Episode: 880
Title: HPR0880: Handbook for the Criminally Insane
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0880/hpr0880.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 04:02:47

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I'll see you in my next video.
Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of the Hacker Public Radio audiobook club.
Today I am joined by Brom, Integral, and Resno, and I am Poke if you didn't know that.
So this time we reviewed the audiobook by the name of the handbook for the criminally
insane and unlike our other two audiobooks that we've done so far, this one came up
with some mixed reviews. Some of us didn't like it and some of us liked it.
So who liked it? Who wants to start? I actually liked it. I thought it was pretty interesting
some of the stuff. Parts of it were kind of questionable. I thought, okay, so I liked it.
I'll stop there. Integral, I knew you had a thought you wanted to share. I absolutely hated this
audiobook. I had a really hard time actually finishing it. Brom, how did you do with it?
Well, you know, I didn't actually think it was that bad. I kind of struggled through some parts,
but I just kind of put it on the background when I was doing work and paid attention. Yeah, I didn't
enjoy this one either, and I listened to it twice. Oh, you poor soul. I think my biggest issue was
Brian Holtz, the author. He didn't vary his voice, and so a lot of times it was hard for me to
figure out what person's actually speaking. You know, is it Monica or is it the other girl or,
you know, who's actually speaking here? Monica and Betty, yeah, I got those two mixed up a lot.
Pretty much everybody else I was okay with, though, in her other redhead friend there.
I actually didn't have any problem distinguishing the voices. I just felt that they weren't
distinguished enough, as opposed to say, like, shadow magic, or you could definitely tell who was
speaking. I will give him that. I thought the recording quality was really good. I had no
complaints about that. Someone mentioned to me that they heard his, um, his, like, his breathing
in the background, but, you know, his intake of breath, and I didn't notice that. You had to
really listen forward if you wanted to find that kind of stuff. I will say that the audio quality
was good. It had some parts where it kind of graded on me a little bit, but mostly that just
came from him being monotone. I'd say the recording was exceptional, especially compared to a lot
of the, a lot of the books you get on, on patio books and on LibraVox. I mean, even compared to
shadow magic, the recording on that's not the greatest, because it, it kind of levels all over
the place. From one episode, it's really soft, and then the next one, it's really loud, and then
Luminous is blowing your ears out. Yeah, this was pretty consistent.
Yep, that's true. It was. I agree with you guys on that.
So this is by far my first patio book. So I'm really coming into this with sort of like
blind eyes and to the whole scene. Um, so yeah. It gets better, I promise.
Well, see, it wasn't bad for me. So, you know, you all, like, kind of like really,
really attacked this book. And, you know, I thought it was, I thought it had some of its flaws,
but I, I really liked the, the general story. I kind of liked some of the, uh, things it went on.
Some of the storyline I got, um, I couldn't, I guess I didn't understand the progression of the
story sometimes. It felt kind of confused and all over the place. Um, and I, one other thing,
that sound effect when he was, I guess the scene, a change of scene, or I really didn't know what
the sound was for because it, it wasn't consistent across the, the chapters in the book.
Is it like a flatter or something? Yeah, he definitely used that for a scene change.
But sometimes he didn't, you know, sometimes it would just be, uh, like, I thought, at first,
I thought it was like a page change, like changing the page. But it sometimes, it was a scene change,
other times it wasn't. And I listened to see if it was consistent. And to me, it wasn't consistent.
Maybe, maybe you all think something different.
What I thought was going on is in a lot of cases, he kind of just let it happen.
And then sometimes he did use the sound effect and other times he used the sound effect to do a,
a time lapse, but keep inside the same area. And I think whenever it came to like, you know,
a time lapse or something like that, you kind of need to say, hey, four hours later.
