Another great book from Brad Thor

Loved it and enjoyed the time listening to another great book from Brad Thor. His story always keeps you transfixed in the book. Just another way to keep you listening and enjoying the book. Another way to get your attention on the story as he thrills your mind with adventure.

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Mediocre thriller with a low reading age

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

The *first* chapter is taut and exciting. A woman is fleeing shadowy pursuers through a busy shopping mall. She's only too aware of her diminished options in our ultra-surveilled pan-opticon state. She carries out some desperate and unseen remedy in a lingerie store - the last bastion of privacy in a dystopian world! Awesome! What's going to happen next?

Well - first of all the reading-age drops. Brad Thor rests on his Chapter 1 laurels and starts grinding out dull, over-explained prose. If you were reading it your eyes would skate across whole sections of this plonking explicatory text; you would fast-forward to where something happens.

However with an audiobook you have to listen to every word. It doesn't help that the vocal talent is merely adequate - of which more later.

There's also little in the way of effective scene-setting. Locations across the globe are bland and barely established - there's no immersion and no evocative description.

There's nothing in the way of emotional landscape. The hero is a bland, super-accomplished, emotionless cypher. He moves from one poorly described location to another while the text informs us of his laundry-list of accomplishments and credentials. Scott Harvath never shows a flicker of life, introspection or human vulnerability. Why would we care what happens to him?

The hacker character (on the other hand) is likeable and memorable. I was rooting for that little guy - he was the only character with a discernable pulse. But even his scenes - set against the same wasteland of poorly established locations as the rest of the book - couldn't save this tedious thriller-by-numbers.

Disclaimer: I could only get through about a dozen chapters.

What aspect of Armand Schultz’s performance might you have changed?

On the vocal talent:

Armand Schultz gives a flat read with little vocal variety.

It was adequate (hence the three stars) but it was monotone and added nothing to the admittedly dull material. Schultz compares poorly to audiobook stars like Degas, Longworth, Pacey or Armstrong.

Professional audiobook readers should have a rich vocal palette. The best ones have the ability to move between different vocal instruments - moving seamlessly between accents and phoneme-sets.

Schultz either doesn't have or doesn't exhibit these skills. The most I can say is that he reads the text clearly without hesitation or breath-issues. That's not really good enough.

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