Andrew

This is one of the first few audio books I have listened to, and this one I have actually read before. All the wonderful baroque fanciness and joy of tech that was evident in Snow Crash is present here, yet Stephenson's writing style and characterisation improves markedly.

Stephenson's endings are often critisized (correctly in some cases) for being too open ended. I didn't find that a problem in tDA. This is not a 'travel a long way, destroy the ring and sauron, all go home' style of book, so it doesn't have that sort of ending.

The narration is simply excellent, with appropriate accents and timbre, but not overdone or excessively stereotypical. I personally felt that one or two voices were awkward (Nell and Harv) but given that all the characters were voiced by the same speaker I could forgive that. Despite having read the book already I listened to all 16 hours, it was just that good.

A wonderful description of the madness that is the restaurant industry from a man who started at the bottom of the industry. Some great writing, some a little bit bombastic, but most of it really entertaining, all of it brought vividly to life by the narration of the author. Anthony Bourdain is incredibly passionate about what he does, paints such vivid pictures of the people in the industry, the food oh the food, the controlled mayhem that is the production line of a kitchen, that he almost makes you smell the kitchen, hear the New York accented commands of the chef and the cussing of Ecudorian line cooks.

I felt hungry after many a description in the book, but equally was convinced to be far more vigilant at restaurants.