I'm not even sure that I really noticed it, but I could see what you're saying. And had I,
had I paid quotes or attention, I probably would have noticed it. But that's something that lost
and Bronx has talked about and Klaatu has talked about where if you're going to put sound effects
into a recording, you really have to be consistent with them. Because I found myself getting lost
in what was the meaning of that sound effect because it wasn't consistent. You know, if you're
watching a movie, they can frame the movie and you can see the progression. But in an audio
setting, you know, that sound to me means one thing. And if all of a sudden, like my cell phone,
if I hear a ding and I set that for text messages, I know that's a text message. I don't
expect a ding for when I'm getting a phone call. So for me, that really like kind of took me
off a notch because I didn't expect that sound to be multiple things. You could consider it part
of the story, though. It's supposed to be a little bit disjointed. He's juggling a lot of threads
in the air. He's got a lot of different things going on. So if you're a little bit confused,
the whole nature of the story is that it's a little bit chaotic. You could argue that it's a
stylistic thing. The thing is, I don't think he pulls it off well enough to do it. That's what I was
going to say to join on to that is that the book is too disjointed. It's got too much going on at
any one time. And maybe reading it, it'd be a little different, but hearing it spoken from him
just doesn't work as well. That's my biggest complaint about the book as well. My second biggest
complaint is that not a lot of things in it made sense. He got a lot of stuff like factually wrong
along the way. But the fact that there were so many threads that had nothing to do with one
another, they just kind of interacted just because of the characters in it, but they didn't have
anything to do with each other. That kind of frustrated me a little. It kind of reminded me of lost,
you know, the TV series where things would appear and then disappear and you'd wonder what the heck
happened with that. And then I guess that sort of progression of just a random series of events
that culminated into nothing. Not only that, but then also just like lost to be like, hey random
rules change. They present something as this is what's happening, this is how this works,
and then all of a sudden it doesn't work like that anymore. That really throws you off,
especially when there's no explanation as to why. I don't need specifics, but I'll have to wait
till after the beverage thing. The one thing that really bothered me was that several extraneous
characters, like the first character he introduces, he doesn't play any part in the story, he's just kind
of there. They bring them up in the middle and it's like, oh, at the end, we'll do this cute little
wrap up where nothing changes. Well, he did use them to introduce the axe murderer and he is the
same zombie who led the girl out later. But yeah, I don't know. I've said enough good things about
this. I'm ready to drink. You know, it's an amazing audiobook review, you know, 12 minutes in
an already drinking. What are you drinking? Well, in honor of the book, Malward.
Okay, please explain this to the people who don't understand it. Well, give me a second here.
Somebody else going and I'll read from the bottom. Okay, so I have a pumpkin ale. I don't know
for drinking beer, but I have a pumpkin ale. How do you like it? What's it like?
So I'm not a beer like snooty person. I usually try to drink like a lot of craft brews. I like it.
It's, it has an interesting taste. It's actually like, I have a, what's dogfish head brewery.
I have one of their pumpkin brews as well. Well, one thing that got me was, so I got like a
four pack. It was like seven or eight dollars for a four pack of beer from the dogfish head brewery.
I thought that was pretty good. I'm always afraid to buy a four pack of beer when it's the same price
as a six pack. Yeah, but but people had told me they're like, oh, you got to try it. And I'm like,
it's so expensive. They're like, hey, it's worth it. It's so good. It's so awesome. So, uh, yeah,
that's why I bought it. I would do that if someone said it was that good. Then I would definitely
do it. It's, uh, can you taste pumpkin in it? You know, I really can't taste as much pumpkin as I
thought I would taste. Um, it doesn't have like a pumpkin-y taste. It's, uh, something slightly
different, but it doesn't taste like pumpkin at me. Like if I open up a pumpkin, it doesn't taste
like that. It's not as pumpkin-y as I expected, I guess. Huh, that's cool. I, I've had pumpkin coffees
and the more pumpkin-y those are, the more I seem to like them, even though I typically don't like
flavored coffee, but I haven't had a pumpkin beer yet. I think I'd like to try it.
A pumpkin coffee? Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, pumpkin coffee's awesome.
Well, I guess that leaves me and Mr. Mute. So, uh, I'm drinking, well, the only stuff in the house,
I've got, Sanbuka. So, I think I'm going to go with the black today. Oh, Sanbuka's delicious. How do you
like that? Um, it's a little sweet actually. It's kind of more of a dessert liquor for me, but, um,
since it's the only thing in the house, uh, I like strong liquors flavor. Hopefully it'll get me
wasted enough that I won't actually remember how bad this book is. I'm a real fan of Sanbuka. I
like it. Blacker white is fine. I don't really notice the difference between the two, but in coffee,
I love it. An ice coffee. All right, let me read this from the label here. Most first-time drinkers
of gypsum malware project our liquor. It's strong, sharp taste is not for everyone. Our liquor is
rugged and unruelenting, even brutal to the palate. During almost 60 years of American distribution,
we found only one in 49 men will drink gypsum malware. During the lifetime of our founder,
Carl Gypsum was apt to say, my malware is produced for that unique group of drinkers who
disdain light, flavor, or neutral spirits. Those are pretty bold statements there. Yeah, pretty much.
