Christen

The premise of the book is weak at best, but could have been saved with good writing - it wasn't. The characters are inconsistent at best, and whiny and completely unrealistic at worst. Some of the climatology was interesting but in other parts the author has some serious gaps in his understanding of science and of the world. I followed to the end out of sheer determination with one more illogical step after another (both in the characters personal lives and the flooded world). The narration made it worse- the accents were terrible and never what they were described as - a "California drawl" sounded like a drunk Ozzy.

This might be a good book, but I couldn't get past the first 15min where the narrator read about murder and horror and very dark descriptive statements in a sweet sing-song voice completely out of sync with the text. It makes the whole thing sound idiotic. If I were the author I'd be furious. As a listener its a waste of a credit, but I'd happily give it another shot on paper.

I had to look at the author's bio after reading this one. After reading the book, I was certain he had some serious issues with women. He is slightly forgiven b/c he is very old and this was written in 1980, but still much older writers than he manage to do it- especially when writing about a future in which he stated that women work and have equal place in the world with men (you can't just say that, you have to write characters that fit it!). The authors biography has the most in common with the main character Gordon, and I imagine his major female characters are all based on ex-girlfriends or ex-wives he doesn't like.

The science is cool and the depiction of future global disaster is always thrilling. However, how the world gets to such a place of gloom and doom is not adequately explained. He talks about the molecular mechanisms, but not the political change and sheer lack of testing it would take to bring them about. Real world doom scenarios happen slower.

I agree with other reviews that it was too long. I do think the narrator did a fine job (except for the casual loops, but that gave me some entertaining thoughts about how casual time loops might be different from causal time loops, maybe casual time loops are just a bit more breezy and fashionable).

Its not terrible, I enjoyed listening even if I got steamed up at the author for half of it.