Michael

Some friends, yes. But those who really rely on my suggestions, I would not be able to do so. Any book offering Linda McKinney as a character in it...I will skip. Sometimes a character just gets under my skin as totally implausible, ineffective and unnecessary. Normally I can find my way around him/her. Not this time. On top of that I did not really care about any of the characters. Found myself rooting for her to get waxed. Like the character Bert in JA Konrath's 'The List' or Colony Executive Sevgi Eretkin in Richard K Morgan's 'Thirteen'...sometimes characters just stick in my craw...and finishing the book stops being an adventure and becomes a chore.
Cool subject matter. The narrator is spot on. Loved Daemon and Freedom. The author knows his craft as far as his ability to spin a yarn. Just that one character spoiled the experience for me. Found myself fast forwarding, something I consider a definitive no no.
And so it goes.

Pretty much. I kept going till I finished the book. The topic of drones is fascinating since they are now deployed over our not so friendly skies. The delivery of the subject matter has me thinking...and I like things that make me think...after I close the book cover.

The part about the ravens and why they have such huge brains. Delicious. I will be finding out all I can about ravens now. I like writers who can spark my imagination.

If the part of the Linda McKinney is rewritten...yes.

Yes as long as there are no blacks figuring prominently in it as a race or clan.. As an African of the diaspora I have run into Card's black savage/slave motif before. Tossing in a Hitler and Himmler( or was I dreaming?) into the mix before the character is well on his way to exile just had me stop the audiobook in its tracks. I think I will stick with his Enderverse and the parallel books of Bean and Petra's adventures.

The beginning. See above.

Stefan delivers...always. I will be sad to miss his performance here.

Annoyance. As I read the beginning I had a flashback of another Scott Card book with blacks swinging through the trees defecating while in mid flight and I just can't shake the image. I really don't care how good the book will get or how he does the blacks 'justice' in his depiction of them....any more than I am eager to stumble over the latest Scott Card faux pas and get ejected from the narrative and back into the real world. I enjoy being transported...not ejected . Lost my taste for continuing this book. As I get older I tolerate this nonsense less and less.. I no longer make justifications for why authors write a certain way just so I can finish a book. Something annoys me...I stop the book in its tracks as I did with this one. Permanently. When I qualify for exchanging it...for another audiobook...I will. I am too old for this stuff.

I have been reading sci fi-fantasy since 1966...and it still is my preferred form of fiction. But I am in my fifties now and intend to be very, very selective from now on.