Was it a flicker group or a, it was flicker group, right? Yeah, there's a flicker group for it,
and they have the malware at face. It's people who try a malware for the first time,
and they take a picture of them, and they put their face up there, and it's hilarious.
Everyone should check out the malware face flicker group. It's amazing.
So in short, malware does not taste good. Is that correct?
I would compare malware, or actually, let me, let me rephrase this. I used to compare malware
to being in a car wreck, and having pretty much your entire family slain, and then a tire being
stuck inside your mouth, and that's the entire feeling of malware. However, now I would probably
compare it more to being in that same car wreck, and this audiobook being stuck on the radio instead.
That's rough, dude. How do you spell it? Because all I'm getting is malware. Am I not hearing the
pronunciation correctly? M-A-L-O-R-T.
I've got a seasonal beer tonight. I've got a long trail, and it's harvest is what it's called,
and it's a brown ale, and it's, it's good, but it's not that good. I'm not, I'm not real thrilled
with it. It's, it says it's brewed with maple syrup, which is appropriate, because the long
trail brewery is in, is in Vermont, and that's, that's one of their big exports over there. And I
usually like the long trails. I like their double bag is, is pretty good in flavor, and long trail will
put you on your ass pretty fast if you're not careful. It's, it does go straight to your head,
but this one is kind of a, it's almost a sudsy feeling in the mouth, but it's not a sudsy beer. It
doesn't bubble a whole lot. You, it's got a really thick head when you pour it, but it hasn't got
much carbonation after that, and it's very dark, which I'm usually very fond of, but it, it's got
such a light flavor to it. I don't know, it's just not what I was expecting. How's the head retention
on that? I don't know, I haven't said, let it sit long enough to see how the head, you know,
dissolves, but there's still a little bit left in them about halfway down. Okay, that's pretty decent
I bet if you take a shot onto it, it lasts longer, some of the zombies in this book.
Okay, my first complaint about this book is the title. Hold on, hold on, let me, let me
regge your first second here. We've now entered the spoiler zone. If anybody, after having heard
the first part of this review, is still planning on listening to the book, you want to quit it now,
but since I don't think that there's anybody there in that category, we're just going to go.
I did not like the title of this book, handbook for the criminally insane. There was nobody in this
book who was actually criminally insane. Everyone who was... What about the axe murderer? He was possessed,
he was demon possessed. He was a bit part that was barely in the book. The chapter names were all
based on, you know, different things about the criminally insane or something that you would expect
it to be, but they didn't describe the chapters at all. No, they didn't at all, and they had like a
that kind of 1920sish music going and the guy would say, choosing a victim, and then they wouldn't
choose a victim, it didn't have anything to do with it. Well, then they kind of choose the innocent.
That way, there wasn't a choice. It's sort of like, yeah, we need somebody who's innocent. Well,
there's exactly one person in this entire town. But wait, all of a sudden, there's three.
And she's just the person who just moved in. It's a good thing she moved in here because we
didn't have any last week. Maybe it's a most innocent thing. Whoever the most innocent person in
town is, that's who they have to go with. Well, she had the location though that the other people
didn't. She was, she was right across the street. So maybe that was the the added benefit. That was
another thing that I disliked about the book. She didn't have the location because the location was
only good if the zombies had to lure her into the graveyard. But the mayor was demon possessed.
The police chief was in on it. The deputies were all in it. They could have just arrested her at
any time and walked her over to the damn graveyard. What the hell were the zombies for?
Maybe it was that she had to come over over her own accord or something. They kept trying to lure her.
Maybe it was the fact that none of the zombies of the demon possessed could actually go in the house
because it was protected by the ghost. So it could have been that that they just couldn't go in.
Yeah, but I'm saying, you know, she went to the police station. She was in the police chief's office.
All he had to do is just to arrest her. Slap a couple cups on her and chunk her in the graveyard.
But then that ruins the story. You know, what's the storyline if you just, you know, this is the
problem you ran into a lot of movies. You know, if you say, well, you could just cut this whole thing
and if you just did this one action, you don't have a storyline. Well, is it a storyline worth having?
