Great book, terrible performance!!

Was really looking forward to this book after the excellent Wool that was excellently performed by a lady with a lovely expressive and versatile voice.
Have found this book hard going despite the great story, the narrator sounds like a surfer and I keep waiting for him to say 'duuude'.
It looks as though Audible are looking to cash in on the success of Wool by bringing over this recording from America but it is so difficult to get past the narrator's voice.
Listen to the sample before you buy, if you can listen to narrator then you are in for a great story.

11 people found this helpful

Oh Dear

I wanted to love this as much as I had wool, but its too long winded and gets tied in knots with its time lines.

6 people found this helpful

A rewrite of Wool from a different point of view

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Stop using silly voices

Any additional comments?

If you've read Wool (which is brilliant) and want to read Dust (which is very good) then you need to read Shift for it to make sense. Apart from that, I'd give it a miss. I would give Wool 10/10, Shift 5/10 and Dust 8/10.

5 people found this helpful

Story drags out too long, cash grab series

The Idea of the story is good. But the pace at which the plot unfolds is really too slow. I had to increase the reading speeds to 1.5x just to stay somewhat interested. I won't blame the narrator. I was never distracted by him. It is the filler content that bores the like out of me. If you gave the idea to Andy Weir, our imagination would be on fire. This story and all in the series require engineering filler content.

4 people found this helpful

Great book with poor narration

The voices the chap has are all the same and become really frustrating the longer it goes on.

The main guy is good but would be helped by some other voices as characters.

story is very good though.

3 people found this helpful

Awful

I will NEVER listen to anything narrated by Peter Brooke again. The guy is a goof. It became so bad that it's funny more than once but worst reading of anything I've heard.

If you enjoyed the first book, well done. You can't possibly not want to know more. Unfortunately, all you will learn is the writer is a hack and got lucky the first time. This really needed a better editor. The only answers in this are to questions you never had.

You can't quite skip this and go to the third for continuities sake but the third one also gets far more passes on the reviews than it should too. My only hope is that HBO or a film studio buy the rights. Do the first book verbatim and re-write everything else. Bad book. Avoid.

Hugh Howey is the proof of Chimps and Typewriters. I wouldn't let him near my shopping list after the next two installments. Whomper.

2 people found this helpful

Disturbing and awful narration

I have written this review for all of the trilogy, though this one was particularly bad because of the narration.
This review probably applies to the complete trilogy, the story was well written, but I really didn't enjoy it. Most of the characters weren't 'full enough' to get to know them and like them. The situation was bizarre to say the least, but very disturbing in general. I wish I hadn't read this at all.

2 people found this helpful

My Review

Ok so I'm not going to sit here and slander this book, it wasn't bad but in my opinion it was nowhere near as good as the first book in the trilogy. I didn't like the narrator's voice, however I'm sure people would. I didn't like the style of the book, I didn't enjoy the back and forth of the story. I guess I am comparing it to Wool and I didn't enjoy it as much. I'd probably read the book instead of listen to this if I had to do it again

2 people found this helpful

Good book, middling narrator

I've loved this trilogy for years, but the narration in this book almost made me quit. do yourself a favour and listen at at least 1.4x to get through it.

1 person found this helpful

Oh, it is just so tedious.

I made it to the end, I feel like I've completed a gruelling marathon. The story frequently jumps about, or seems to, for no particular reason. By the second half of the book you're starting to question if the first half was indeed the same book, or completely unrelated. Crucial questions are answered, by the main character, in their mind, and the answers are not shared with the humble reader who is still wondering what on gods green earth is going on. Wool, of the same series, is worthwhile but stay away from this one.

1 person found this helpful