Storm from the Shadows

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Jay Snyder

Length: 31 hrs

Publisher's summary

Rear Admiral Michelle Henke was commanding one of the ships in a force led by Honor Harrington in an all-out space battle. The odds were against the Star Kingdom forces, and they had to run. But Michelle's ship was crippled, and had to be destroyed to prevent superior Manticoran technology from falling into Havenite hands, and she and her surviving crew were taken prisoner. Much to her surprise, she was repatriated to Manticore, carrying a request for a summit conference between the leaders of the two sides which might end the war. But a condition of her return was that she gave her parole not to fight against the forces of the Republic of Haven until she had been officially exchanged for a Havenite prisoner of war, so she was given a command far away from the war's battle lines.

What she didn't realize was that she would find herself on a collision course, not with a hostile government, but with the interstellar syndicate of criminals known as Manpower. And Manpower had its own plans for eliminating Manticore as a possible threat to its lucrative slave trade, deadly plans which remain hidden in the shadows.

©2009 David Weber (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Good book...terrible narrator

Just when I got used to familiar voices, a new narrator comes along and makes my ears bleed.

Jay Snyder's female voices are excruciating as he speaks in a weird, hyper, false falsetto and tries to speak with an English accent.

In general, he narrates the entire book like he is being timed to see how fast he can speak and sitting on the edge of his seat about to fall off. I do not think he took a breath in the first 30 min of the book. I do not know about the rest of it, because I just could not stand listening anymore - I have tried about 6 times since purchasing, to no avail. He speaks so fast and in such a hyper-intense manner, its hard to follow the story.

I love the author, the book series, and got used to the female narrator on the previous Honor books, but I will not purchase again with this narrator.

I read/listen to relax, Jay Snyder's narration left me feeling like I had just run a 4-min mile in 30 seconds! Slow down dude and let the listener enjoy the book.

What happened to Weber's writing? Or his editor?

First off, The narrator has the most ridiculous cast of female voices I have ever heard (Think Monty Python).

Secondly, Over the years I have really enjoyed the Honorverse series (with a couple of notable exceptions). However, this book reminded me of the incredibly boring War of Honor installment in this saga. Heavy on politics and political meetings, and very light on character development or even much action for that matter. Combine that with half the book being a re-hash of events previously presented in other books and you have a really long dull book.

The author needs an aggressive editor... Or he needs to be paid by the book and not by the word.

Did I mention the huge cliffhanger ending....

Avoid this. I don't think you are missing anything significant in the series.

The audio production is a mess

I'm about 1/4 of the way through it, and finding it painful to imagine being halfway through it. This is not to say anything against the novel itself. It's just that the novel doesn't lend itself to the audio format. Between the large use of internal dialog, asides, and other dialog adornment, a five minute conversation between two characters inevitably takes a half an hour, with the result that it's almost impossible to follow the flow.

And given that most of the main characters are women, the choice of narrator is questionable at best. While I've found him perfectly decent on other titles, he's just the wrong woman for this job.

Ponderous

Do not, I repeat - do not buy this book. Ponderous, overblown, bogged down with incredibly insignificant detail, and lacking in any drama or action that would move the plot, if you can figure out what the plot is, forward.

Quite possibly the most boring book I've ever attempted.

Weber's Worst Book

30 hours long, and only the last 5 hours tell a story. Sadly they are simply a preface to some other book. A number of events are "set up" and in the end nothing happens. It is like Lions Game, insanely unsatisfactory. I am a big David Weber fan but large portions of this book are lifted, verbatim, from his earlier books. If you read reviews of the printed version,readers become confused as the transitions among the three warring civilizations are not noted. You are on the deck of a "good guy", then a "bad guy" then a "stupid puppet of the truly evil guys" and in the audible version it is impossible to keep the first 25 hours of the book straight. This is followed by a horrible do nothing ending where 5,000 things are ---- about to happen. Sad, a huge disappointment from a very capable author

Not happy with new narrator

Couldn’t get past first chapter with incongruent male voice compared to previous books.
Will seek full refund and investigate subsequent books for previous narrator.

Storm from the Shadows

So far (I have listened to part one only) I absolutely hate this audio book. As there are so many females why is the narrator not a woman which would save the awful female voices he uses. The first half of part one deals with technical terms for space weapons and completely lost me in all the jargon. I will stick with it trough part 2 but I really don't anticipate it will get any better.

Get creative

I was very disappointed in this book. There were far too many meaningless characters, which made it hard to follow. It seems like the author was constantly trying to build in some suspense or depth, but it never went anywhere. There was no imagination or creativity in terms of the plot or characters. The writing was extremely lacking in color and flow. If I hear someone say "on the other hand", "unfortunately", "honestly" or several other words or phrases that were used over and over and over I am might have to punch them. This is the first time I have ever skipped or fast forwarded through portions of a book and the interesting thing is that I didn't miss anything. What was really annoying was the fact that in a couple of places where the author could have added some excitement the situation was just skipped over.

They should have paid more for a better narrator

If I had picked this up as a book, I might have enjoyed it, but with this narrator, it was just so much babble. There was little or no difference between the voices used by the different female characters, so who was saying what to whom, became an issue many times.

If you love the series and can handle the bad narrator, then by all means get it, if you don't -- pass it up.