That's a very good question. I mean, my wife watches movies where I'm like, well, if you just cut
that part out, this movie would be over already. And so I guess you asked the question, you know,
I guess it's a worth having. I didn't see the zombies as worth having. They were there just to be
zombies. They served no purpose in the underworld. They served no purpose in the overworld.
I don't know why they were there other than zombies. I think the only two internet
clicks of this guy missed pirates and ninjas. He hit everything else in this book. He's got robots.
He's got zombies. He's got aliens. He's got freaking demons. He's got robots. Exactly. It's all over
the place and discordant to boot. Had he tied them together any better, it probably might have
helped to make some sense, but it just didn't make sense the way that it was. Like everything that
was in there was like a convenience. It was really convenient for him to have a robot superhero,
you know, and it was really convenient for him to have a ghost that could scare away all the zombies
and all the monsters and every other thing. I'm not sure where he, what he was trying to do with it.
I have this thing where I can really suspend my disbelief. Like, you know how a good story is
always supposed to be the willful suspension disbelief. So I was like, yeah, this is a pretty good
story. I mean, there's some good pacing. I mean, there was that. If you ignored all the various
plot holes, it's like, yeah, there was some good pacing. There's some suspense and there was
that whole point where they introduced that one guy who goes off in his own and he's like, yeah,
I found the robot that was stolen. And it's like, yeah, for a quick second, you actually worry that
he's going to succeed, but you know that the whole plot depends on him getting eaten and that whole
plot device is neatly tied up. It was sort of like, yeah, that could have been expanded some more.
They introduced that character to have the robot shut down for five whole minutes worth of
story time. Five minutes. There were 14 chapters in the book and he showed up in 13. Exactly.
Another character that could have completely been thrown away from this book and it would have
had no problems. And he had the same effect as like a secret super weapon does in a science fiction
book. Wait, so he's using my absolute favorite form of literary device here. Is that what you're
saying? Could that be why he had this character? It seems to me that yes, he was there just for you.
Do you not like the secret super weapon? Deus Ex is my least favorite of all literary devices.
It's such a calm. There's better ways to do it always.
If he were an interesting character, he would have shown up in chapter one or chapter two.
And he'd have been hunting the whole time. And if people are familiar with with
audio books, like think of a JC Hutchins character where the guys just struggling and struggling
and struggling at something the whole time. And finally, he has a timely breakthrough. I mean,
that's understandable. But this guy just showed up and was like, ah, I have found her.
The FBI couldn't find her. The other people couldn't find her. But I'm the one who found her.
And with these three switches, I'm going to deactivate her. Well, she is a badass.
I will say the one thing that I really thought was kind of cool was the one conversation between
the two women. I found it to be like really, I could see, I could really picture that whole
conversation going on. And when it happened, it was kind of, I don't know, kind of cordial to me.
I really like cordial. Is that the right word? I thought it was kind of cool how they did that.
The conversation, at least the conversation between them. It kind of made it more realistic.
And that sends to me. That's my positive comment. Wow. Those conversations pulled me out of the
story every time they happened. Because all I could think of when I heard those two chatting was,
doesn't this chick work? How can she afford to buy a house out in the middle of nowhere and just not work?
Well, that's breaking with the storyline. It needed to be explained. It really did. It's like,
okay, yeah, she just buys a house out in the country. Well, what's she going to do?
Don't you understand the reason that she bought the house out in the country is so she could be part
of this story? And it's not like I'm asking a question that wasn't asked. She asked, Betty,
don't you work? So, you know, it came up. This is not just me being picky. She asked, Betty,
do you have a job? What do you do for work? And Betty's, oh, I'm independently wealthy. But then
this girl just never, not once, does it come into into the story, what she did for work,
what she plans to do for work? Does she have money of her own? You know, if the author's going to
have the character ask that, he's got to answer it for her. Otherwise, it flattens the character
out. You're exactly right, Pokey. And the big thing I was like was, well, yeah, this,
this chick's a little bit like, you know, even like sponging off the alimony chick,
and you know, perfectly explainable. And relatable? Well, only to some of us. I didn't actually
mean it in that way, Pokey. No, I know you didn't, but I mean, whereas the question was never asked,
it took me right out of the story. Every time they talked, I'm going, when is she going to go to work,
when is she going to find a job? But had she said, I'm sponging off my ex, I've got an alimony
settlement, I've got this set. Okay, you can relate to that. And I didn't mean personally,
I mean, as a character, you're okay now, I can relate with that character, now I'm interested
in what happens to her. Really, that's amazing. I say, oh, you're probably rooting for a death.
