DWD's Reviews

There's a lot of meat to this "tween" novel. Quite enjoyable and discussion-provoking Published in 2009. The Roar is a more "kiddie" book than I normally read. This one is aimed at the tween crowd (the book says down to grade 3 but I can't really imagine anyone under the age of 10 getting into it) and I found it to be quite compelling despite being aimed at the younger set and the occasional clunky simile and/or phrase. The Roar has a sequel called The Whisper. The book is set in a dismal future in which religion is gone (not really mentioned but people say, "My odd!" rather than "My God!") and the environment has been destroyed by mankind in order to kill of the animals. 45 years before the story an animal "plague" caused all of the animals to attack people in a crazed frenzy. So, people retreated to just a few countries (UK, Canada and a few others), became part of a highly stratified society with lots of urban ...

Duration: approximately 3 hours Read by Gillian Anderson   So, how can I say this succinctly and clearly? The abridged audiobook of The X-Files: Ground Zero is not good. It is bad. It is not well read. It has few of the best qualities of the TV show. Gillian Anderson Read by Gillian Anderson, the abridged audiobook clocks in at about 3 hours and read unenthusiastically by Gillian Anderson. One of the reasons I picked this one up is that I figured she'd read it well. It says it was recorded in Vancouver in 1995 (where the show was filmed) and it sounds like she read it between takes. She sounds tired and completely uninterested in the text. Then again, when you look at what she was reading, I cannot blame her for being uninterested. This book has none of the zip of the show. Mulder's lines are almost non-existent. No smart-alack lines or observation. No wry sense of humor that makes even the weakest of the TV shows watchable (I love the X-Files but let...

A sci-fi book for lovers of history Published in 2010 by Audible Studios. 23 hours, 56 minutes. Read by Katherine Kellgren. Unabridged. 43 hours of audio listening later (read wonderfully by Katherine Kellgren who handled a wide variety of accents and aging characters with real skill), I am finally done with the Blackout/All Clear saga. These books are intended to be one giant book, not a series, although you would never. ever know that from the audiobook's cover. To her credit, the author, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Connie Willis introduces the second half of this audiobook with a warning that you had better listen to the first half first. Indeed you should and you should listen to the second installment as soon as you can after hearing the first one because there is no review, no scenes where the characters re-hash everything for the benefit of the listener. This is literally the second half of a very large book and she starts out exactly where she left off. See m...

LeVar Burton creates the framework for an epic yet... Read by LeVar Burton Approximately 3 hours ...he fails to follow through. Have you ever read a book in which the author takes a premise that would, at most, fill about 150 pages and yet he or she stretches it out to 400 pages? This is not one of those books. Aftermath has the opposite problem - an awful future is described and peopled. The cure for cancer and brain disorders is discovered, stolen and recovered with lots of gunfights, chases, psionic warfare, attempted child rapes, attempted suicides, kidnappings galore, slavery and people being skinned alive. However, none of it is fleshed out - we are left with the skeleton of an epic story - a framework of what could have been. Think Stephen King's The Stand told in less than 300 pages. I just wish he'd added more. LeVar Burton I am reviewing this as an abridged audiobook (no doubt the abridgment is part of the problem as well. Too often, too much is ...

Lackluster characters hurt a very interesting premise Read by David Colacci Published by Tantor Media, November 2010. Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes, Unabridged. Ultra-prolific author Alan Dean Foster introduces yet another series with The Human Blend , the first installment of a trilogy set in a relatively near-future Savannah, Georgia. In this interesting new world the direst predictions about global warming have come true. America’s southern states have become near-tropical. Flooding ocean waters have buried coastal cities, forced them to move onto stilts or have caused cities to move inland. Much of Florida is underwater, the Everglades have swallowed the rest. Political changes have swept the world as well. The United States is now part of a larger country called Namerica. Several countries in Asia are equal to, if not more important than Namerica. The moon, Mars and Jupiter’s moon Titan have been colonized as well. Alan Dean Foster But, the most important changes ar...

