Northworld

Northworld, Book 1

By: David Drake

Narrated by: Scott Aiello

The Consensus ruled twelve hundred worlds - but not Northworld. Three fleets had been dispatched to probe the enigma of Northworld. None returned. Now, Commissioner Nils Hansen must face the challenge of this distant planet - a gateway to nine alternate worlds. There, he will confront a world at war, a world of androids, a world of sentient machines - all unique, all lethal. But deadliest of all are the men who would be gods. Who rule these worlds with absolute power. And who challenge all trespassers. Like Commissioner Hansen.

©1990 David Drake (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Review Northworld book 1

David Drake and Scott Aiello have teamed and produced a great story. The intrigue of crossing realities comes alive in this first book of the series. I can’t wait to dig into the next.

Not as good as I thought it would be

Let me begin by saying I've been a fan of David Drake's writing since I picked up a copy of Hammer's Slammers back in the early '80s. I loved that series, and several others. I even read the Northworld trilogy 25 years ago, when it first came out. But that was the last time I'd encountered the story, until I listened to to audiobook. And to be honest, I'd forgotten all the details of the story, save that it was an SF retelling of some Norse tales.

I was disappointed with the story, this second time around. The character development varied from miniscule to non-existent. I didn't find myself caring about the outcome of the story. In short, my reaction was, "Meh!"

A number of story lines were thrown out, and never resolved. It sort of felt more like a stream of consciousness than a well-told tale, which is surprising, as David Drake is normally a good story-teller. And you can't even blame this on it being early work, as he'd already written a number of stories and novels by this point.

The reader did a decent job of voicing the characters, but mispronounced a number of words, the most jarring of which was probably "sidereal" which he pronounced like "side real". Dude, if you don't know the word, don't guess at the pronunciation, look it up. As I've ranted fairly frequently in my reviews, nothing yanks me out of the flow faster than mispronounced words.

So over all, I just would have to say, "Don't bother!" This audiobook series will join a list of about six or eight other audioboks on the, "I'll never be listening to this again" list.

Unbelievable

I was never more turned off by a book than this on in the first 15 minutes. Thank goodness he has gotten much better at storytelling.