I know I would, considering, Pokey just suggested, however, that's a little different.
I didn't really root for anything in this book. I just rooted for the chapters to be shorter.
I actually liked them long because that means I had to drag, you know, another file and just
sell it in a little less often. So in comparison to other audio books, is this
where the episodes are tapped, are they generally more chapters or the chapters usually longer?
It really depends on the author. In my opinion, I wouldn't look at it as chapters, look at the
thing from, you know, start to end because you can pause a audio book at any time.
Yep, as long as you have an MP3 player that can resume, you can stop it in the middle of an
episode and walk away. And if you don't, click on one. Make, for example, Shadow Magic,
they ended, he ended every chapter of the cliffhanger. So the idea that when we were getting this
original, it was serialized, it was like, man, I can't wait for the next episode. This time,
it was just like, you know, I'm not really excited to read the next chapter. I'm just kind of
doing it for this, you know, review. That's exactly why I listened to it. I listened to it the day
after we recorded the last book club. And I listened to it all in one day because I just couldn't
wait for it to be over and I didn't want to do it the more days. But then everybody took so long
to listen to it. I had to listen again so I could remember because I forgot about it.
I blame Dan. You will know it is not even here. Yeah, exactly.
I'll take the blame for it because I started right in that very next day talking about how bad
the book was. That's my fault. At the end, it's all for picking it, but my fault for turning
everybody else off. Well, I was turned off by the title. I won't lie. Um, little that I know,
the title is actually the part of this book. Oh, to be honest with you, I'd rather listen to
Carrot Top, do a 12 hour audio book on prop comedy than listen to this book again.
The cover didn't draw me any there. Definitely not. I have to tell you though,
the guitar riff that opened up the story was awesome. I loved it. I danced to it every time I came on.
You and your guitar riff. I got a little tired of it. It was really well done, but it's not my
kind of music. So I just didn't do anything for me. Did you like the more classical tune that followed
the one where he told you the title, the chapter of the book? Yeah, that one was actually better,
but see that the book itself had a very clockwork orange effect on me. So while I'm listening
to beautiful music, at the same time, I know I'm going to start throwing up any moment now.
Was your head going to spin around and you start projectile vomiting?
No, that's, that's a different movie. That's another thing too, is a lot of what actually happened
in the book. I didn't want to hear about, you know, I didn't want to hear about them digging up
some little kid and folding the corpse up. And I just, I got to that part in particular,
and was like, you know, this is not what I want to hear. The robot sex was hard for me.
It was all pretty descriptive where it just didn't need to be. In fact, I'd say it was ruthlessly
descriptive. I appreciated that. I think he was going for that in like a genre sense. He was going
for the, the gore and the gruesomeness. And I can understand that, but, and I can even accept it
in certain cases, but the stuff that he talked about, I just, I just, yeah, didn't want to hear it.
Yeah, I very often found myself tuning part of the book out or removing my headphones,
till he stopped talking about somebody's guts or whatever, especially in the zombie scenes.
Like the cop being handcuffed naked to the goat, that was pretty funny though.
That was actually, I thought that was funny. And I thought a lot of the zombie scenes were actually
funny. Had, had he made a comedy about zombies, I'd be all in. Resna, what did you think of his
descriptiveness and, and gore and all that? We bothered by it, turned on by it, whatever.
I thought it was pretty good. So as I said, this is my first patio book. So I thought, I thought
his descriptiveness was enough to help paint the scene. I tried to listen as much as I could,
and there was no part where I said, I'm just going to turn it down and walk away. I listened
as thoroughly as possible. Oh, you know, the other thing, the one thing that kind of,
that I was actually making notes, because I said, okay, I want to make sure I cover these points
during the talk. The one thing that kind of took me off was all the cliches. And so one he said,
in life there are like drivers and writers, be a driver or something, you know, like from the
Volkswagen commercial. Yeah, and he kept switching them from life to death, because they were
always zombies doing it. Yeah, I hated those pop culture references. I mean, I got the point.
I mean, the guy was supposed to be like this really annoying, like motivational speaker. It's like,
yeah, you have nailed it. Can we move on? I think part of this has to deal with author himself.
