Florian Weller

Good-but-not-great sequel, with mediocre narration

Revisado: 07-09-20

Let's assume that you know what you are getting story- and author-wise; if you liked "The Mote in God's Eye", this is more of the same intriguing setting and interesting characters, with a somewhat weaker story. If you haven't read the former, don't start here, there's too much background missing.
However, the narration came close to sinking this for me a couple times. The speaker is very American, a little too fast, bad at distinguishing characters from each other, and an absolute ham in stretches. There's one Blaine family discussion scene that sounds like an amateur theatre troupe doing improv, all over-emoting. If you have thick skin required for this kind of thing, worth a listen.

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Great topic marred by style

Revisado: 09-09-18

This is an interesting topic that unfortunately was done in by the author's stylistic pretensions. Harris seems to have overdosed on the maxim "show, don't tell" to the extent that he embeds everything in slice-of-life scenes. Which wouldn't be a problem if done well, but it isn't; in these passages, his style alternates between laboured and cutesy. The first chapter demonstrates the problem nicely (the prologue kinda works). Here the basic background on Sega vs Nintendo is layered into an interminable beach scene that makes you grind your teeth every time Tom Kalinske ponders waking his wife, is being charmed by his daughter or opens his heart about beach holidays.

If you are impervious to creaky narrativer technique, you may well enjoy this book. Otherwise, I recommend that for pop culture history done right you turn to Sean Howe's "Marvel Comics - The Untold Story" or David Kushner's "Masters of Doom" (both on Audible), who pull off an enjoyable balance between story and info drop. I will be returning this one.

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Not Simmons' masterwork, but highly entertaining

Revisado: 02-03-18

This is nowhere near as deep and complex as "The Terror", or as sprawling and epic as "Carrion Comfort" or Dan Simmons' various SF novels. But it certainly is good fun, constructed with ease and elegance, and stuffed full of random and fascinating facts and sidetracks. It might seem daring to start a novel off with a four page (my estimate) technical description of a catastrophic brake failure; but he pulls it off, and keeps up the pace very enjoyably. This is also as close as I assume most readers will ever get to a novelization of a Darwin Awards Best Of. Fine and fittingly hardboiled narration. Recommnded!

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An unconvincing Irving with a recycled feel

Revisado: 06-21-17

I've enjoyed many hours with the recordings of "A Widow for One Year", "A Son of the Circus", "Last Night at Twisted River", and several others; but with this book, I stopped listening after two hours.

My greatest turn-off was the vast amount of trope recycling on display. The over-zealous Jesuit missionary with the scourge in his luggage; the protagonist with the crippled foot, owing to a bizarre childhood accident... did he forget those were well and truly put through their paces in "A Son of the Circus", or did he expect his readers have forgotten? Plenty of other instances stood out during the first two hours already. - Stylistically, there wasn't much to enjoy either. All the less appealing techniques of later Irving are in full swing, most annoyingly the somewhat mechanical looping of synonyms to identify speakers (instead of a subtle "he/she said"). When the most frequent of these is the laboured moniker "the dump reader", this quickly becomes grating.

Lastly, while the narrator does a good job, he has made the unfortunate choice to voice the main protagonist's sister (who speaks in a mysterious made-up language only he can understand) as if she was constantly chewing on a hot potato, which is simply aggravating.

I think shall go back for a re-listen of the sublime "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and give this one a miss.

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