Price

Nice book, but the experience was ruined since I had already listened to "Fishing for Stars". Shame on Audible for releasing this one after the sequel.

For a historical fiction work and not a bodice buster romance novel, the characters seemed overly enmeshed in various sexual exploits. Follett, too, seemed to delight in his own virtually pornographic and voyeuristic descriptions of these exploits. I would have been happier with less detail in the bedrooms and more in the story.

Amusing creation of a wartime Navy staffed by idiots. Mr Keith reminds me of Toole's Ignatious Reilly and Hellers Yossarian. (comparative literature pun intended). But Wouk had them first!

Rutherford performs at his usual high standard. I'm always entertained and informed by his work. Unfortunately, the narrator/production crew fell short. Although the narrator has a soothing but authoritative voice (to me), there are numerous odd pauses that could have been edited, as well as deficiencies in the audio file (skips, gaps). Perhaps minor quibbles, but annoying nonetheless.

A Gen X vision of reality. Wildly grasping at any leftist cause, this account is more of a tantrum against her rearing than any sort of serious analysis. The unabashed display of nihilism is broken only by worship of her politically and emotionally kindred spirits and her desire to be more like them. Apart from the content, the narration is dreadful. The stilted delivery could be considered as merely curiously stylized at best, but I found the somewhat dysphasic delivery distracting.

This will probably play well to the NPR crowd. In fact, if you are a TAL listener, you have probably heard most of this drivel before (I have), so you may not want to waste your money for it again, even if you like it.