A pleasant enough read but at times it was just 'off' Published in 1986 by Pocket Books. The premise of Crisis on Centaurus is that the colony Centaurus is bombed by a terrorist group and approximately 1 million victims die. The planetary government is in a shambles and the Enterprise is dispatched to aid in whatever way possible. However, Enterprise is having a series of computer failures and is not up to full capacity so things get tricky for Kirk and the crew. Ferguson has written an adequate Star Trek novel - his main characters are written very solidly, but his supporting characters are rather like cardboard cutouts. The women weep and the men clench their teeth and pound their fists in anger at the news of the terrorist attack. Having the benefit of hindsight in regards to the 9/11 attacks, I found the behavior of many of the characters to have been implausible at best, including doctors taking time away from the thousands of refugee patients to tour the Enter...

Recommended for middle schoolers through adults    National Book Award, Young People's Literature, 2002. Published in 2002. Limiting The House of the Scorpion to a young adult audience is a disservice to the book and to the themes it brings up. This would be a fantastic book for an adult discussion group - there are so many themes and controversial topics that a group could discuss for hours and hours. That being said, I nearly quit listening to this audiobook after the first hour. It was sooooo slow to get started. On top of that, it was often dark and opressive. However, after the character Tam Lin comes in to the story the whole book changes and you would have had to fight me to get me to give the book up. By the time the end came around I felt like I had lived a life with Mateo and was thoroughly satisfied. So, what kind of themes are there? Well, this book, in my opinion, points out the dangers that many of the more Conservative thinkers warn us about ...

Considering the reputation of this author, I was quite disappointed Originally published in 2000. In order to start with positive thoughts - What does Carr do right with Killing Time ? 1. His vision of the future, published in the year 2000 about the year 2023, does correctly predict that Afghanistan would be a hotspot for the American military due to a fanatical, independently wealthy, international Muslim terrorist. 2. He predicted that the U.S. would become involved with Saddam Hussein in Iraq over WMDs. (Ironically, in this book, Saddam tries to nuke France in 2006) 3. Carr does an interesting thing by writing a sci-fi book that sounds Victorian. 4. His beginning themes of capitalism gone amuck are interesting, despite their misguided nature. What does he do wrong? 1. There is little or no character development. Even our main character is minimally fleshed out. He joins a group of anti-information age terrorists with little or no qualms, despite the fact that ...

Top-notch techno-thriller, with equal emphasis on the "techno" and the "thriller" Published in 2009 by Signet Daemon is part 1 of a series. I do not know if there will be more than one sequel but the next book, Freedom , is coming in 2010. (Note: Click on this link to see the review I wrote about Freedom ) A computer program created by a mad genius has infiltrated the world's computers and is creating a 'new world order'. A revolution is in the mix and it will be led by the world's disaffected and misfits - the tattooed computer geeks, the pierced gamers, crazed psychopaths that treat all life like it is a NPC in a computer game, etc. There have been plenty of books, movies and TV shows about the computer that has taken over a building or a spaceship, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey . but this is the first one I've heard of in which the entire world economic system has been hijacked. I'm no computer expert, but and I am competen...

Be prepared - this is only half the story Published in 2010. 18 hours, 44 minutes Read by Katherine Kellgren Connie Willis continues her on again/off again time travel series with Blackout , a book about time travelling historians from mid 21st century Oxford who are visiting World War II England. Katherine Kellgren does a fantastic job of nailing the great variety of English accents and the one American accent as well as the male voices. Time travel has become routine for these historians - they have teams to help prepare them for their jumps into the past, including clothing, paperwork and implants to help them with accents. They are also able to learn vast amounts of information by way of sleep learning, which can be helpful for memorizing such things as every location of a V-1 attack or what time all of the air raids happened during the Blitz. But, the routine of time travel belies a deeper problem - that of "slippage".  The trips back and forth are becoming less ...