At a certain point, whenever he's talking about the little demon dog and it's changing shapes and
stuff like that, he literally says that the dog changes shape into a lion and then a tiger and
then a grizzly bear. And nowhere within his deck sentences did he say, oh my, it wasn't there.
The opportunity was there. He wrote it into the book and then he completely ignored it.
And the cliches didn't end with the the ad guy, the motivational speaker guy either. They were all
through the book. At one point, someone was naked as the day they were born. I specifically
remember, and there was all kinds of stuff like that. So look at that, that bug,
those constant references. I mean, if you make one, that's fine, but all throughout the book,
I just, I got tired. I did get tired of hearing that because it kind of lost his originality
and his vision, I guess, of the book. So yeah. Dan, what did you think of the cliches?
I was not overly put off by the cliches I must admit. I did not detract me from enjoying
any chapters of this book. Did you enjoy any chapters of the book? I enjoyed every single chapter
of the book. To me, it was like listening to a really fun B movie, but you are by definition
saying that it is a lesser, a lesser book. Right. I do not imply that it is a lesser book. I just
said to me, it was like listening to a B, like a B horror movie, like watching a B horror movie.
And I'm not saying I love B horror movies. I don't think it was badly written, but I mean,
it's, it's not any, it's not Hawthorne. I definitely got in my mind's eye. I was like,
yeah, I'm painting a scene as he's describing it. You know, I had a lot of paint to work with
because he was very descriptive as we've heard before. And we were sort of like, yeah, this comes
off as a B horror movie. There's lots of like little jumps in the plot and there's lots of
little contrivances. It's a little cheesy and you're getting the limber territory towards the end
of it with all the clichés. But that's what I got out of it. It was definitely trying to be like a B
horror movie. Yeah, I mean, I guess when I started listening to it and I was like, I was captured
by the talking zombies, you know, communicating with one another, seeing stuff from a zombie's
perspective, you know, usually get a lot of that. And then, you know, it kind of went over to
deep in with the robotic, um, bionic woman, um, and, you know, the demonic Chihuahua and everything.
It was just, it got crazy, but I thought he pulled it together pretty well.
Dan, I want to know what you thought about the zombie speak and the zombie translation.
I enjoy, I guess kind of enjoyed the fact that the zombies could communicate with one another.
It provided a human element to the zombies. And they were quite, I thought a lot of them were
comical. Was it Tom? Every time I heard Tom, I kept thinking of, um, guarding your brains by
Jonathan Colton. You know, that's every time I heard him speak or they reference his name,
I kept thinking of that song. But, uh, I was not thrown at all by the zombie speak.
I didn't mean their dialogue though. I meant their speech, their, their,
their, uh, which translates to, I guess it kind of took a little bit away from it. I don't
know, it's the whole thing when she was walking, um, with, um, whoa, what's the red hair
chick's name? Was it Sue? Help me somebody. I think it was Sue. I think we'll just go with that name.
I, Susette, Suzanne, I think it was Suzanne. And character was Monica. Monica was a main character.
Monica. Yeah, and Suzanne, I think was her friend, the red hair, the kid now, that whole thing,
like, if I was Tom the zombie, I would have killed her right off the back because she was just
annoying. I had no redeeming value whatsoever. And how she could be the one, I don't know, but, um,
how she could be the quote, innocent. I don't know. I really miss a lot of room for the blonde,
the brunette and the red head walking to, you know, X jokes, you know, but I'm totally missed that
opportunity. He had an effect of Charlie's angels. So, you know, I don't know. Yeah, the zombie talk,
enjoy being able to, you know, get a little insight into seeing what they were saying. I
got to dumb without the blurring and the blurring. What the hell? That's translates to, I hate
at this book. How could you hate before? You was that bad. No, no, it wasn't that bad. I will say
that the translations, I like the perspective of being able to hear what they're saying and what's
going on with them. But for me, I think just that extra step of blah, blah, blah, okay, that
translated to, hello, how are you doing? Um, it kind of, I guess, slowed it down a little bit
and slowed down the progress of it somewhat. Yeah, this boy, he could have just stopped doing it
after chapter one and it would have been fine. You're right. He could have just stopped the book
after chapter one and it would have been fine. Oh, that's terrible. You know, I really, I thought
the zombies were hilarious through a lot of this. There are little antics to get her to come out of
out of the house. And the whole concept of them just not being mindless, I'm going to chase you
down and eat your brains type thing. But when she came out with shotgun, they took off.
