Aiden R.

Worst telling of the best story

Revisado: 10-23-24

20+ books all read directly by a narrator, the most important book told confusingly by an unfocused script and read by inconsistent voices. Truly remarkable how much worse this sounds. Jessica is a woman, then a man’s falsetto. What is happening?!

Reading more about this, it’s a splice of a voice acted but abridged script, cut into a single narrator version. Bring us the Scott Brick version!

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Sophomoric effort

Revisado: 10-17-23

Like watching someone else play a video game, someone who skips the character development and just runs fedex quests. Hard to get into the characters or story. Lots of adverbs, passive voice, and trite dialogue. “Dark night of the soul” lasts just a few seconds and then deus ex machina comes to save the day. Voice actor carries the experience but can’t overcome the sense that it’s all a side quest.

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Skip and don’t look back

Revisado: 12-10-20

Decorated with references to a couple of 80s properties but essentially betrays the first story ending.

Unlike most bad writing where the author waits until the last page to reveal that they don’t have a plot device at all, Ready Player Two literally opens with a corny and out of story-world deus ex machina: our long dead game programmer just happens to have invented two way brain control that has no escape but offers perfect reproductions of human souls; the same programmer who spent his final years building the entire story for RP1. Not only that but he left exactly one device where just the right person would find it, even though we know that four people split the rewards equally.

Next in the litany of crap: a quick resurrection of three key characters, but exactly one of them is horrifically morally corrupt due to also newly invented soul editing software. Then we build an interstellar space ship from zero to leaving the solar system in a handful of years, and mix in a virtual afterlife aboard for Earth’s dead... but in a surprise twist it doesn’t actually work so everyone is just hard drives in storage.

For the exact same tale, but told well, read the Bobiverse novels. Cline should have stuck to the world he created and the decisions he made in book one rather than turning a video game romp into a lame rocket ship to Alpha Whatever. Maybe book three will be a cheap clone of Westworld?

Wil Wheaton gives a loving and fluent narration, which betrays none of his opinion of the text. If he felt like me then that’s an Oscar worthy performance.

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Easy to ignore

Revisado: 04-24-20

The author has pride of place in my home. I love most of his writing. I loved the Sukhoi Flankers reference in this story and the greatly sophisticated stub immersion concept (versus its grandparent “cyberspace”).
Gibson doesn’t really bring the heat into the page in this middle arc book. The story hasn’t really progressed beyond the inciting incident except by shuffling the pieces around and doing all the character building for a book yet to be released.
Honestly I wish (former?) Cyberpunk authors would get back to the labor movement and set aside Victorian England entirely. I come for the rebellion not for palace intrigue capped by running away.

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Tedious

Revisado: 01-21-20

Slow motion genocide porn, as read by an authentically commercial voice, with little adventure or interest.

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Raw, gripping, beautiful

Revisado: 12-15-18

I can’t help but change a little every time I read his work. Utterly devastating. Completely human.

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McNovel

Revisado: 07-14-15

I finished only because I felt like the uncomprehending alien characters: sure that something worthwhile must be about to happen because of all the energy that was wasted up to that point. Beating my head against a wall or my office chair helped to pass the time while these words happened to me.

The binary voices were presented well and the reader was quite pleasant. I have no complaint with the Audible production.

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