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I'm trying out audiobooks to see how they do for keeping my motivation going (if I'm not reading I can move around and get things done, is my theory). However, this book I chose as my first is kinda annoying. It's called "Leviathan" (I believe the author is Scott Westerfeld). Now, I know I made a pact with myself to never get involved with another book that was a New York Times Bestseller, because so many of them are absolute dogs, but it had Alan Cumming reading it, so I figured I'd give it a shot. His voice IS nice, but on this book he over-emotes constantly. Every frikken minute has to be at a nine, when I'm really the sort of person who likes things not to get past an eight unless it's the direst emergency, and about a four / five is where I'd prefer to spend my time. Yes, some intonation is good, but your really exciting bits will get lost if it's ALL EXCITING.
But that aside, the author goes to great lengths to do things the hard way. Like, right now the main character is up in a tethered "balloon" - which is an engineered creature - on lookout, and spots an enemy approaching. She signals down that information via semaphore, but then decides that she has to get back down quickly and will have to ditch out by sliding down the rope. I'm like... why? Shouldn't it be SOP that when the enemy is approaching you'd reel the lookout back in so they won't be a target and you'll have more fighters available? Or wouldn't simply asking to be reeled in be quicker than trying to get your beast to vent hydrogen by scaring it? Or, heaven forfend, if needing to get your beast to drop is something that happens sometimes, wouldn't you have it trained to respond to some particular stimulus rather than having to come up with silly ways to try to scare it? And
I love the concept of his invented creatures, but he leaves so much to flail in the wind. They all seem way too frikken intelligent. I mean, you should not be able to scare a creature made from a jellyfish by saying, "I'm going to light a match down here!"
But what might have been worse for me was when the main character drags someone's steamer trunk along the ground, apparently all the way from the door to the ship, with the owner present. There's a million ways the owner might respond to that, from helping by grabbing the other handle to whacking the kid across the ear, calling them an idiot and telling them to round up more help, but just letting it happen does not in any way strike me as one of the reactions I would expect. What about you?
(ETA: I just realized that Alan Cumming often makes the female scientist sound a little like Doctor Frankenfurter. Just a teeny bit.)
But that aside, the author goes to great lengths to do things the hard way. Like, right now the main character is up in a tethered "balloon" - which is an engineered creature - on lookout, and spots an enemy approaching. She signals down that information via semaphore, but then decides that she has to get back down quickly and will have to ditch out by sliding down the rope. I'm like... why? Shouldn't it be SOP that when the enemy is approaching you'd reel the lookout back in so they won't be a target and you'll have more fighters available? Or wouldn't simply asking to be reeled in be quicker than trying to get your beast to vent hydrogen by scaring it? Or, heaven forfend, if needing to get your beast to drop is something that happens sometimes, wouldn't you have it trained to respond to some particular stimulus rather than having to come up with silly ways to try to scare it? And
I love the concept of his invented creatures, but he leaves so much to flail in the wind. They all seem way too frikken intelligent. I mean, you should not be able to scare a creature made from a jellyfish by saying, "I'm going to light a match down here!"
But what might have been worse for me was when the main character drags someone's steamer trunk along the ground, apparently all the way from the door to the ship, with the owner present. There's a million ways the owner might respond to that, from helping by grabbing the other handle to whacking the kid across the ear, calling them an idiot and telling them to round up more help, but just letting it happen does not in any way strike me as one of the reactions I would expect. What about you?
(ETA: I just realized that Alan Cumming often makes the female scientist sound a little like Doctor Frankenfurter. Just a teeny bit.)
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