I don’t like to write negative reviews unless there’s something constructive to say as well. So I must say, I enjoyed the first trio of novels, then I read the short story collection in between (highly recommended order), finishing with this set of four books. As always, narration was excellent. I did notice a few places towards the end where there were slight slips in character accent (as a former audiobook technical editor from earlier days, I still notice these things automatically).
I was really interested in the first set and the short stories. This started out strong, but then, just as other reviewers said, the last half (two books) felt rushed and convoluted. I don’t know why certain characters were sprinkled throughout when really each gave one speech if significance towards the end (to separate people) which could likely have been done by someone else. The constant changing of modern terminology into something more steampunkish was fine at first but after it felt like every other noun was being replaced or re-engineered, I started taking days long breaks from the story.
Honestly, I started noticing I was gritting my teeth when “flash pop” started being used to indicate a photograph. All the epithets being mechanical in nature – some unnecessarily so – and questions about how and why folks ended up where they did. (What happened to those involved in Operation Potato, for example? Both victims and defender.)
I may have missed some things. I had started to tune out to keep my sanity. If this were a 25 or so hour book, I would have stopped it and not finished it. But having invested so much time into the series, it would bother me ever so slightly not to see the thing through. So I did. And I can’t wait to remove it from my device to make room for a fresh new story to clear my mind of the last part of this set. Or better yet, I’ll go back and listen to a few more lectures from some of my Great Courses as interesting mental palate cleansers.
The narration is really what kept me going to the end. I think I still might have stopped it if it weren’t for the steady, soothing voice telling the tale as I gritted my teeth against another mention of “pocket clocks” and “crash ball” and “thunder rails” which – aside from the names – appear to be identical to the present world “watches,” “football” (American style), and trains/locomotives.
Thank you for an easy vocal performance. I will certainly continue looking for narrations by this gentleman (I hope I am close to the right spelling – Mikel Naramore?).
From this author? I will have to think long and hard, read reviews, and make a decision. No more automatic purchase by author name alone, I’m afraid. Surely disappointed, frustrated, and somewhat annoyed by the end of this series.
But the narration was excellent, and the first two books were pretty good in this set. Only the last two here seemed off in the ether somewhere.