C. Dalton

As I listened hour after long hour, I began to picture Mr. Bradbury sitting at his typewriter with a bottle of brandy, typing, sipping, typing, sipping. As the brandy bottle became lighter, the adjectives became heavier until that's all there were. The story line had drifted away, as had my interest, try as I might to not let that happen. After about 5 hours I started jumping ahead looking for the end. I have always enjoyed Bradbury's stories, but this one is the exception. Very long, very boring, very much a waste of time and money. The Sound of Thunder, by the way, is at the very end, a half hour story. It is good listening, but go directly to the last disc to hear it, or "Something Wicked" will wear you out.

This guy took a 15 minute story (and a poor one at that), stretched it into HOURS, and then had the worst narrator I have ever heard destroy what was left. Absolute waste of money. I was in my vehicle on the second cd out of nine when I went to the dump to drop off our household garbage. I left all nine cd's in the dumpster.

This is another great McMurtry saga of the old west, although not quite on par with Lonesome Dove. It digs deeper into the character's lives than did the movie. There are some blatant errors that weren't researched properly, but it is after all, fiction. The narrator leaves a lot to be desired. His pauses are numerous and become increasingly irritating, especially when they don't coincide with parts that should be paused. He just pauses wherever he wants......."and that was (pause) the nature of Captain (pause) Call....". 1,2, even 3 pauses per sentence. The book would have been an hour shorter with a different narrator. He ruined a great adventure.

It's a hard one to swallow if you're over 8 years old. The main character, "Smoke" (I should have known better right there) calls his enemies "crap-head" and "skunk-breath", his tanned brown skin stretched tight over his bulging and rippling muscles.........yawn. And when he approaches his ranch he lets out a piercing grizzlybear roar that silences everything around him and his wife howls back like a she-wolf to let him know she's ok. Whew. I got through the first two cd's and used the remaining 5 for target practice. So watch your step when you think about buying this one.....crap-head.

The Divide was an enjoyable listen, as was The Smoke Jumper, The Loop, and The Horse Whisperer, so it stood to reason that The Brave would follow suit. It started out hard to follow both in story line and characters, jumping repeatedly back and forth over decades with no warning or even a hint that the story just jumped ahead or back 30 years. At each change, you'd listen for several minutes before you realized that Tommy was in his 40's now, not 7 or 8 anymore.

I worked through several chapters, sometimes rewinding to catch something I must have missed, hoping that I'd start falling soon into the typical Nicholas Evans style of writing, and perhaps discover the true story line instead of all this rambling. It never happened. It rambled and time-traveled right to the end. The end was the only highlight, but not near worth the dragging hours of frustration and head shaking.

If you are an Evans fan as I am, I know you won't listen to me when I suggest that you skip this one, but I am betting that you will wish you would have.

Another familiar McMurtry saga.....Gus and Woodrow go on an expedition, there's a famous bad Indian that they try to kill, lots of whores,.......you know the drill.

The story is typical McMurtry and enjoyable to a fault, but the narrator gets irritating with his constant drawn out word endings, and the irritation starts immediately. A great story (and several $$$) wrecked by a poor narrator.

I think Bill needed a little quick cash. There really isn't a lot of "good stuff" revealed, and it comes across as a hastily prepared narrative that outlines the step by step occurances that took place over a period of years. No "insider stuff" here. Shatner being Shatner though, his fabulous ego that we all have grown to love shines through like a beacon in the fog.

This is not the last book in the series, but it's the last book for me. I'm so tired of hearing the word "enhancements" and wading through hours of non-relevant rambling, that I have to say ENOUGH. The plots in the first three books have been quite simple, but one loses track of both plot and characters trying to stay awake. These books could be condensed to an hour, and nothing would be lost. And those statements in a nutshell are the "Consequences".