Michael

WWII and SciFi are two of my favorites so maybe my expectations are too high but I'm about two hours into book two and I'm getting close to turning it off. The endless, pointless, whining dialog combined with the narrator's idea of an English accent is not story telling but racket, irritating racket.

Book one should be one fourth its length considering all of the riveting adventure that has not taken place. As for stereotyped characters, I am expecting one of the street urchins to walk up with an empty bowl and ask for more food.

I have no idea how the author plans on making the rest of the story enjoyable or exciting, or even interesting. I do know that there is absolutely nothing she can do that will make me not regret that I bought this book.

First off, the story is more complex than it needs to be. I didn't get a chance to care about the people. The mystery lady from the previous book gets lost and she could have been a treasure.

Odd's dialog is contrived, vaudevillian and tedious due to too many forced jokes. His constant barrage of one-liners became irritating and I started expecting him to end each one with a "Badoom bum bum". This may sound strange, considering this character talks to the dead, but Odd and the story didn't seem believable.

The latest Jim Butcher book. Thank goodness that Jim Marsters is back.

Sure. He did fine, it was the writing that was poor.

Not when compared to previous Odd Thomas books. Maybe that's what made this book so disappointing.

If you love Odd Thomas I'd stay away from this one.

I love Dean's work, but it seems like he mailed this one in. I'm tired of stories with mega-rich main characters who can use their private jets, and use money-is-no-objet means to solve problems. I can't relate to them (put myself in their shoes) which makes it hard to care what happens to them. At no time did this become a page-turner for me. If this book is classified as a "thriller", I was not thrilled.

I have never resorted to an insulting review, but in this case it is appropriate. The best description I can find for this book is stupid. The author is all over the place, but he goes nowhere with this material. I'm not sure, but I think he thinks that he is funny, but he is not and it makes listening to this very frustrating. Save your credits.

I found this book so much fun that I wished it had been twice as long. It is an adventure.

Duma Key is one of Stephen Kings best. He too often gets pigeon-holed as just a Horror writer when what he really is a Great writer. I listen to his books not because they make me want to look under the bed for monsters, as another reviewer mentioned, but because they are great stories.

Although they usually deal with the super-natural, it's the everyday, blue collar people, places, and dialog in his stories that I find so believable. That's what allows me to visualize what's happening and escape into the story.

Listening to Duma Key gave me 21 of the most enjoyable hours I've spent in quite some time.

Three Problems with this book.

1) Bad Writing. James Rollins tries to write a Clive Cussler-type novel, but because this book is so poorly written it makes Cussler read like Hemingway. The only character that seemed real was the monkey; the rest were so contrived it was embarrassing. Rollins needs to study real conversation between real people and write dialog that matches it. The dialog in this novel was straight out of the Batman TV series.

2) The narrator didn't help. His "voices" were right out of Rocky and Bullwinkle and I found them irritating. I have listened to biographies that were more exciting to listen to than this. This narrator is better suited to nonfiction and should avoid novels. I do not mean this as an insult.

3) I am amazed that a publisher thought that this material was good enough to publish. Not just good, but so good it should be an audiobook. So good, in fact, that it should have cheesy music play between random chapters to add drama.

After 13 hours, just one hour before the climactic ending, I finally couldn't take any more and stopped listening. They finally wore me down and I just didn't care anymore.

If you like a book that will continually insult your intelligence then this is the book for you.

I've read almost all of his books, and while I do like Dean's writing, there are some of his books I would not recommend; for example, I was a bit disappointed with "Odd Jobs". This book, however, I highly recommend. A touch of suspense, a touch of crime/mystery, and a touch of the supernatural all combine to make this one of my favorites.