V. King

Great Sequel with a Bonus

Revisado: 12-26-24

A great sequel. Well thought through and well paced story. My only overall problem with it is the nearly continuous hazing of one of the main protagonists - it got really old and tiresome for me at some point. However, the rest of the story was good enough to ignore the relatively small issues like that. And the blooper reel was a nice cherry on top (nice touch, really!).

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On the dull side, but still good

Revisado: 09-18-24

First as foremost, I'm not a big fan of narrator switches in the middle of a series. This narrator is at least as good as Luke Daniels, albeit with his own unique set of well developed professional characteristics.

As for the story... It feels like the author is deliberately stretching the story to ensure the highest payday he can achieve, sacrificing both quality and readers' overall experience in the process. In this book, he added to the intrigue, but very little in terms of anything else.

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Loved it!

Revisado: 10-22-23

While being light, both in terms of its length and the overall spirit, this book is 100% the work of John Scalzi, with all of his wit, humor, and writing mastery (regardless of what he says about the affect COVID had on his brain at the time he was working on "Starter Villain"). Narrator's performance is, as always, perfect. Overall, this book is a great addition to any sci-fi fan's library.

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Falls very short of expectations.

Revisado: 06-08-23

Alanson, unfortunately, is back to his usual formula of overextended plot, a very cliché list of cutboard cutouts in place of support characters that he uses as props, and his signature poor sense of humor he dragged out from 1950s (not sure how he managed that, considering he's only in his 60s now).

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Entertaining at first, disappointing at the end.

Revisado: 04-29-23

Seriously. I expected more from this author. There are already way too many books in the sci-fi genre published in the 1980s, 1990s and later, than have similar pseudo-philosophical negative endings. I question the author's decision to backstub his readers in such a way As if the author's message is "no matter what you do, the treacherous bureaucracy would always prevail". I strongly disagree with the aithor on this topic. Being an American, I value my rights and believe I can make a difference (obviously, utilizing all the resources available to me in the 21th century). Also, Luke Daniels, for the first time in years, dropped the ball choosing the voice for the MC (who, supposedly, is a teenager)... All in all, this reminded me of Harry Harrison's "Bill, the Galactic Hero", only less timely/relevant, less funny, less memorable, less thoughtful... well, less everything.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Opportunities wasted

Revisado: 04-28-23

The author must have given up on the story a long time ago. Of course, the story never actually shifted even into the second gear. The author simply lacks imagination and talent necessary to deliver anything worth the time of any reader who had at least some exposure to proper sci-fi. He got lucky a few times discovering several interesting plot points that had a real promise if provided proper attention, but burried them all right away, as if afraid of actually writing something worth reading.

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I fell asleep while listening to this...

Revisado: 04-26-23

Even though the author is in his 60s, and wrote close to 20 "books" by now, he still writes as if he was a moderately educated teenager with barely any sense of humor (mostly, borrowed from the 1950s). In this book he tried to introduce some plot twists, but missed all the important marks, and left a story at a very predictable cliffhanger. He certainly does not deserve the over $1M he's made off of these "books".

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Umm... Meh..

Revisado: 04-22-23

The author started poorly and continued at that for almost 10 book. Then the story got somewhat interesting. Now, he lost it again. The story is just as boring as the author's personality at this point. He also has no clue about politics, psychology, science... well, pretty much anything he's trying to incorporate into his story. Also, somebody has to tell him that bullying and abuse are NOT funny. They weren't even funny in the 1950s (the era from which he draws the most of his inspiration, apparently). He should just stop trying to make jokes and concentrate on something he's actually good at (probably, NOT writing sci-fi).

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Worst one so far

Revisado: 04-13-23

The series were already dull, slow and mostly unimaginative. Author's mostly nonexistent humor (and even that he borrowed from the 50s) and his love of bullying persevered, his lack of scientific background has not been improving much, his characters are just the same as they were since the beginning of the series (everybody is exactly the same so far - cardboard cutouts, for the most part, with little to no character development). Yet, the pace of events gradually slowed down (surprisingly, since it's been slow to begin with). And now he decided to do a cliffhanger (must have finally gone through a Creative Writing 101 course of sorts). I have no clue how this guy made over $1M on these books...

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Disappointment.

Revisado: 03-07-23

Performance is great. Writing is mediocre at best: it's a scaled down version of Bobbiverse, without any of the cool stuff.

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