Jules

Cute....for a while

Revisado: 04-04-25

I started off liking this, but then a truly obnoxious character was introduced, who ramped up the grossness and profanity factors to the point of just being intolerable. After a while the sexual innuendo (and blatant sexual commentary) just gets tiresome and it isn't cute any more. I can handle the incessant F-bombs but the rest, not so much

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Maudlin brooding and overwrought narration

Revisado: 03-01-25

Orphan X spends the entire book, as far as I have been able to get so far, brooding in an existential funk over his life and decisions, and combining this with the overwrought narration by Scott Brick has made this book just too unbearable to finish. Brick has evidently never met a simple declarative sentence he found acceptable, and his relentless breathless infusion of intensity and melodrama into nearly every word is just too tiresome after a while.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Fascinating characters and history

Revisado: 10-22-24

The author wove an intricate plot into a background of little-known history and pulled it together with interesting and likable characters, and the narration kept the characters sorted out and individual, important in a complex story line. I not only loved the book, I even looked up the Night Witches and learned the author had done her research, so this and the history of Nazi-hunting framed an accurate background for a great story

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The worst narration ever

Revisado: 10-22-24

I couldn’t get into the plot because the narration for one of the characters was so awful that I had to give up. The narrator chose to present this character in a wholly obnoxious light and then to use such a painfully high-pitched voice and clumsy phrasing that she turned her into a cartoon character who was unbearable. I had to turn the book off and I’ll be asking for a refund.

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The political caricatures turned me off

Revisado: 08-23-24

The use of the story to make personal political commentary turned me off and I’m going to ask for a refund. It should be possible to write a good story without resorting to caricatures

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Another interesting assassin

Revisado: 11-04-23

Silva did the best he could with warmed-over material---government conniving and corruption, an interesting assassin who is also an artist---but it felt forced. Many of the characters felt recycled. He seems to do pretty well with a certain kind of woman, such as an assassin or a jewel thief, a woman who is in many ways more like his male characters. But trying to portray a normal woman he falls into stereotypes, and his Elizabeth is so shallow and so annoying she is wholly unlikable. Michael loves her "more than anything in the world" and it's hard to see why, as she is whiny and clingy and childish in her demands that everything be explained to her before she will do as asked.

Christopher Lane did a great job and I will look for other work he has narrated. All in all, the book was OK, a pleasant listen, but fell far short of the Allon series

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It drags

Revisado: 02-18-23

I thought I was getting a book about a real life spy but so far it's just been one dreary account after another of explanations of psychoanalysis. And it has reminded me of why I don't buy books read by the author. I finally gave up on it when it couldn't keep my attention for more than a couple of minutes and I'll be asking for a refund

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Entertaining but a little wordy

Revisado: 09-16-22

It did drag sometimes when it felt like there was too much description, but overall it held my interest . I usually avoid Brick’s narratives because of his tendency to emphasize a word in almost every sentence, but he used some restraint in this reading and only drifted into his usual melodramatic style a couple of times

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Totally obnoxious sound effects

Revisado: 04-05-20

I'm trying to get through this book. I'm really, really, trying. It was good for a while, an interesting development of plot and characters, but then-----WHOOOOOMMMMMM! I'm driving along and all of a sudden there is a really loud mechanical-sounding noise booming through my car. Naturally, I think it is coming from my car, which induces instant panic because if this is my car it means something really serious or I just ran over something really big.

But no---someone "creative" (we need a font that accurately conveys a sneer) decided that what this book really needed was constant intrusions by some loud obnoxious sound effect that has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It's just random irritating noise. I've tried to make sense of it, as it only appears in parts of the book. Does the moron with the big button marked OBNOXIOUS NOISE think that we are so stupid we need to be told when something important or scary is going to happen? Or did happen? Or something? Or did he just twitch and it doesn't mean anything?

I put the book on a speaker at home, so I no longer think my car is blowing up, but I'll hit a stretch where it seems the WHOOOOOMMMMMM! marks every scene and it is so annoying I turn off the book.

Audible needs to get a grip on these sound effects junkies. Maybe THEY have attention spans that need to be constantly jolted, or imaginations so feeble they have to have every sound referenced in a book played out for them, but unless this is the market Audible is seeking they need to put a stop to it. We don't need to hear a squeaky door or a gunshot or any of the other nonsense some directors or producers feel compelled to add to otherwise perfectly good narrations of perfectly good books.

I like the story, the narrator is doing a good job with just a couple of mispronounced words and does his best when he has to read the thoughts of a character instead of the words, and i'd like to find out how it ends. I would probably have given it more stars if I had been able to just listen to it without all the interference. I've even asked Audible to note sound effects in a book description, so we can know in advance what to expect.

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Cute but annoying

Revisado: 01-01-20

It's one thing to have a book written for children, another to have a book that seems to have been written by a child. Not Young Adult, but more like fifth grade. As a middle school teacher I would have given the story a good grade----as an adult listening to it, not quite so much.

But really, is it absolutely necessary to clutter it up with incessant, annoying sound effects? Not only annoying on their own, but evidently chosen to sound as much as possible like engine problems, so listening while driving is a constant alert to a clang, whistle, boom or clatter till it is clear it is just more of the juvenile and cheesy noise that is part of the recording.

The writer is OK and has some promise, though he needs to work on continuity and tying things together instead of just coming up with one gimmick after another. The narrator needs a little more self discipline, though he did capture some of the snark of a teenaged boy. The producer and particularly the sound person need to get a grip---in audio books, less is so much better than more. We buy books to hear them read by people who can convey the meaning and nuances of the writing, not to hear someone trying to impress us with how "creative" he is by coming up with as many noises as possible. If the writing is good and the narrative is OK, we don't need the clutter of noise. In this book, the noise detracted from the experience. The musical interlude was about five times longer than it had to be, for example, and it wasn't even very good music. Leave out the squeaks, screeches, thumps and so on and let the story tell itself.

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