Gunu

Fun, but Rough

Revisado: 10-14-24

The story is amusing and engaging with a good sense of wonder. You'll likely have to be familiar with Xianxia novels to understand the setting, since some of the background details are a bit lacking. The author is also clearly inexperienced as the plot takes a few leaps, but the ending chapters were very well done.

Unfortunately, I just read book 2 and the author fails to maintain his grip on the plot and tempo of the story in the next book.

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Literary Nosedive

Revisado: 10-14-24

The quality has taken a steep dive after book 1. Key characters are hardly mentioned and problems are solved by the MC essentially announcing them to be over. None of the exciting imagery or feelings of discovery from the prior book are present and Labby being essentially from the narrative removed all the humor and light-hearted charm. The final chapters are a complete mess as the author obliterates his power scale in order to catapult his MC to ridiculous levels...

The book would have been much better if the plot focused on putting the school the villagers built the MC to use, becoming a respected school teacher involved with battling immortals and demons on the side. Instead, the MC is being worshipped as a god.

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Not Xianxia

Revisado: 09-29-24

While the story is somewhat amusing, it falls flat as a Xianxia parody.

There's pretty much nothing Xianxia about the book. Other than a few stolen terms, everything screams a western, skill based litRPG.

Beyond that, the world building is exceptionally poor. Massive tech level inconsistencies, like having genetic engineering and plastic but no sandpaper or indoor plumbing, make it difficult to get an idea of the backdrop for the situational comedy. Reactions that should be comic end up bland or arbitrary without an authentic straight man. The atypical actions of a modern, western man in a less technological and foreign society is lost. What should be glaringly different world views are absent and everyone exudes modern mindsets and actions, detracting from the comedic aspects of a situation. (The fact his peasant farmer neighbor can read ought to seem more unusual than the MC being unable to.)

Parodies thrive off of pre-existing tropes, so world building isn't always critical so long as they stay within pre-established genres. Unfortunately, the only Xianxia I believe the author has read is Beware of Chicken, which is itself a parody. This story seriously lacks understanding into its base genre.

If you're actually a fan of Xianxia literature, this book will give you none of what you'd hope to see. (The author doesn't seem to know what face-slapping is let alone have the ability to joke about it.)

So long as I was able to ignore this glaring flaw, however, I did find the story somewhat enjoyable. The book is largely inoffensive and has several amusing sections. The main characters are decent people, if perhaps a bit bland and lacking in depth. Some of the situational and physical comedy made me laugh enough to make listening to this not feel like a waste of time. The reader also was acceptable and I had no problems with his performance. In the end, those bits of amusement were enough to give the book an average rating.

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Boring

Revisado: 08-15-24

This book lacks anything particularly interesting. The main character is too strong, making every battle a foregone conclusion. The rest of the characters are bland yes-men, little more than cardboard cutout personalities.

There are some authors who can pull off an OP MC, but they have a good sense of dramatic timing, or comedy, or social interactions, or great world-building, or brilliant imagery. This book lacks any of these things.

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False Advertising

Revisado: 05-24-22

Reading the summary made me think this book would be a fun comedy riffing on all the tropes of typical YA modern day fantasy novels from the perspective of an average Joe.

Instead, I found myself listening to a gritty coming of age drama about a high school senior coping with his and his family's mental illness. The most comedic part of the book was the chapter titles and the fantasy elements were only there to lighten the depressing mood while creating a vague, and mostly ignored, sense of urgency.

While this wasn't the type of book I was looking for when I purchased it, I admit that the writing was good. The ultimate moral lesson was also uplifting, but most of the book seemed to be intent on normalizing morally corrupt concepts like enabling alcoholism or high schooler/adult sexual relationships.

In other words, if you're looking for a spunky satire, this isn't the book for you.

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The Missing Shard

Revisado: 12-07-20

As a big Brandon Sanderson fan, I've been wanting to hear more about the Cosmere. Taldain in particular was mentioned in some recent works, so I was curious about the graphic novels.

However, most of my casual reading is done through audio books now of days and I wanted something I could listen to while doing other things. So I was surprised and intrigued to see this addition to Audible.

The story lacks something even when compared to the White Sand short-story found in Arcanum Unbound, but is nevertheless a respectable work in its own right. Although the character development and world building are somewhat sparse compared with a traditional Sanderson book, it is still entertaining and attention grabbing.

