Lane

Most Original Premise I've Read in 35yr of Avid Reading

Revisado: 03-15-25

Everything about this book, by all rights, shouldn't be that intriguing. The main character is an old lady so you know she's not going to do anything super taxing. There are creatures that have to learn to communicate so you know there will be a language barrier. There are greedy human corporations in space so you know who the bad guys are.

And then it all gets turned upside down on you and you won't want to stop listening/reading. The narrator is FANTASTIC at the difficult task put before her, so truly, this should be a listen and not a read. I can't say anything else without major spoilers. Do yourself a favor and listen to this book. Future you will thank past you for the choice.

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The Narrator is Awful, Ruined

Revisado: 03-08-25

I didn't really connect with any of the characters, so I'm not going to continue this series. Especially not with a narrator who has so little pitch depth and alternates between raised voice and nearly a whisper both in the same sentence. There was no comfortable volume level to hear everything while not getting my ears blown out since there was so much mumbling and lack of breath control. The female voices were almost all the same, just varying degrees of breathy or whiny. He absolutely ruined any chance this story had.

Also someone needs to tell Weber and friend that we did NOT need sex scenes this explicit. I'm going back to the main series of Honor books and will not bother with further spinoff stories.

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Too Much Religion

Revisado: 02-15-25

This read like someone just wanted to do a thought experiment with a bunch of world religions and there was no consistent plot to follow. There was one section with about a hundred different rules that were read individually, and the end just ended with nothing being wrapped up or expounded upon into our present day. I don't know what this was, but it was not a novel.

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Mandatory Reading for Women Pilots

Revisado: 01-20-25

The book needs no summary since the cover text speaks for itself. Getting to "meet" these incredible women though the author (who spent years with them learning everything she could) has been a tremendous adventure and honor. This was clearly a labor of love and likely this author and historian's magnum opus. The care and reverence with which difficult subjects and trauma are covered must be mentioned. This is a beautiful and heartfelt journey that I wish every American high schooler had on their assigned reading list. We as a country could learn so much from these women in both a historical and civil rights capacity. And if you are a woman pilot, especially a military pilot, I implore you to go read this and learn about your history.

The last time a book brought me to tears was Where the Red Fern Grows in third grade. I was sobbing driving through Dallas on my way to work tonight listening to the last 20min or so. I've been inspired to become more active in my own chapter of Women in Aviation and I'm sending a copy of this book to our chapter president ASAP.

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Great Story, Too Much Intro

Revisado: 10-06-24

Everything about this book was great except the 95 minites of forward, FOUR prefaces, and then a prologue. The story didn't start until NINETY FIVE MINUTES into this listen. The prefaces for the first three editions were unnecessary when an even longer one was written for this fourth edition. The entire story is spoiled by the time you get through the introductory materials. definitely better to be read on physical media so you can save all tgat for LAST and also see the pretty pictures.

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Terrible Exposition, Awkard Attempt at Meta

Revisado: 09-07-24

The descriptions of the "alien ship" were impossible to visualize and constantly making no sense in terms of distance or time. Even Tolkein, with his love of exposition, would cringe at how convoluted this all was. I get it, alien, weird, blah blah blah, but there was nothing cohesive at all about the weird stuff even in the end, it was all guesses and speculation on the part of the characters. And I figured out the "twist" before they did. If I had been reading instead of listening, I never would have bothered to finish it. The story felt like one of those 80s sci-fi B movies where they keep bombarding you with so many questions and unexplained phenomena building up to some crazy epic reveal... that when the incredibly predictable "AHA!" moment finally comes, you wonder why you wasted so much time on something so lame and contrived. And to write oneself into the book in a weirdly meta way was unnecessary and made the whole experience confusing as to what edition of this fictional book we are supposed to be listening to. And how did they get voiceover recordings from dead people after the mission? Were those supposed to be badly written fake interviews but intermixed with real ones? Just blatantly lying to this supposed reader in this universe that is also me? Completely unreliable narrator and it pissed me off. Gosh the only thing that got me through the last hour of this was the fact that I was stuck in the car in traffic after a double shift and I didn't have the brainpower to even turn it off. If you love scifi and space adventures, skip this one and save your heart the trouble of disappointment.

