Anonymous

Unfortunately spoiled

Reviewed: 2020-08-21

The promise of a young black man running marathons to save his kidnapped sister is thoroughly let down by a glacial pace, an uninteresting political intrigue, and almost a dozen side characters (about half of whom are wildly disinteresting) who constantly push the protagonist out of the spotlight. Despite most of these side-characters having a good chapter apiece to introduce themselves, I still found myself forgetting who one or two of them were. Was this because it took me three weeks to read through? Certainly, it was. But the story was just so boring that picking it up for another chapter became tiresome. The story has a muddled ending. About half of the characters come some level of emotional or narrative conclusion, but plenty of them don't. The protagonist is almost dropped off the face of the earth with an almost literally "and then he lived happily ever after, and continued running marathons with his girlfriend." The amount of pacing whiplash is staggering. The most egregious example of the author's pacing issues (and worse, his lack of understanding for what is interesting in a story): At one point we spend almost five minutes describing a woman getting on a plane, getting off the plane, calling a taxi, and driving to a woman's house. The following interview is then summarized in one sentence. Jarring doesn't begin to cover it. Narrator was very memorable, although the first half of the book was peppered with frequent musical refrains which he half-hearted. I expected the music to be an ongoing theme but was *completely dropped* halfway through and was never once mentioned again. Just bizarre.

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New-age nonsense

Reviewed: 2020-06-28

Impossible to listen to. Ridiculous; full of wild assertion after unfounded (and unprovable) new-age nonsense.

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Unique and arresting.

Reviewed: 2020-03-09

The first book of the Bobiverse deals with the most interesting problems in the series; while the latter books seem to regard the first half of this novel as the "necessary boring part," that's the part I was most curious about. The science begins relatively hard in this novel but quickly sinks to exceptionally soft sci-fi. This is easily the best book in the series, clearly earning its 5/5 rating while the others sink slightly to a 4. We are Legion is the fastest I've ever read an audiobook, and while the sequels were devoured with similar voracity, I can't help but feel let down by what this masterpiece sets up. Still, a marvellous series. I'll keep an eye out for Dennis Taylor's other work.

Mild letdown

Reviewed: 2020-03-09

The series can't help but finish on a bit of a low note with the epic battle with the Others taking place over two chapters, and being of such a high-level viewpoint that it lacks a certain viscerality. The fascinating science-fiction that abounds in the previous books is (merely) continued here, without much evolution. The author serves too many individual plotlines onto his plate and struggles to finish them all satisfactorily, as some of the narrative+emotional climaxes of the trilogy occurred in the previous book, and characters like Will are largely left adrift. I was hoping for Bob to eventually get down to a galaxy-charting expedition, with the full knowledge that geometric growth is his greatest asset against the Others. In the end, the author settles on four or five star-systems that lack sufficient punch to distract from my personal disbelief that Bob could be so self-important that he refuses to create more probes to search the galaxy. As mentioned, the author also lacks the awareness to bring the various plot threads of the various star-systems and various Bobs to a single well-knit conclusion, and with every main Bob given equal time, the actual danger of the Others feels unimaginably weak in comparison to the danger the story tells us they pose. In other words, neither the pacing nor the characters are as well-developed as they could have been. As a personal complaint, I swear the phrases "grin" or "raised eyebrows" each appear over five hundred times in this book. Get a thesaurus for god's sake. However, this is not to say I don't like it. These are largely nitpicks clinging to a very solid core. A mostly-satisfying, if occasionally-unsatisfying conclusion. 3.5/5

Fabulous!

Reviewed: 2020-03-09

Impeccably paced, apprehending plotline, and relatively interesting characters provide a real thrillride. A modicum of BattleTech knowledge (or the ability to use Sarna.net) is a prerequisite, but the book certainly does not get by simply by clinging to the spine of the BT universe. Three large-scale BattleMech battles in twelve hours, pillowed by plenty of interesting character-driven plot, with the exception of perhaps one or two dud chapters out of forty. Excellent narrator and highly varied diction. Couldn't recommend highly enough.

Very good!

Reviewed: 2019-08-10

Amusing and unique take on Harry Potterlike "what if magic were real." The world at large is happy to welcome the differently morphous to society. Chaos ensues.

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Disappointing.

Reviewed: 2019-07-18

Lead character without goals or desires bogs down a slow and boring story. Narrator deadpan.

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