Tomas

Wish I have not ignored one star reviews

Revisado: 01-02-17

Don't be fooled by 4 star ratings and book award. It can still be bad. I want my credit back. Switched to 2x speed after one third of the book. Stopped listening at half mark and got the rest of the book events from detailed summary on wecanreaditforyouwholesale site.

The world building was decent at the beginning. You get to know strange planet. But the story failed big time. Basically Lord of the Flies on another planet but adults are still there very dumb and powerless. Easily bypassed by horny teenagers who are tearing apart community, have all "great" thoughts and act like Moses. Yeah right. Some adult characters are snuffed by author just to make it easier for this unbelievable plot to evolve. The story telling is uneven sometimes excruciatingly slow and sometimes on fast forward. In the future I will more skeptical for the British Arthur C. Clarke Award winners.

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slowish

Revisado: 04-07-14

The trilogy is awesome. But second book for me was the weakest book from all the trilogy. From my perspective author had material only for 2-2.5 books and this middle book slows down and sets up the story for the third book. Most of the action is in one place. The filler material: growth of two young adults: facing fears, doubts and participating in political activity. While this happens you read and roll your eyes and mutter when will you grow up. Ayway this book has high ratings. So I suppose it depends on the reader.

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hmmm

Revisado: 12-23-13

Not sure if it was a waste of credit, but definitely this book is at the bottom of the list of all McDevit books that I have. Too many boring parts. Important story lines were left dangling in the end. Rationale for character action in tragic circumstances are so not convincing that it seemed just sheer laziness on the author's part.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

hmmm, big ball of mess

Revisado: 11-09-11

well, there were some phillip k dick moments, but overall I am very disappointed.
During 3rd hour of listening there is abrupt shift in story line of one character and other characters. My first thought was like wow: the narrator mixed the papers took out 50pages or so and appended them at the end of novel. I have listened to all the book and still can not shake off the feeling of some audio editor screw up :) At first I thought to request back my money from audible. Then I checked amazon reviews and wiki. It seems that this P.K.Dick novel has very messy publishing history. If it is not audio editor screw up, then they took some screwed up published version. Save your time you should not be paying your money and having such thoughts.

BTW I checked with some online PDF version (that claims to be the final final version) the pages that I am complaining are back in place and the story is 50% longer.

Well complete mess what can I say. In the case it is audio editing screw up I am reviewing 7 hours 16min length version :)

Description of the shift: We have a far from earth totalitarian planet. There are two ways to get there: 18year trip using ship(with round-trip option) or 15min teleport(only one way). One main character made a decision to take 18 year trip, doing all the preparations. Next chapter the character is preparing to enter teleport chamber. Why? What circumstances made to change his mind? Well in the last pages of the novel you get the missing pages with an ending that feels kind of abrupt.

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esto le resultó útil a 7 personas

overbloated

Revisado: 11-02-11

I have read most of the Murakami novels. Overall I enjoyed this book but with some reservations. My two cents.

Pros:
1. Strong narrator performance.
2. Usual Murakami magic realism.

Cons:
1. Over-bloated. 1/3rd too long. The author had material only for two books. Third book-part is so boringly slow. Too much overlap between story lines when characters are basically stepping on each other toes and figuring out the same puzzle parts again and again.
2. Far-fetched love story axis (like in chic lit) made me roll my eyes many times while listening to the book. Some kind of not really believable Japanese version of Odysseus.

For Murakami first novel readers:
1. Be aware that novel is spiced up with some sex scenes. This should be nothing new for the person who read several Murakami novels.
2. Not the best Murakami novel as first read.

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esto le resultó útil a 74 personas

science part ok, but story poorly executed

Revisado: 02-14-10

author have done thorough scientific research, but he is not philip k dick :), although he tried to do his best. And, yes, secular readers should be prepared to a dose of paragraphs with christian view.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Not bad

Revisado: 03-13-09

I am in the progress of listening to this book.
So for I am interested.

One minor thing that pissed me off:
Audio book chapters are not mapped to audible format chapters. You get to skip in chunks of 70minutes and get in the middle of book chapter.
This is true for format 4. Big thumbs down to audio publisher for this screw up.

Ok, but I should apply mindfulness technique on this irritation :)

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esto le resultó útil a 42 personas