Grant

I wasn't impressed. The story format was intriguing and I was looking forward to some valuable insights delivered with authenticity, What I heard was forced inanity. I found little that was sincere or realistic and I felt ripped off, so I quit listening after the 2nd or 3rd chapter/story.

I'd like to read Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, but it doesn't seem to be available on audio.

Sounded like a Used Car Salesman at times. Felt it was 'acted' rather than delivered with feeling.

I was expecting a much more credible, detailed and well-considered approach. The parallel earth concept is always an intriguing one and I look forward to authors exploring the possibilities. But when a contemporary 21st century society is the setting for such a story, I expect fantastic elements to be realistic within the confines of a real world, pragmatic view. To have one set of characters embark on a journey, with young children, through 100,000 uninhabited parallel worlds in a couple of hundred days with just their backpacks (and no other ready supply of food, medicine, toilet paper(!)??? or consideration for the long-term impact to the characters of each vomit-inducing ???step move??? between worlds...), is highly unrealistic. Let alone the NEED for going so far. And that, once they arrived, unscathed, there would be a 'shop' there, with tourist T-shirts and other goods that had also *somehow* gotten there??? It beggars belief that the authors could expect readers to take anything else seriously. While other reviewers have commented that the novel considers impacts to society as a result of this scenario, I found the realisation very na??ve. To think that wholesale migrations would either occur (there would clearly be large swathes of the public who wouldn???t consider it, or might go once and never return), or if it did occur in the way portrayed, that there wouldn???t have a much greater impact than was pictured, smacks of lazy thinking, let alone writing. It???s as if they had the germ of an idea and just didn???t take the time to consider the practical details. I got a third the way through and could not finish it. One highlight: the narrator was darn good with his accents ...