Mike Reiter

Reading the series is a must, doesn't stand alone

Reviewed: 2019-08-12

Tim Gerard Reynolds does an excellent job with narration. Since I have listened to all the Riyria books and this series he, to me, is the voice of this world and setting. The story starts a bit slow but picks up speed. There is one part of the book when one of the main characters does something I would consider stupid and I found it pissed me off, and then I realized it is because I actually care about these characters. Some secrets are revealed and my only real complaint about this book is that it is not a stand alone book. If you had not read what came before, you might be ok but probably not and the worst sin, is it ends in the middle of the story. I don't mean the overarching epic, I mean the story that is being told just stops in the middle.

Amusing and a little weird

Reviewed: 2019-07-27

If you have been following the saga through John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders you know our protagonists can see supernatural, pan dimensional beings due to a power given to them by a drug they call Soya Sauce. It is a decent adventure with kidnappings, battles, shady government(?) organizations, reality tv stars, shape shifting aliens and batmantis. The humour is sophomoric, that doesn't make it any less funny but if you don't like dildo shooting cannons, fart and dick jokes, this might not be the book for you.

I enjoyed it and I felt the performance by Stephen Thorne was very good and captured the spirit of the material.

Starts slow but gets better

Reviewed: 2019-07-21

Martin and Gwen had kids and moved back to the modern world. As always some wizard(s) go nuts and the other wizards have to save the world from them. Pretty much all the stories in the series go like that. But like all the books there is some interesting twists and humour. The book started slow and predictable and I was forming a negative opinion of it but it started to pick up a quarter of the way through and I ended up enjoying it. While this book stands alone, I think it is more enjoyable if you have read the others and know the secondary characters. They don't get much time in this one, and knowing their back stories adds depth their smaller parts.

All hail our digital overlords

Reviewed: 2019-07-14

Level 5 refers to a near future where the pinnacle of artificial intelligence is referred to as a Level 5 AI. The science fiction part is very good. The extrapolation of current mobile technology and nano-technology is very plausible. The jump in AI sentience and gravity manipulation is much less plausible but not so much it detracts from the story in any way.

The narrator does a very good performance and has identifiable voices for each character.

I guess the main thing I liked about the story is it wasn't a story of AI's destroying or saving mankind but involved people and relied on them being stupid, brilliant, altruistic, petty, greedy, paranoid, you know, people. Some of the characters are a little too saintly (Victor's wife) but the saintly ones have very very very small parts.

Standard RPG Lit, nothing to see here move along

Reviewed: 2019-07-08

If you have read any RPGLit, you have read this one. Unrealistic contortions to get the main character into the game so that when he dies in the game he dies in real life. This in a world where the US doesn't allow Kinder's eggs because they are dangerous, such a game could never exist. Actually it would be a more interesting story if they described a world where such a game, one that kills people, exists, the breakdown of that society would make a good story.. The "hero" flails his way from one situation to another and rather than planning anything just picks his skills on the fly when he needs them. He and his low level friends take down monsters that are 4+x their level in groups of twos and threes. If you ever played an RPG you know that you would last about two seconds. It does end with an interesting plot point but not enough to make me get the next in the series.

I never got used to the narrator' voice. It certainly detracted from me getting immersed in the story.

If you have never read any RPGLit, this is about the same as any of them. If you have, you can pass on this one.

Super heros and office politics

Reviewed: 2019-07-06

Andrea becomes an administrative assistant at a corporation that employs super heroes to protect the earth from super villains. She is contractually obligated to not ask questions. The story is light hearted but of course involves a world saving fight at the end. The narrative oscillates between super hero stuff and office management, politics, marketing, sales etc. The performance is very good and engaging and the book is entertaining.

Great villain great characters

Reviewed: 2019-07-03

They made us read Margret Atwood in school. It used to be one dimensional characters and heavy handed messages. But since a Hand Maid's Tale she has only got better. I highly recommend this book, and if you liked it I also recommend The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake,

Roz, Charis, and Tony are people who vaguely knew each other in college. They also knew or knew of Zenia. Zenia re-enters their lives one at a time and destroys them for no really discernible purpose. The characters in this novel are well developed, you actually care what happens to them. Zenia is deliciously enigmatic and evil. The story is told through a series of flashbacks as well as present day.

The narration of this story is very good. If there is one knock on this book it is the same problem that all books written before 2010 have that try to be in "present day" is that it feels a bit dated to have people reading news papers, getting messages on answering machines, and plot points that would disappear with a quick picture from a cell phone or a text message. But that is a niggle at best.

Intriguing story,rather long, unsatisfying ending.

Reviewed: 2019-06-20

It is a story of two people connected across time and dimensions. I don't want to give too much away but that much is obvious from the chapter titles. The characters are engaging and the narration is quite good. This is actually three books that make up one story. Although after listening to it I could not see any of the books standing alone. There is some interesting mysticism hinted at but not fully explored, which actually makes it more interesting. Nobody really knows who or what the little people are, what they can or can't do or even what their agenda is.

I enjoyed the whole story but the end felt rushed and a bit unsatisfying. I guess it both allows the listener to draw their own conclusions as well as leaves room for a follow on story but I guess I would have prefered a more concrete ending.

Facts are wrong from the start

Reviewed: 2019-05-12

I might end up agreeing with his premise, but I could not get past chapter 3. He incorrectly states that Einstein was a poor student, which is incorrect and easily checked, besides you don't get a doctorate in physics if you are a poor student. That Edison invented the light bulb. While Edison did invent the electric vote recorder, the phonograph and the multiplex telegraph system, the light bulb was invented by William Joseph Hammer, a consulting engineer that worked for Edison. He quotes the bible out of context. By that I mean selecting a single line that seems to prove your point regardless of the contest in the story. Like reading the parable of the Good Samaritan but only the line about how Levites avoided the man and saying that point is you should avoid people who have been beaten and robbed.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Good story a bit predictable

Reviewed: 2019-05-12

Very good story with a very cool setting. The characters were interesting and the narration was very good. I guess the ending was supposed to be a twist but I saw it coming quite a ways away, although that didn't really detrack from the story. My only complaint is that it was too short