Rob

So this isn't exactly a book. More like an audio program I guess. Each “chapter” is an episode. There is sound effects and music. Each character is played by a different actor.

As a format, I think this is great, and would consume more stories this way. In my early days of getting into audiobooks I borrowed some BBC Sherlock Holmes stuff that worked the same way, and I'm surprised there haven't been more like this. If I was rating just the audio portion, it would be an easy 5 stars.

One improvement I'd love to see is some kind of full cast list posted somewhere (ideally in text, not audio, but I'd take an audio update over nothing). There are so many characters and I recognize some of the voices but not all. I was only able to find some partial lists on various sites, but nothing on audible or Felicia's website. I'm not sure if this warrants an IMDB page, but I love how IMDB has pages for TV Episodes because I often use them to look up someone and try to jog my memory as to what else I've seen them in before.

With regards to the actual story, I had mixed feelings. Some of the humor was great, but a lot of it didn't work for me. That's always going to be subjective though.

I also didn't find any of the characters very likeable though, which is my bigger issue. I thought they were interesting characters, but I like to have something to “root” for. I guess I was rooting for Laurel, but often I was just frustrated with her.

My favorite character was probably Robicus (not sure I'm spelling that right). It may be that I'm partial to Wil Wheaton, or maybe it's just you're not supposed to like him, so I thought that was well done.

Overall, I thought this was enjoyable but not amazing. I do love that it was a self contained story. That's so rare these days. Everything is a series. If you like fantasy, and nerdy humor and/or are a fan of The Guild this one is probably worth a listen. Probably closer to 3.5 stars than 3, but not quite 4 for me.

Finally had some time to come back and leave some thoughts. I absolutely love Holly Gibney as a character. She's one of the best characters Mr. King has created in recent memory. You can tell he thinks so too, since she has evolved from a supporting character in the Bill Hodges Trilogy and the [b:The Outsider 36124936 The Outsider Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1524596540l/36124936.SY75.jpg 57566471] to being the protagonist in first a novella ([b:If It Bleeds 46015758 If It Bleeds Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571399830l/46015758.SY75.jpg 70552618]) and now a full novel.I found this book uneven. There were parts where I was really engaged and wanted to keep listening, but there were others where my attention started to wander.This is also set during covid. That's somewhat important to the plot, but not really that important in my opinion. Mr. King has an author note about how If It Bleeds should have covid in it too, but doesn't because he wrote it before we knew about covid. Personally I think that's part of why I liked that novella better.I read as recreation/an escape. I prefer not to have to be reminded of that stuff. For me that impacted my overall enjoyment of the book.Overall I'd give this 3.5 stars. I liked it, but not as much as past stories with her. I found it slow at times, and the case/mystery just wasn't as interesting to me as some of the others.I hope we get another Holly Gibney story though, because I really love her and the supporting characters (the Robinsons mainly) and I've enjoyed having some mystery/thriller books to consume in between all the fantasy and sci-fi I typically read.With regards to the audio. As strange as it sounds, I missed Will Patton. He was a great fit for the other novels. I got used to his Holly voice. He's narrated all the previous Holly Gibney stories, including the novella, so the change of narrator caught me off guard. That said, if you're going to replace him with a more appropriate female narrator, picking one of the two actresses to portray her on TV is a good choice.I think Justine Lupe does a good job, although it's been a few years since I watched the Mr. Mercedes TV show, so I didn't really recall her portrayal of the character very well. Once I got used to the narration swap, I enjoyed it. I hope that they keep her for any future Holly stories for consistency, because I really hate when narrators change for series/characters.

I pre-ordered a while ago this without knowing anything about it other than Bill Watterson was involved.

I loved Calvin & Hobbes as a kid, although I'm not a die hard fan and I don't own the books. As such I haven't reread them in a while. However his name was enough for me to check out his first new work in forever.

I promptly forgot about this book until I got the ship notification this week.

It's incredibly short. Some pages have a single sentences. At most there are 2 or 3. Each pair of pages has text on the left and a picture on the right. It's only 72 pages long. So there really isn't a lot to it.

I enjoyed it, but probably would have preferred to simply borrow it from a library to read once.

Maybe 3.5. Very little plot. Mostly a lot of slice of life and character development.

I very much like the 2 main characters, but it had been a while since I read the first book and I didn't really remember what the overall plot was. It didn't matter too much since this didn't really seem to deal with that until the final section of the book.

There is very little to make this book a fantasy. It's there, and is probably an underlying driving force, but if you're expecting magical combat or something, you're going to be severely disappointed.

So far this is my least favorite of his fantasy series (I really loved Dagger & Coin), but I still liked it enough to pick up the final book.

