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A review by briarrose1021
Initialization by From Hell
5.0
So, I was able to listen to the audiobook version of this and really enjoyed it! Travis Baldree did a marvelous job with the narration, cleaning up a lot of the translation while staying true to the the spirit of the story.
The story itself was rather interesting, with all the people of Earth suddenly being transported to some new location and then having to compete for survival. Yet, somehow, our main character is experiencing it as a sort of Groundhog Day episode, remembering having gone through it all already and now having the opportunity to do it again. His experiences in the "training" scenarios and new trials are interesting, as he becomes a one-man killing machine.
Overall, it is a good story. However, the initial translation is, in a word, painful. If you are interested in this book, I highly recommend the audiobook version over the ebook. Whispersync will not work because of the alterations Travis made, but the alterations made the text flow much better. (For example, in the text is peppered with exclamations that remind me of the Adam West Batman TV show; the audiobook version does not.) In addition, there is some racist dialogue in the translated ebook - which I don't know if that is because of the original text or just a bad translation - but the audiobook removes and/or changes the dialogue to remove the racism.
Other than that, Travis Baldree is an awesome narrator, so just being narrated by him is a recommendation all on its own.
The story itself was rather interesting, with all the people of Earth suddenly being transported to some new location and then having to compete for survival. Yet, somehow, our main character is experiencing it as a sort of Groundhog Day episode, remembering having gone through it all already and now having the opportunity to do it again. His experiences in the "training" scenarios and new trials are interesting, as he becomes a one-man killing machine.
Overall, it is a good story. However, the initial translation is, in a word, painful. If you are interested in this book, I highly recommend the audiobook version over the ebook. Whispersync will not work because of the alterations Travis made, but the alterations made the text flow much better. (For example, in the text is peppered with exclamations that remind me of the Adam West Batman TV show; the audiobook version does not.) In addition, there is some racist dialogue in the translated ebook - which I don't know if that is because of the original text or just a bad translation - but the audiobook removes and/or changes the dialogue to remove the racism.
Other than that, Travis Baldree is an awesome narrator, so just being narrated by him is a recommendation all on its own.