But half of them were completely mindless. Literally, they didn't have minds in their heads.
Yeah, they'd been blown out or torn out or whatever. Rotted out.
They still had enough sense to get the hell out of there when danger came around.
I didn't like the whole like practice. Oh, yeah, we just kind of screwed up the ritual.
Like that was kind of just silly. The fact that like Tom was the only one that kept his free will
or whatever. I don't want to do this. I'll help you. But what I actually do is completely useless.
That was the one thing I didn't mind. Wow, people are all over the place with this book.
Yes, there's lots to find fault. Yeah, how about the part where, you know, the scientist that
eat the mad scientist, of course, steals the robot and the thing controlling it. And the hardest
part about it was getting the emotions to work, but he just did that. No, the hardest part was
lo and the damn thing on the pillar. I mean, he was talking about like this control unit's huge.
It's like, how do you find underground and not get noticed? Now, whole thing, we're the
attractive down that guy that I thought that was kind of point was that I could have done without
him going down, finding the barn, earning off the supply, having a hole, trying to
get suspense, biting her shut down. Yeah, we covered that earlier and we pretty much had
the same opinion as you. I mean, the thing that really bothered me was the dude is such a great
programmer, he had his security can be broken by a 10 year old. Just type over ride Rome,
don't you know that trick? Don't forget, he did have several backup batteries. Those were
there for protection. How many people in the room right now have ever had a backup battery last
longer than two, three, four years? Not me. Fuck you, the last six months. Yeah, those were 10
year old batteries. I haven't had a pair of double A's last that long that I didn't use.
I was going to say maybe if you turned on the intensity on your personal massage.
Those are your snee batteries. Also, you do know. I will say listening to Pokey and I think
integral playing so much about this book on IRC before I even started it. I came in with like,
this is going to be horrible, but I was surprised at bad. So what you're saying is that
our complaining made this book better? I don't know. I don't know. The way you guys were coming off
and saying it was terrible, it was so hard to get into a drag. I didn't get that at all when I
started listening to it. He appreciated the positive points. Is that why you didn't like the
Lunessa music last time? I will stand by the fact that when the book three comes out, I will not
enjoy the Lunessa music. Lunessa, whatever they are. I just hope you text me in themes.
You know, that would probably go a long way. And that's probably one of the things that I
noticed about this book too. The transitional music or whatever in there, very quick. And it wasn't
as I thought imposing and repetitive and as Lunessa got. Had he chosen different songs or
something in between maybe books, I might have not own the disgust. That is Lunessa.
Yeah, we complained about the flatter, especially between scenes a little earlier. The biggest
complaint we had was it wasn't consistent. Did you find that at all, Dan? Which wasn't consistent?
A little brown. Yeah, I saw that. I should say I heard that. Sorry. It became a device to do
whatever he wanted to do, whether that be a scene change or a couple minutes later or whatever
he thought he should do at this particular moment in time. I will kind of also say, you were talking
about, I heard you talking about the Chihuahua changing into the lion, the tiger and the bear on my.
I was a little like disappointed in that because you got these zombies running around and you got
these like really imposing demons running around. And what is the main bad guy turned into a giant
bear and a shark and then then at one time he turned into Griffin. All I can say is the shark
did not have freaking laser beams. Pew, pew. That would have been awesome. So when he did turn into
the shark, Dan, were you absolutely terrified? Were you on your inflatable kayak when you heard that
part of this? No, but I'm glad I wasn't because I would have been shaking it my shoes.
No, I've read most of the or I listen to most of this I can do in yard work. And was it better
than yard work? Very a whole lot better than yard work. You must have a big yard, Dan. I don't
know. When the guy when either the demon turned like the third form, it's just like come on and
this fight already. I could have had a little more death in this. Like everybody survived at the
end and it was all good. Well, for various values to survive, didn't Tom meet a max again?
