Slightly more than the sum of its parts...

Unlike Service Model - which I found to be superb, and narration by Adrian Tchaikovsky entirely appropriate and a positive element - not so much with And Put Away Childish Things. Tchaikovsky produces an impressively diverse range of output - my absolute favourites being the Tyrant Philosophers series (books 1 and 2 so far) and also Service Model (his SF is, for me, more variable.) This title falls more in the fantasy/escapist genre and I think AT was not the right reader for it. A better narration may have lifted it significantly.

I am not sure why authors do their own narration. In many cases, it's excellent - for example David Mitchell is the only person who should ever narrate his own books - but of course he's a performer anyway. Generally speaking (no pun intended) if you're not a performer or the title is not a personally biographical rendition - better leave it to the professionals. Having said that, my previous positive comment about Service Model (story and narration by AT) stands - perhaps as the exception.

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1 person found this helpful

Five nights at Aslan’s

Loved all the references to other worlds, sometimes subtle; sometimes not, occasionally (like Five Nights at Aslan’s) referencing things at least 50 years apart, crediting the reader with a very wide knowledge indeed.

I was a bit unsure of the performance at first, but by chapter 2 the author was delivering very well indeed, and no one can deliver the exact intended meaning as well as the author, almost like a singer-songwriter.

Some of the more phrases reminded me of the wit and complexity of Douglas Adams, if there had been a Hitchhiker’s Guide through the Wardrobe.

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Poor story, good humour

It is not a bad story, but compared to Tchaikovsky's magnificent science fiction this book has a poor plot and not a few unexplained hows, although of course there's a lot of humour stowed away.

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charmingly post apocalyptic and bleak

a lovely twist on the old children's adventure trope. I really enjoy these smaller works Adrian have been writing. they're lovely little treats.

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2 people found this helpful

Magnificent

Lyrical and engaging and deceptively clever - all the best aspects of a children’s fantasy story with many layers.

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Good story, but narration marred by a few bad edits

The story is well paced at the beginning and pensive at the end. It's subversion of narina is mostly played for laughs, but it also allows the protagonist to going on arc that wouldn't be possible in most fantasy stories.

The narration is also generally good, but the reason I knocked a star was that there are few instances where it seems like a sentence of two was recorded separately from the main reading and spliced in.

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Disappointing overall

I had high expectations of this, after reading Children of Time and Children of Ruin, which were both brillant. This one should have been a short story. Although the ending / twist at the end was clever and interesting, the rest of the story and characters fall flat. If you like the concept, you should read Stephen King's Fairy Tale instead.

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