The Warp and the Weft (The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie #1)

By: Laurence Dahners

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

When a guy tries to roofie her, young surgeon Ryn Wilkie is catapulted onto a parallel Earth that’s at the technological level of the late 1800s.

Confronted with a society where women's voices are stifled and medical advancements are non-existent, Ryn's despair turns to determination when she discovers her ability to flip between worlds.
Can she leverage her abilities to advance their technology and challenge those deep-seated gender biases, or will the weight of their traditions prove insurmountable?
And, can she stop the guy who attacked her before he hurts other women?

"Jump" into the first book of the Worlds of Ryn Wilkie.

“Some of the best Sci-Fi I’ve read in years.”
“…reminds me of Heinlein and Asimov…”

Virtual Voice Sucks, but the Story Is Good

The story is good, and while it is a different Dahners' story, it still has the Dahners' feel. I would've rated this a 4 star book except for the fact that I listened to it on Audible. It is your typical (in a good way) Dahners hard science fiction story where the protagonist has an ability that us mere mortals do not. She learns to work her gift, all the while making the world(s) a better place.

I listened to it on Audible and that was a bit of a disaster since it was an A.I. narrated story, instead of a human being. I understand that leaves more profit for the author and Audible, but taking the job from a human beings lowered the quality of the narration by a big degree. The author must've written O.R. as the acronym for operating room. The stupid computer pronounced it "or" so the main character entered the "or" a lot, since she is a doctor, and many scenes take place in the operating room.

The story bounces back and forth between our Earth and an alternate earth. (Because I listened to it on Audible with a robot narrating it, I couldn't tell what the alternate Earth was called. The computer pronounced it "Serth" so maybe it was "C-Earth" in the book?). Our protagonist and her best friend Keeley, have a mind to change the alternate earth and to advance women's rights there, where women are stuck hundreds of years in our past with no rights whatsoever. During their time on our Earth, they are both doctors and they are trying to finish out their rotations, all the while stop a serial rapist(s). Also, for those who have read or listened to the Hyllis family books, there is a bit of that in here, too. Because there are multiple story lines going on, the book flies by, is engaging, and interesting. I look forward to the next one (hopefully narrated by a human being).

The narrator repeats each chapter heading twice, presumably because the words "Chapter 10" must appear twice in the story. At various points, it felt like a robot was narrating the story. Sarcasm was COMPLETELY lost in its narration toolbox. We are dealing with rape and some other heavy topics, and having a computer who lacks empathy narrate was an error.

Not one of his better ones.

The virtual voice is better than the normal text to speech. It doesn't distinguish between characters and there are odd pauses: I didn't check but I suspect most of these are for paragraphs. For some reason chapter headings are read twice.

I do plan on reading the sequel: but it's not one of his better books. The worlds he's created have potential but the characters, in general, aren't ones I'd want to be around. They don't have the spark/fun I have come to anticipate from almost all his other series. Almost everyone has multiple chips on their shoulders. The issues/ideas seem oversimplified.

He did point out that very few people are aware of how frequently women commit rape. But he didn't show any other awareness of the complexities of early and modern women's rights movements. For example men in general didn't have the right to vote until shortly before women got the vote. The Supreme Court ruled that if men were subject to the draft they deserved the right to vote. Men were and are generally subject to harsher treatment by the courts. Up until very recently life was very nasty for almost everyone. Both men and women.

He repeatedly referred to these athletic modern women being far stronger than old style farm women. The athletic modern women might have some specialized strength for gymnastics/martial arts movements. But for the lifting/toting/all day long strength I'd bet on the farm folk and people from the early 1900's hands down. If he wanted to argue that the farmers were malnourished or generally sickly then perhaps ....


I like his sharp, fun leads who give me a smile and things to think about. This book was lacking from that As in his bioterror book his treatment of vaccines was simplistic. For example he could have acknowledged that the smallpox and polio vaccines accidentally spread very nasty diseases, such as syphilis and RSV, all over the world. Several vaccines have the issue that while they suppress symptoms: many only mildly suppress disease spread if at all. The diseases have the higher risk but generally lower spread of the disease once recovered. One sign of this is how difficult it has become for pharma to produce immunoglobulin. In general people no longer have the long term immunities, in their plasma, used to produce the immunoglobulin.
perspective.

BEYOND EXCELLENT !

Virtual Voice: 4 Stars
Meat Bag Voice: 5 Stars

If I could get a Dahners Audiobook tomorrow narrated Ai or I could wait 2 weeks to get a human narration; I'd take the Ai.
Interestingly I'm willing to criticize a group but not individuals because I have so much respect for the hard work of creative people.

If Virtual Voice brings greater production rates then so be it.
On average over the works by Dr Dahners I enjoy the Ai voices almost as much as the best human narrators. At the time of this review, with only three examples: The Little Redheaded Boy and His Flying Saucer, The Transmuter's Daughter and The Warp And The Weft, I'm hoping Laurence can bring his engaging worlds into this universe more rapidly. One problem is, that most of the meat-sack actors lack sufficient versatility to do justice to the richly diverse characters encountered in one of Laurence's beautiful stories while the Ai voice presents the words more like the printed page which allows our minds to build the graphic worlds the good doctor describes. However the Ai struggles with spacing the words, sentences and paragraphs comfortably. The level of detail never feels like filler in his stories, but supply just what's needed to visualize the scene that his intelligent characters encounter.

There may come a day when I miss the emotional engagement only humans can express, but I crave the works of Dr Laurence Dahners, so the bottom Line: I'll purchase his Audiobooks the instant they are available, be it Ai or human voice, so whichever wins the production race wins my attention.

Is this selfishness or greed on my part? Is this self defeating in the long term? To answer these questions we'll have to engage stasis.

A science fiction story read by a computer

Liked the story and the characters. Seems to be a mutant-genius-hero series. Deals with equal rights issues. The virtual voice tech was nearly good enough to sound like a real person. Laury Dahners writes great stories!