Extraordinary Powers

This is an interesting story line and a bit different for an espionage novel. Unfortunately I think the narrator really ruined it, at least for me. The storyline was a bit choppy but well thought out. If you are debating using a credit for this or another, I would think twice about using it here.

I enjoyed this book although it wasn't among Joseph Finder's best. It was still pretty good, with vague supernatural overtones. Not super-intriguing, but easy to follow. I didn't have a problem with the narrator as others have, in fact, I found his voice suitable to the first-person narration, if a little hesitant. The characters were all well-fleshed out, the story takes some crazy leaps which one won't expect and perhaps the wind-up is a little bit contrived. But overall it's another fun, engaging novel of good people caught miserably in bad circumstances, using Extraordinary Powers to get unentangled, and maybe save the world!

Scott Brick would have nailed this book. But, as it was, the narrator seemed like the disembodied voice of a GPS some of the time (especially the beginning). This hurt the book, in that the emphasis was often put on the wrong or inappropriate word in a sentence or dialogue. Often, it was confusing, and sometimes even conveyed an entirely different meaning. While you were trying to figure out what the character was really trying to say, the audiobook advanced, and you either had to rewind or miss some of the dialogue. It would have served the narrator better if he had read the book, or read it more than once, so he was aware of the inflection and meaning of the sentence he was characterizing. He appeared to read with the same "voice up and down" pattern no matter what was being said. It was like simplified narration 101--put some inflection in your voice while reading--but the idea should be to do it when and where it is meaningful and suitable. Good authors like Finder should insist on well-versed and talented narrators who don't make their work suffer.

I love Joseph Finder's writing, but I was so distracted by this narrator's "voice" for the lead character, that I decided to read it in print instead. To give him his due, when he read other characters he was fine, but the tone of the main character, Ben Ellison, is just inappropriate.