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aix83 's review for:
The Bitter Twins
by Jen Williams
The book is a good follow up to the first. The story digs deeper into the history of Saarn and of the invaders, instilling the same sense of creeping Lovecraftian doom. The vistas are equally capable of driving anyone mad, the decrepitude of Ebora is equally moldy, and the crawlers are equally eldritch. We get good looks at the queen, the behemoths are not only well explored but full of exciting secrets and surprises etc. Vintage is still Vintage and new characters are developed nicely while some others turn fully villainous. New areas are being explored, including origin island. The plot isn't tight and possibly there's too much room lost on boring character development that feels like slow pacing.
The pacing and characters sliding into worse versions of themselves made me disinterested in how this ends. There's no reason why Hestillion is doing what she's doing other than that she's stupid and plot reasons. So her character fails miserably.
I didn't like how some characters degenerated into worse versions of themselves instead of improving as the plot goes on. It doesn't feel that the magic system is tight and can be explained in a coherent way - basically we'll never get the explanations we desire. Especially the part with the creators and the tree was a blow to my suspension of disbelief.
The audio had real problems with the narration. While the narrator's voice is very nice and he's doing the ladies, especially Vintage, very well, he's made some very poor choices. The tall, slim, cultivated, lazy Tor sounds like a giant stupid oaf or possibly Shrek because the narrator lowers his voice to do him. I think the narrator's actual voice would have been so much better because it sounds refined.
There have been times when the narrator is yelling and then whispering. This is very inconvenient and I had to fiddle with the volume a lot especially when listening on speakers at night. I get the idea of immersion but there is such a thing as pretending to whisper or yell without changing volume so much as to make it unusable.
The worst by far are the dragon voices. They all sound like annoyed people with serious mental development delays. They speak slowly while bellowing horribly even when they're discussing trivial matters. Vostok, a lady, still sounds like a man. Just no.
I can't tell if the pacing was a bit slow or it was the narration. Everything happens slowly and solemnly without any good reason. It makes the story hard to follow and feel like it's moving at a glacial pace. The narration doesn't feel quick and engaging, rather than like a tedious history book. There's no reason to read description at a slower pace than dialogue.
It's a shame because the narrator has really nice voice and that accent could be used to spice things up a lot. With different stylistic choices, the narration could have been superb. It's possible the narrator is trying to copy Michael Kramer which is a mistake because Kramer sounds like a boring self important person who loves the sound of their own voice. He may have been good for children who grew up in the 80, when people had a lot more patience than nowadays and slow boring books by Tad Williams were all the rage but today those books and that narration style are not acceptable anymore.
The pacing and characters sliding into worse versions of themselves made me disinterested in how this ends. There's no reason why Hestillion is doing what she's doing other than that she's stupid and plot reasons. So her character fails miserably.
I didn't like how some characters degenerated into worse versions of themselves instead of improving as the plot goes on. It doesn't feel that the magic system is tight and can be explained in a coherent way - basically we'll never get the explanations we desire. Especially the part with the creators and the tree was a blow to my suspension of disbelief.
The audio had real problems with the narration. While the narrator's voice is very nice and he's doing the ladies, especially Vintage, very well, he's made some very poor choices. The tall, slim, cultivated, lazy Tor sounds like a giant stupid oaf or possibly Shrek because the narrator lowers his voice to do him. I think the narrator's actual voice would have been so much better because it sounds refined.
There have been times when the narrator is yelling and then whispering. This is very inconvenient and I had to fiddle with the volume a lot especially when listening on speakers at night. I get the idea of immersion but there is such a thing as pretending to whisper or yell without changing volume so much as to make it unusable.
The worst by far are the dragon voices. They all sound like annoyed people with serious mental development delays. They speak slowly while bellowing horribly even when they're discussing trivial matters. Vostok, a lady, still sounds like a man. Just no.
I can't tell if the pacing was a bit slow or it was the narration. Everything happens slowly and solemnly without any good reason. It makes the story hard to follow and feel like it's moving at a glacial pace. The narration doesn't feel quick and engaging, rather than like a tedious history book. There's no reason to read description at a slower pace than dialogue.
It's a shame because the narrator has really nice voice and that accent could be used to spice things up a lot. With different stylistic choices, the narration could have been superb. It's possible the narrator is trying to copy Michael Kramer which is a mistake because Kramer sounds like a boring self important person who loves the sound of their own voice. He may have been good for children who grew up in the 80, when people had a lot more patience than nowadays and slow boring books by Tad Williams were all the rage but today those books and that narration style are not acceptable anymore.