Progress Report

By: Roman Lando

Narrated by: Adam Schulmerich

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

An alien artifact. An accidental discovery. A looming nuclear apocalypse.

Art is a computer geek and retro electronics aficionado who just wants to be left alone. When he stumbles upon an alien artifact, he can't help but try to find out its purpose. Instead, he finds himself in over his head, in the midst of what might just turn out to be the end of the world, and nobody except him knows the truth. A truth that certain factions don't want to get out—at any cost.

It's not paranoia when self-driving cars are out to get you. Can Art survive the hunt, and maybe save the world in the process?

Progress Report is a near-future technothriller for fans of Ready Player One, Daemon, and Bobiverse. It’s packed with action, humor, and a sense of the profound that will linger long after you've finished listening.

©2022 Roman Bershadsky (P)2023 Roman Bershadsky

Mind blowing

Loved it. Full of twists keeping you on the edge of your seat. Highly recommend. Narration is perfect.

enjoyable story

I liked the pace of the story, a couple of 'awe c'mon' moments but overall well done.

Reluctant hero. Wild adventure

Received as an audio review copy through Roman Bershadsky, this is an honest review. This wondrously narrated by Adam Schulmerich finds a man named Art swept up into a very quirky yet important adventure that he could become a great hero of as he is tasked with stopping and alien contingent bent on humanity's destruction after discovering an artifact and marked for death by said alien forces. To be humanity's champion, Art finds out that a whole separate contingent of aliens has been working through our existence to better our species and can provide the assistance Art needs to keep humans alive... along with some crazy ass luck to go with it. There's nothing to lose with this story and fun way to spend your time.

Highly recommended.

This book is so lovely!

Awesome science fiction, the protagonist makes me so happy, not a narcissistic bone in his body. Thank you so much for this gift, I enjoyed every minute.

Enjoyable

I found this book to be enjoyable and it kept my interest throughout. I especially enjoyed the narrator's performance.

Definitely worth checking out even with some flaws

I received a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

This is an interesting story, with some inconsistencies, and awkward dialog.

I enjoyed this book, quite a bit, despite it's shortfalls. The main character was relatable, secondary characters believable, good settings, good plot and pacing. It was a good time.

The main character was well developed and easy to identify with. He was a little over powered, but not so much so as to feel out of place, just a little cliche. The fact he is a a tech head, with all the right contacts, and also well versed in firearms and martial arts, is a bit much. I'm not saying there's not a lot of similar people in the world, but it just seems a bit far fetched how this all fell exactly into the right persons lap.

I loved that this was set in canada, but this also lead to some inconsistencies. Like the fact he got a hand gun, at one point, and his mind is solely on the "illegal" 10 round magazine in the rifle he has. He has no firearms license, and no permit for the handgun, meaning the rifle magazine would be the least of his worries.

There is also an American agent working in Canada. An international agent or Canadian CSIS officer, would have been a little more logical, but hey, I guess America has the police the whole world, so....

The dialog is also a little clunky. Now, the book is written as a diary or log of something that happened to the main character. The main character is writing it all down, incase he is not able to deliver the information. In that regards, it makes some sense that the dialog he recalls wouldn't bee the way people talk, especially as the narrator is trying to write semi formally, for record of the events. However, it is a little hard to read/listen to, as people don't generally speak to each other the way they do in the story.

The voice narrator, Adam Schulmerich, didn't help the dialog. He read the book a little like he was giving a speech. It matched the semi formal tone of the text, but it definitely added to the robot feel of the story. The narrator needs to add some voice differentiation between characters and add some female voices, and generally loosen up a little. Be more conversational.

All in all, this was a pretty good book. It falls into some cliche traps of overkilled protagonists, and "'Merica!!" the tone is a little too formal, leading to some robotic dialog, but the engagement of the story is more than enough to over power any of this.

This is definitely worth a read/listen to.