Audible

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Rasp
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Re: Audible

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Fixer wrote:
Rasp wrote:I just wrapped up "will save the galaxy for food"
Half way through that one myself. Space adventure in a time after instant transport has made space travel obsolete. Wonder if he got the idea from "into Darkness".

I give it a thumbs up so far, I'm a fan of Yahtzee's dry, sardonic style of humour. Only niggle I've had is that his voices for Mr. Henderson and Blaze are fairly similar.
He seems to revel in the juxtaposition of usually mundane situations onto bizarre settings it seems like he cant get through a book without having one of more characters that ether are or are assaulted by bureaucrats.
I am the one who requested Chuck review Kannazuki No Miko. (under an old alias)

I count it among the most despicable things I have ever done to another human being and I'm sorry.

Things I have requested that are not evil:
* Anna's Quest
* Contradiction
* TECHNOBABYLON
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Fixer
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Re: Audible

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Rasp wrote:
Fixer wrote:
Rasp wrote:I just wrapped up "will save the galaxy for food"
Half way through that one myself. Space adventure in a time after instant transport has made space travel obsolete. Wonder if he got the idea from "into Darkness".

I give it a thumbs up so far, I'm a fan of Yahtzee's dry, sardonic style of humour. Only niggle I've had is that his voices for Mr. Henderson and Blaze are fairly similar.
He seems to revel in the juxtaposition of usually mundane situations onto bizarre settings it seems like he cant get through a book without having one of more characters that ether are or are assaulted by bureaucrats.
I haven't picked up his other books yet, worth getting in your opinion?
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Rocketboy1313
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Re: Audible

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Fixer wrote: I haven't picked up his other books yet, worth getting in your opinion?
I read his first book, "Mogworld" and it was actually a pretty breezy title.
I read the first half of "Jam" and it was funny, but I put it down one day, got busy and have never gone back, which is odd as I left on a cliff hanger.

I will probably be getting "Will Save..." on Audio book next month.
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Rasp
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Re: Audible

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Rocketboy1313 wrote:
Fixer wrote: I haven't picked up his other books yet, worth getting in your opinion?
I read his first book, "Mogworld" and it was actually a pretty breezy title.
I read the first half of "Jam" and it was funny, but I put it down one day, got busy and have never gone back, which is odd as I left on a cliff hanger.

I will probably be getting "Will Save..." on Audio book next month.
It's a pretty straightforward if you like this you'll like the others I feel.
I am the one who requested Chuck review Kannazuki No Miko. (under an old alias)

I count it among the most despicable things I have ever done to another human being and I'm sorry.

Things I have requested that are not evil:
* Anna's Quest
* Contradiction
* TECHNOBABYLON
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Fixer
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Re: Audible

Post by Fixer »

Rocketboy1313 wrote:
Fixer wrote: I haven't picked up his other books yet, worth getting in your opinion?
I read his first book, "Mogworld" and it was actually a pretty breezy title.
I read the first half of "Jam" and it was funny, but I put it down one day, got busy and have never gone back, which is odd as I left on a cliff hanger.

I will probably be getting "Will Save..." on Audio book next month.
Finished Will save Galaxy on Sunday. Quite good overall, the ending was a bit anticlimactic but then that was probably the point.
I picked up Mogworld shortly after, you can definitely tell that Yahtzee has improved his presentation and audio work since then.
You can hear his lips smacking, his character voices are off from his verbal description of their tone. No chapter titles spoken so it suddenly lurches from one to the next.

Still, seems enjoyable so far.
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Fixer
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Re: Audible

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Thanks to a lot of long journies for work and late night IT support stuff, I've managed to finish the Yahtzee tyilogy.

I can see why you may have put Jam down Rocket. It does seem to drag in the middle. A lot of ground is re-tread.

Personal opinion is that Mogworld is the best, though the worst produced. It has the most interesting scenarios, memorable characters and managed to do "miracle day" better.

I've just picked up "All our wrong todays" as my next. A man name Tom living in a Jetsons style utopia uses a time machine, shifting history and ending up in a horrible dystopian 2016... that we all know as today.
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Fixer
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Re: Audible

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Finished All Our Wrong Today's. Quite a good listen in the end.

With some caveats. Elan Mastai uses Chapters the same way other writers use Paragraphs. One chapter was him stating a long list of expletives, an ear bleeding barrage which I could not skip while listening to the book in my car. Also, the way the narrator, goes into details about his sex life can be uncomfortable at times, existentially terrifying in others.

Still. Overall I very much enjoyed it. Tom Barren, an admitted screwup, paints a picture of his old, lost world. One in which 52 years ago a miraculous invention provided the world with limitless free energy. With unlimited resources, the post war golden age exceptionalism and lofty dreams of the 50s and 60s came true creating a true technological utopia. He describes this from the terrible dystopian present he exists in now. Our reality, where brain monitoring programs don't scan your mind to give your dreams satisfying and logical endings just before they wake you so you rise each morning feeling completely refreshed. Where people wash themselves with disgusting archaic showers, food isn't produced to be perfect every meal, where clothes are made from processed animal or plant fibre instead of being manufactured from advanced polymers to fit you each morning.

A lot of the narrative goes into his personal connections with characters who have changed since his mistake erased his old reality and the mechanics of time travel from a practical standpoint. Temporal drag that requires him to exist in 2016 for causality, the difficulties in plotting travel to not only time, but also a space on a spinning world orbiting a star circling a galactic core in an expanding universe.

The story of how Tom's trying to adapt, live with the guilt of erasing the world as it should have been, or even if there is a possibility to restore the old timeline without screwing things up even worse than they are now kept me hooked to the end.

Well worth spending a credit on if you have one spare.
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Rocketboy1313
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Re: Audible

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Fixer wrote:Finished All Our Wrong Today's. Quite a good listen in the end.
I had not at all heard of this book before. It sounds good, I put it on my wishlist.
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Fixer
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Re: Audible

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Picked up Elite: Mostly Harmless by Kate Russel. Mostly thanks to her Elite Dangerous coverage and that she's a long time fan of the game.

First Audible book I can't recommend. Occasionally dotted with old Elite references but filled with unlikable characters who have one dimensional personalities and non existent motivations who are there only to move the plot from situation to another. This is because the main character, Angel Rose, seemingly has zero autonomy of her own.

Follow this up with various rapey scenes written in sensuous detail and the main character's loathing of their rich parents and you get that crawling feeling on your skin that you're reading someone's personal Fifty Shades of Grey in space self insert fanfic or a Freudian exploration of their psyche.

Also over-produced sound effects and the annoying as hell noise DORIS the robot makes before saying things.

Positives I would say are Kate's voice work and the 10% of profits that go towards charity but that's about it.

I cannot for the life of me gleam why there are so many positive reviews out there.
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Re: Audible

Post by Fuzzy Necromancer »

If you want some good posthuman Scifi, I would stand up for Glasshouse.

If you want some good Dr Who licensed properties, I have good things to say about Feast of the Drowned, The Last Voyage, The Gemini Contagion, Shining Darknesss, and some others I can't bring to mind right now.

If you want really, REALLY well-read dark fantasy, the Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix is a series about necromancers with no less than Tim Curry himself as the reader. The Skulduggery Pleasant series is also a fun collection about a snappy-dressing skeleton detective, but the real star is Rupert Degas, who gives whole added dimensions of character depth by the power of his voice alone.
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