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benfast's review
2.0
I was excited for this book, the story of R101, and the mystery of why it crashed. But then I got the audio book. The story was interesting enough, but the combination of a short narrative and highly distracting narration meant it was really not enjoyable.
The author seems in a race to get his words out. This 4-hour audio book probably could have been stretched to 6 or 7 hours had he slowed down and inflected a bit more. The author's voice isn't bad, in fact at first I thought it was going to be a great narration, but it moved so quickly that you don't know when one sentence ends and the next begins, and it makes the narrative move so quick you lose track of the plot or which characters it is following. The narrative is good enough, presenting the story in a way that makes sense and that moves forward logically. The only criticism that I could level is that there wasn't enough about the First Officer (though perhaps we lose track of him because nobody from the control deck survived to give an account of his actions?), and that some of the movement between R101's story and the comparison to R100 and other airships gets a bit confusing. I found the epilogue the most interesting and actually what I wanted from the book - I ended up actually laughing out loud at the last sentence, but that was the only time I was that amazed by the book or the story.
I would suggest getting the print version, or giving this a pass.
The author seems in a race to get his words out. This 4-hour audio book probably could have been stretched to 6 or 7 hours had he slowed down and inflected a bit more. The author's voice isn't bad, in fact at first I thought it was going to be a great narration, but it moved so quickly that you don't know when one sentence ends and the next begins, and it makes the narrative move so quick you lose track of the plot or which characters it is following. The narrative is good enough, presenting the story in a way that makes sense and that moves forward logically. The only criticism that I could level is that there wasn't enough about the First Officer (though perhaps we lose track of him because nobody from the control deck survived to give an account of his actions?), and that some of the movement between R101's story and the comparison to R100 and other airships gets a bit confusing. I found the epilogue the most interesting and actually what I wanted from the book - I ended up actually laughing out loud at the last sentence, but that was the only time I was that amazed by the book or the story.
I would suggest getting the print version, or giving this a pass.
shim's review against another edition
4.0
The audiobook is well read with the author's calm and calculated voice. The content is quite interesting, covering topics that most people will know nothing or almost nothing about. Aside from the Hindenberg disaster the history of the airship is one that is largely forgotten.
The book dives deeply into the engineering of the airship as well as the historical and political context that also contributed to its demise.
There are some artistic details that appear to be completely fabricated as I don't see how it's possible that anyone would have recorded anything as detailed at the time as the action of taking off one's glasses and wiping them at such a specific moment. In that it seems to attempt to be both a history book as well as a novel. This makes it a bit more entertaining but does raise some questions about what is fact vs fiction in the book.
The book dives deeply into the engineering of the airship as well as the historical and political context that also contributed to its demise.
There are some artistic details that appear to be completely fabricated as I don't see how it's possible that anyone would have recorded anything as detailed at the time as the action of taking off one's glasses and wiping them at such a specific moment. In that it seems to attempt to be both a history book as well as a novel. This makes it a bit more entertaining but does raise some questions about what is fact vs fiction in the book.
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