

Definitely recommended.

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Good narrative history

Reviewed: 12-21-20

A lot of names to keep track of but they’re mostly consistent throughout the story of the carrier. Unavoidably jingoistic but even that is on the light side.

Narrator is decent if a little too “manly,” but I suppose it’s a good fit. He reminds me of the voice actor who portrayed Jet in Cowboy Bebop.

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Obvious pickups are obvious

Reviewed: 09-13-20

The story is great, it truly tells a minute by minute story of the events in each plane and at each site. There’s obvious edits where the author mispronounced a name and every time it comes to it the whole audio quality is changed. There’s whole sections that are the same, it’s pretty rough but everything levels off at the end.

You guys might want to knuckle down on those edits.

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Unavoidable jingoism but otherwise pretty good

Reviewed: 08-17-20

I was looking for the story of the event, not so much hero worship. It wasn’t all that, but there were parts that fell flat for me as I don’t wear American flag t-shirts.

The buildup to the events is well told, with crew background and relative events which lead up to the disaster.

The narrator sounds like Major Dad, which is a big plus to the aforementioned flag wearers. It’s fitting for the story.

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Detailed story, muddy narration

Reviewed: 09-22-19

I returned this book after slogging a chunk of the way through and spending a week willfully forgetting I had bought it.

The narration is heavily edited (likely it was automated) and the sentences just run into eachother. A couple points have pickup queues, but those are forgivable.

This presentation might work for a work of fiction or a less dense nonfiction, but the narration turned quickly into white noise and I was constantly lost. Having a map handy might work, but really the whole thing is impenetrably produced.

Chapter 11 into 12 has a music sting that sort of runs over the sentence in 11 and it just abruptly ends. It was at this point that I had realized I hadn’t paid any attention to the past half hour, that the long run on sentence was dully causing me to seek distraction elsewhere. I returned the confounded thing, and I’ve removed all books narrated by this person from my wishlist.

I suppose I’ll have to find this particular history in physical book form; or — more likely — on a free podcast.

Thanks but no thanks for this shambles.

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Fantastic story, difficult narration.

Reviewed: 03-25-19

Not sure if it’s editing or the author himself (really it’s both) but the narration was performed in a monotone voice that was edited so that all the sentences would run on to eachother.

The real saving grace is the content itself. Very interesting story.

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1 person found this helpful

Great story, but

Reviewed: 07-21-18

I really liked the story, it is a tale told in many parts and has more names and people to keep track of. It’s not bad once you get the hang of it.

The last few chapters / couple hours of the story are a long and drawn out denouement, a sort of repetitive narrative story of things winding down after the war. I get it, it’s a “where are they now” type of thing of each and every player in this true story... it just keeps hinting at an ending without providing it. I think it could’ve been better written; it feels as if the entire third act was tacked onto a wartime tale. I’d still recommend this book to friends, just with a warning.

The narrator doesn’t pronounce the german words very well, but it’s forgivable.

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