Matthew

I'm a big fan of science fiction short stories--I own every one that Audible has. This is the worst. Only one memorably entertaining story out of four.

The first book in this series was interesting because of the fascinating mystery that unfolded slowly about why the alien ships were doing what they were doing, and the battle scenes were exciting. This book has very little mystery, allowing the author to concentrate unceasingly on his annoying characters. The main character is ridiculously expert at everything though he was formerly a computer science professor. He is apparently the greatest military commander who ever lived, continuously out-smarting professional Generals etc. His girlfriend, the only female in the book, is a ridiculous character, who seems to be crafted straight out of an adolescent's hormone-crazed mind. She is an impetuous sex maniac who always "needs" to be tamed by the main character. This was an annoying waste of a credit. At least now I know to delete the other books in the series from my wishlist...

I'm interested in the concept of Artificial Intelligence and thought this book might be interesting because of the author having a name that I'd heard many times in reference to AI, predictions of the future, etc. Instead, it was incredibly boring as the author drones on and on about computer history and inserts a whole bunch of plugs for his various companies.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book as it blends my two favourite genres, scifi and military memoirs. Unlike another author in this genre, Jack Campbell, this author writes good stories (although the dialogue is stilted and unrealistic). I've put the rest of the series in my wishlist!

There's absolutely no subtlety at all in this book. The dialogue is a study in how people NEVER talk to one another. It could have been way shorter, but the author puts in all sorts of mundane and unimportant details (like what the characters are having for breakfast). The premise IS interesting though, and the narrators are good--using several different people to narrate is much better than having one person fake a bunch of gender/accents.

Some new information that I'd never heard before. A fantastic insight into wartime London. The explanations of some of the social structure and connections between various players in the scene became a bit tedious at times, but in general the book was extremely good.

I read a lot of military memoirs. This one lacked the appeal of most of them. Not well written.

Extremely interesting book. Some of the historical date etc recitation is a little dry, but overall a refreshing antidote to the standard recitation of how bad western culture is taught in universities. Most authors should resist the temptation to narrate their own books, however. This guy's accents are terrible, and his phlegmy delivery of the other parts was excrucating to listen to.

Must reading for video game nerds and computer geeks who were teenagers in the 80's. I'm the latter, so got a lot of the computer and pop culture references (though definitely not all of them--there are hundreds, sometimes very obscure). This isn't a mass appeal book though. Sometimes the video game descriptions (especially the frequent reading of the scoreboard) are extremely tedious, and the ending is all wrapped up in a nice little bow reminding me of a children's book instead of well-written adult fiction.

Interesting premise, but too often ascends to the very tips of Mount Pious. The fawning over high tech entrepreneurs becomes ridiculous and transparent very quickly.

There are a couple of good stories here, but mostly mediocre ones. Not really worth the credit.