I think this is easily my favorite book of this series. I looked over my last reviews for books 4/5 (or 1/2 depending on how you count them) and I guess this was originally a trilogy and now its 4 books (or maybe I just assumed a second trilogy), so I had kind of thought this was the last book when I started it.

It does appear the last book will be out much sooner than this one was, so maybe as he was writing the final book he realized he had too much he wanted to do and split it in two.

I still prefer the Darrow chapters to all the others, but Lyria and Virginia were interesting as well.

Lysander is still far less enjoyable to read, but necessary to getting a big chunk of the plot. Overall I thought this book was more in lines with books 2 & 3 of the original trilogy and less like books 1, 4 & 5. Hopefully the final book will be as enjoyable if not more so.

The narration by Tim Gerard Reynolds is spectacular as always. I haven't listened to a book read by him in a while. He does a variety of voices and you can tell when the protagonist swaps in a new chapter simply by the way he reads them. I highly recommend the audio version.

I thought this one started slow and I didn't particularly like any of the characters. However things really picked up, and there was a lot of good character development as it went alone. This was easily the best of the 3 Secret project books so far.

I've heard it mentioned this is his best stand alone Cosmere book as well, and while it's been a while since I've read the others, I may have to agree with that sentiment as well.

Overall I thought this was a good story with some interesting magical elements (as per usual for me with a Sanderson book). There are some nice easter eggs in there for people who have read other books (likely including some I missed), but one that can easily be approached by someone who has never read anything in the series (or by Brandon Sanderson for that matter).

The audio was excellent as always. Despite the story being “told by Hoid”, it made sense to have the 2 narrators cover one of the protagonist's POVs. Michael Kramer and Kate Reading are always favorites of mine.

They even make a decent effort at describing some of the artwork throughout the book. However since I also got the pdf for this book, I made it a point to go check out the excellent images after the fact.

A good, but not great conclusion to the duology. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending (although it does have a nice hook for a possible sequel series that I'm interested in reading).That said, there was a series of chapters in the last third or quarter that were so engaging that I just sat around staring at the wall and listening to a few extra chapters. I think if I had liked the ending a bit more this would have been a 4.5 star book.This series had some really great character growth and some nice surprises. It was a solid addition, but still not as enjoyable as [b:Six of Crows 23437156 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1651710803l/23437156.SY75.jpg 42077459].The narration is once again quite good. I've done all of Ms. Bardugo's books in audio and [a:Lauren Fortgang 3144008 Lauren Fortgang https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1393207484p2/3144008.jpg] does a great job with them. I'd highly recommend the audio version if you're into that sort of thing.

Another solid entry in the Grishaverse. Not as good as the Six of Crows duology, but better than the original Shadow and Bone trilogy.

I initially found Nina's story slow, but it built up pretty well as the series went on. Zoya had some pretty good character development in this book I thought. I'm looking forward to jumping right into the second book.

The narration for this is really good. I think Lauren Fortgang did the previous ones as well, so if you liked those in audio, you should like this too.

Apologies, but I'm sad this series is over, but I thought he really stuck the landing. Thankfully his new series seems promising but it's going to be hard to top Cradle.

I'm really going to miss these characters.

It was ok. I didn't love the “rating system” gimmick. The ending was fairly predictable. Some of the world building was interesting, but that's about it. I hope the other books from the Kickstarter will be better.

I'm generally a Michael Kramer fan, but he didn't feel like a great fit for this book. I'm not sure exactly why. His narration was fine.

Similarly, Kate Reading narration of the inserts was also fine.

A fun start to a new series. I was initially a bit disappointed his next book was this and not [b:Waybound 61397047 Waybound (Cradle, #12) Will Wight https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1662233493l/61397047.SY75.jpg 96861387], but now I know I have something else to look forward to once that concludes.This is definitely space fantasy and not really sci-fi at all. It has a similar feel to the cradle series in terms of pace and tone, but this borrows more from Star Wars, Kaiju movies and Sentai stories instead of shonen or wuxia stories. All things right up my alley.Travis Baldree once again does a great job with the narration. I've been reading Cradle in ebook (which is rare for me these days) but after doing older novels by Will Wight in audio, I'll pretty much be sticking with that format for the foreseeable future.

3.5. Not as good as the first one, but still enjoyable. I'll be picking up the next one when it comes out.

The audio is a good option. The narrator does some voices at times and her natural reading voice is enjoyable.

I enjoyed this, especially the last few chapters. I ended up just sitting around listening to this for like an hour just so I could finish it. I thought I had it all figured out pretty early, but was pleasantly surprised I was only partially right. If not for a bit of a slow start (it didn't seem to grab me right away), I might have given it a 4.5.