As far as the production goes, I'm not sold on Graphic Audio's methodology. Although full-cast audio sounds like it ought to be more immersive, the many transitions between different actors, with their different pronunciations and talent levels, can be jarring. Added to that, the ability to narrate different thoughts and perspectives is often hampered. Further, sound effects mixed throughout a production often give off a pulp-fiction vibe. Although some were well-timed, most felt forced and merely made it harder to focus on the actual story.

The result is a choppy story with poorly defined but likable plots and characters. While worth the price to purchase it and the time spent listening, it's no masterpiece.

As far as the Cosmere is concerned, there were a few more things to learn about Taldain than were in the White Sand short story, although some of the details were different between the two. That said, nothing significant was added in this book and I wonder how canonical it's considered, being a remake of a co-op work.

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A new genre for a favorite author.

Revisado: 06-29-19

I always enjoy Brandon Sanderson's writing and find it particularly fun when he takes a stab at a new genre.

Skyward is well written with a quick plot, riveting aerial combat, and heartfelt drama that has been well balanced with humor.

The plot is most easily identified with Ender's Game or an Anne McCaffrey novel, but the mix of humor and drama brings it closer to Sanderson's Reckoners series in temperment. While it's positioned as more of a Juvenile or Young Adult Sci-Fi, Skyward should prove entertaining to a variety of audiences and is great for families on long road trips.

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The long way to encourage selfishness.

Revisado: 06-29-19

After 20+ hours, I finally felt I had a good impression of Twinborn Chronicles: Awakening Collection and decided to stop listening.

The setup seemed to last forever, but as a veteran of fantasy epics I chose to stick it out. However, I began to realize that what I thought were very slowly developing characters were actually fully developed from the beginning. I think I was thrown off since they kept getting shallower the more I knew of them.

The whole book seems to be a treatise on the virtues of self-interest. When a character's father is murdered, the author spends a few sentences on why this character doesn't care before moving on to enthusing about the new promotion and cool magic sword given to them by said murderer. This theme continues as virtue for virtue's sake is disdained in favor of vain pleasures and self gratification.

The plot is mildly complex, but unfolds incredibly slowly while the author takes time to delve into various forms of escapism. The characters are binary constructs with either for or against the MC's happiness being the only relationship dynamic. I can see Twinborn Chronicles: Awakening Collection appealing to middle-school students who discovered D&D for the first time, but is tough for someone with more life experience to sit through.

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Audible, Not Everyone's a Liberal!

Revisado: 06-29-19

I had to stop listening 2 hours in when a caricatured conservative podcast was used as the setup to domestic terrorism.

Heavy handed and biased political rhetoric or scenarios are only enjoyable so long as they conform to your own world view, and I find it dishonest and disreputable that Audible chose not to hint at such bias in their summery. I would not feel the need to write this review if the author's intent had been made clear from the beginning. It's also rather telling that previous reviews mentioning this bias (in an attempt to be helpful to fellow listeners) have since been removed from the reviews section. This is despite the fact that they received more helpful votes than not.

Please understand that this heavy handed silencing of what were sincere statements does not engender much good will from customers, especially that significant portion of the population who does not hold your views.

As with previous reviews, I will attempt to be fair to the author and state that I found their writing mildly entertaining before their political rhetoric ruined the experience. I think the book rightly should have good appeal among listeners who hold similar views, especially the younger age brackets from middle school to college age students. However, the author did not appear to be a very deep thinker and certainly had not studied philosophy in much detail, resulting in somewhat shallow characters and world building. The reader has a raspy voice that seems odd when compared to the relative ages of the main characters, but other than that I had no problems with her performance.

I hope this review will help potential listeners in their choice of entertainment and enlighten the administrators to the discontent they are stirring up among their customers.

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A Mixed Bag of Cliches

Revisado: 06-27-19

This book contains two stories, the first is a fairly standard Military Sci-Fi. While decently written, it doesn't stretch the envelope much. The second is a bit more unusual but feels llike it was copy-pasted from a half dozen popular movies. The odd bits of cliches have trouble meshing and the story is quite choppy in places. That said, the book was entertaining and kept me from feeling like I wasted a credit.

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