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Only 15-20% About Krakatoa

Revisado: 09-02-24

this book covers a great many topics and Krakatoa is only a small percentage of them. if you want a book on the history of the greater Java area read this. if you want a history of Krakatoa, find a different book.

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Read, Don't Listen - Narrator Ruins Incredible Story

Revisado: 01-20-24

Kim Cross has written a beautiful story about one of the more devastating event in modern US history. The immense amount of research that went into this is staggering. (And that's coming from someone who used this event as part of their meteorology master's coursework.) The care with which she crafted stories about death, destruction, and most importantly: grief, cannot be overstated. I don't DO emotions and this one still made my chest tighten in places. If you enjoy reading about the weather or about humanity coming through for each other in times of natural disasters, do not miss this book. Unquestionably 5-Star material. But READ it, do not get the audiobook.

The narrator, Tracy Brunjes, absolutely destroyed this incredible piece of artistry. First of all, they should have chosen a male narrator since about 80% of the characters are male. Granted, some of the more main characters are female, but male narrators tend to do a better job narrating females than female narrators do with males on average. That is the smallest of my complaints.

This lady manages to turn every single character in this novel into a stereotypical caricature of a southern accent. People died in this book, and the grief that the friends and family felt is so strong and real. Instead of handling dialogue in a respectful way, the narrator manages to come up with the most offensive accents and overreactive vocal inflections I have ever heard in an audiobook. Every character sounds the same, like a hysterical generic southern woman screaming, and I almost quit the book several times over because of the narration. She had "narrator voice" and "dialogue voice" and even her narration was not particularly good.

This narrator has no business ever touching another non-fiction book. How no one stopped her before she had done the entire book and told her that this is not okay, I will never understand. I will never listen to another book narrated by Tracy Brunjes. If I could give zero stars for narration, I would.

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Amazing story, audio editing leaves much to be desired

Revisado: 01-12-24

The story was a ton of fun. It absolutely doesn't take itself seriously. This could have easily been written about one of my former D&D groups where one person tries to be a Very Serious Gamer (™) while the rest of the group was mostly having fun roleplaying, exploring the world, and generally not doing the most obvious "attack everything" method of combat.

Humor was occasionally too over the top slapstick, but I did laugh out loud numerous times when it hit just right. Despite being a band of utterly unexperienced adventurers, each character was well designed to play to their own strengths despite their weaknesses. It made me like all the characters, even the gruff one, the narcissistic one, the naive one, the smelly one, the... you get the idea. They were unapologetically true to themselves, take them or leave them. I'll take them all!

The problem is with the audio version of the book. The editing was BAD. This is one of the BEST narrators I've ever heard. Seriously, I'm going to look up and listen to books Haley narrates regardless of the genre or plot. But I didn't want to hear the whole second chapter twice. I didn't want to hear the same word or phrase repeated with different inflections as she played through some of the dialogue. Some sections were clearly re-recorded in a completely different and very echoey room. And the volume was not relatively steady throughout, but would have periods every so often where it would get LOUD and then quiet alternating, sometimes in the same sentence. Very off-putting. Whoever edited this needs to go back to school and retake an editing class. Worst I've ever heard in over 500 audiobooks I've listened to. Don't let that put you off listening, though. Haley Catherine is a real treat when things are put together correctly.

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Narrative on War and Genocide, Not Wilderness

Revisado: 02-20-23

I'm 2 hours in and they've spent about 15 minutes of that time actually discussing the wilderness part of the journey. The rest has been a narrative on the genocide in Rwanda and war and strife in general. It's not the wilderness survival story I was led to believe it was. If I wanted to read about war and genocide, I'd buy a much more detailed and well-researched book on the topic. I'm returning this one.

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