I still probably enjoy her Six of Crows series better too. This is a blend of fantasy, mystery and I guess horror. There are certainly some horrific things here. I think I prefer the heist type story, but I do like this better than her Shadow & Bone series.

The narrators are both fine, but nothing special. They read in their own voices which works well enough for their respective POVs. There is nothing particularly special about the audio book, but at this point it's my preferred format, and is a solid choice.

3.5 stars. It was a fine entry in the series, but nothing special.

The narration was good, although he just reads everything in his normal speaking voice.

I rather enjoyed this one. Not a whole lot of plot, but fun characters that I just enjoyed spending time with. Very low stakes. I see a lot of people call this “cozy” I think of it more like a slice of life anime style story. I found myself making excuses to keep listening. That's always a sign of a good book.

I guess he's doing a prequel. I may pick it up eventually, but I don't feel like there is a need for that. Or a sequel really. I think this works really well as a stand alone. Maybe I'll change my mind later though.

The book also came with a second short story that was a bit of a prequel. It was fine, but not as enjoyable as the main story.

I knew Travis Baldree from his audio narration, that's what first put this book on my radar. Normally I'm not a big fan of authors narrating their own books (with a few exceptions). You can add him to the list. He's a great narrator and there was no way I'd do this in any other format.

This one kind of frustrated me. It's overly long at times, and there are sections where I feel like Andrew Rowe wants to express his personal opinions, but for me it just pulled me out of the story. I don't have any issue with authors who want to use fiction to discuss real world issues, but when it ruins the immersion like that, it just doesn't work for me. But the good parts are really good and keeps me invested in the series.I've long felt that Mr. Rowe is better on ideas than writing and maybe that is starting to overwhelm me more in this series than it has in the past. I still like the characters and world building and I'm still interested in knowing what comes next. However I feel like the pacing and writing could still be better. It's one of the main reasons I didn't continue on with the related stories. While I'd like to know the details of those books, I just struggled with [b:Six Sacred Swords 43902687 Six Sacred Swords (Weapons and Wielders, #1) Andrew Rowe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551600782l/43902687.SY75.jpg 67973755] too much to go on.I will give this next book a go, but I hope things don't keep trending in this direction.The narration is fantastic as always. It being unabridged can feel bad at time due to some of the detailed descriptions of things that your eyes would probably skim over if you were reading it. However Nick Podehl always seems to handle it as well as he can. I will definitely continue on in the audio format.

It's been a while since I read volume 9, and I didn't really have the time to go back and re-read. It took me a bit but I think I remember the key details from the first 9 volumes. Either way, it's nice to have more Saga to read again. I really enjoy this series a lot.

Once again Fiona Staples artwork is great too.

I'm looking forward to picking up volume 11 once it's out.

3.5 stars.

Much like it's predecessor it largely ignores PC games in favor of console gaming. It has a single mention of Valve and Steam, despite how integral that has become to modern PC gaming. Blizzard gets more coverage than it did in the first book, but it's mostly in the context of the rise of Activision.

It is still a solid book on the last few generations of console games. However it's far from “ultimate”.

3 or 3.5 stars. It's a fun story, but nothing spectacular. There are some cool cosmere tidbits that I enjoyed.

Michael Kramer does an excellent job with the narration as always.

3.5. A bit longer than I'd prefer, spending too much time on minutiae about the game balance and competitive scene than the creation of the games themselves. While this book is supposed to be the first of a series, it covers all the history of Mortal Kombat that I care about. 1 book is enough for me.

Decent ending to the series, but I just kind of lost interest at times. I'm not sure if this is because of the narration but I much preferred Isoka's chapters to Torrie's by far. It could also be that I love the supporting characters around Isoka, especially Jack and Meroe. Apparently I said this in my review for the last one, but I don't really get why this book needed 2 different narrators. I would have probably just preferred Catherine Ho read the whole thing. I felt like the pace of the narration by Nancy Wu was a bit too fast for my liking.

4 or 4.5 stars. Pretty fun read overall and an enjoyable ending to this part of the series. Lots of great Cosmere stuff too. I hope we get some more with some of these characters later on.

3.5 stars

Overall a fun and quick read, but nothing mind blowing.

I wasn't a huge fan of Ms. Lafferty as a narrator. She wasn't bad, but I might have liked it a bit more with a professional narrator.

3.5 stars rounded up for a strong finish. I took a huge break from listening though because the middle of the book wasn't grabbing me as much.

Another solid entry to this series. I wish we got some more answers in the book. There was some promising setup that made me think we'd be learning more than we actually did about the publishing company. There were also a few places where it felt like it could use some editing, but overall enjoyable.

The audiobook was really good as usual. Roger Wayne does a bunch of voices that make it easy to know who is talking and really adds that extra something to the book with his reading.