  I liked Glory Lane , with the single glaring exception of... Alan Dean Foster ...all three human characters. They do not grow. They remain petty, impudent little pests and I found myself wondering why the other races tolerated the human species if this was all the better that they were going to meet! Seriously, the actual sci-fi was top-notch. There were a multitude of worlds and species that were well-done. But, it was marred by the inclusion of a punk rocker, a geek and a ditzy blond who continued to bicker, and sometimes actually fistfight with one another, no matter the situation. I wish he'd haven given that aspect of the story a rest. I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. Reviewed on May 15, 2005.

A competent, but not great audiobook Published in 1999 by HarperAudio Abridged audiobook Format: Cassette Duration: Approximately 3 hours Read by Bruce Harwood I heard  Skin as an abridged audiobook. It was narrated by Bruce Harwood, who portrays the most 'normal' of the conspiracy-addicted threesome known as 'the Lone Gunmen' on the X-Files TV show. Harwood does a competent, but ultimately uninspiring job of narrating the story. Bruce Harwood In fact, this is also a decent description of the book as a whole. It is okay, but not great. The characters act like they are supposed to, but those wry comments from Fox are mostly non-existent and Scully is just not quite right throughout most of the book. I am sure that the abridgment is at least partially to blame. The unabridged version is 8 and 1/2 hours. This one clocks in at three hours. Something had to give and it sounds like this one gave away its personality. The plot itself was okay. The ending...

My opinion is all over the place with this movie Originally released in 1977. Another reviewer described  Wizards accurately when he said it was "a weird, horrible, funny, enthralling cartoon movie". That is dead on. The animation is both bad and wonderful. The plot is epic, wonderful and poorly thought out and petty. Ralph Bakshi So, here are some random thoughts:  The animation: I LOVE the fact that Bakshi used a variety of animation styles and techniques. It made the movie visually interesting and some of the animation is great enough to rival Disney animation at its very best. Sometimes, however, the animation is of such poor quality that it distracts from the action. At times, the animation is worse than SeaLab 2021 on Adult Swim - and they intentionally make the animation bad! Money became an issue as the movie was being animated and it is, at times, quite obvious that they cut corners in some segments. The characters and...

I have not cared much for Green Lantern,  but I picked this one up on impulse... Published in 2009 by GraphicAudio 6 CDs 7 hours Voiced by 20 actors Unabridged. When I was a kid I never cared much for Green Lantern. In the D.C. Comics universe I liked Superman and Batman and in Marvel I liked Spider-Man and the Hulk but the Green Lantern never did it for me. Maybe it was the giant green baseball mitts, pincers and boxing gloves coming out of the ring. Just seemed hoaky, I guess. Which is all the stranger that I liked the audiobook for Green Lantern Hero's Quest: Justice League of America  as much as I did . The book features Kyle Rayner, a new Green Lantern whose real life job is that of an artist and his specialty as a Green Lantern seems to be creating artistic even cutesy things with his ring, such as baseball mitts and giant boxing gloves. GraphicAudio creates yet another adaptation that delivers "A Movie In Your Mind" as their slogan promises. I ...

I recommend hearing it as an audiobook Originally published in 1969 in book form. Published by Dh Audio in 1985. Read by Jose Ferrer. Duration: 5 cassette tapes Unabridged. I could add to the volumes of literary criticism that fills the reviews of Slaughterhouse Five , but what's the point of that? Rather, I will recommend that you hear the book as an audiobook - the book's a stream of consciousness, disjointed approach works very well on tape. The reader shifts from one scene to another as easily as Billy Pilgrim does. The version I heard was not the one available here. Mine was narrated by Jose Ferrer and he did a wonderful job. Too bad Ferrer has passed on. So it goes. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Slaughterhouse Five .  Kurt Vonnegut Reviewed on February 3, 2005 Note: This book has been challenged multiple times over the last 50 years for sexual content, foul language and teaching principles contrary to the Bible. A...