Who didn't get an axe? This book budget? Did anybody else find it also annoyed? You know, a lot of
the technical things annoyed me and not just like, you know, oh, I know more about computers than
the author of this book, but like other technical things where, you know, Betty is underground,
but yet her radio still works. You know, she's they're 60 feet down under dirt and water and
stone, but she's receiving just fine. And then her walkie talkie breaks, but she doesn't have it
built in that she can listen to the walkie talkie. She's got a built in that she can pick up TV
channels. That's a good point. Probably licensing rules. Didn't they specifically say that she
uses short wave radio? She talked to the satellite via AM. A lot of AM is, you know, you can do AM
with walkie talkie. Yeah. Yeah, but she just said she could she could just close her eyes and watch
television. But she can't pick up a walkie talkie. That's a good point. Wow, that's a huge hole.
Yeah, there was a lot of that stuff at the beginning before you were made aware that she was a robot
that, you know, she she talked about stuff like that, like the purish she'd never been outside
the perimeter. And she can pick up television just by closing her eyes and like silly things like
that that were, I don't know if they were meant to be hints, but they didn't really come across as
hints to me. The perimeter is something I brought it with an integral. We were talking when
I said, what's so deal about the perimeter? And this was before I had I think he had finished it
and I was still trying to progress through the through the book. And he said, oh, it doesn't mean
anything. I think it's one of those things that they dropped later on. But it really came back to
be something about, you know, the her being a robot and whatnot. But on a side note, listening to
if someone just listened to excerpts of this whole conversation, it's really kind of funny because
you're like the dog that turned into the Griffin and all this stuff. And it's like, wow, this story
is really all over the place. That's what it felt like listening to it. Like I said,
is it every single genre? It's a pirate ninja. I'm going to paraphrase something I heard on
another podcast, but I don't know if you guys ever listened to Geek Knights, but the guy on their
rim, someone apparently once said to him, I think you tried to do too much with that. And I thought
that about this book all over the place. I would agree with that. I would, uh,
that's a tough one. Part of me was like, all right, I'm in, I bought it all,
listening to it. I took the package home. Okay, I got it. Another part of me kind of agrees
with you on that that there was just a whole lot of so much stuff thrown in here.
That I wonder had gotten rid of the, you know, the robotic heroine or supernatural if
the direction that story could have taken. No, I think if he had gotten rid of the heroine,
he wouldn't have had a story anymore. No, the robot, you think if he didn't have the robotic
heroine, there would be no story. Oh, I thought you meant like actual heroine.
Well, that's one thing that wasn't this, there wasn't no drug use in this book. Was there?
No, there was no drug use, just like there was no insanity. Well, there was insanity
because, uh, the axe dude and the guy who wrote the journal went insane. They were possessed
weren't insane. All right, because the axe murder dude, he was exercised. He became a good guy
again, just like the zombie became a good guy again. Well, the whole point is he was a good guy for
like exactly what one chapter. Wait, so you're saying that most of the characters in this book were
there the entire time to do something in one chapter? Yeah, do you die like the next chapter?
He was basically a giant Deus Ex Machina. Oh, I did something really bad. The, the, what was
it? The shaman woman? She was there for one chapter just to reverse him and then he came back
and he did something and he sacrificed himself. So somebody could get into a better position
and that was the end of his whole story. Yeah, Dan, I want to ask you something too and we
talked about this before you got here, but you said you bought the whole book. So,
what did you think about the fact that the zombies couldn't get to the house and couldn't
capture her, but the entire evil side of this depended on the fact that she needed to be captured
and brought into the cemetery, but all of the people that were on the bad guy's side other than
the zombies, you know, the sheriff and the mayor and all the deputies. They could have just
grabbed her at any time and just brought her over there. Well, I kind of got the impression that
there was a little middle management going on in this whole thing and not the left hand wasn't
talking to the right hand into all this and that the whole concept of finding the innocent
sacrifice was left to the job of the zombies and everybody else was more worried about getting
the mayor reelected or something, but I do see what you're saying because it almost, right,
it does and it does feel like precisely the left hand was not talking to the right hand.
My favorite character in the whole book was the hamster because he was the most believable.
And it was sad when he died too. I thought it was funny when he died. It was one of the only parts
I laughed at. God, killed God. Oh my god. Resident, do you have a favorite character because you
liked the book? I didn't, I don't know. I liked the, I think my favorite thing was just the conversation
between Betty and Monica. I guess I kind of, I think I liked, was Betty was the robot?
Yeah, Betty was the robot. Yeah, I think I liked Betty. I think I liked Betty. I think Monica had
some some redeeming qualities, but I guess I kind of, I like both of these characters. I just like
the conversation that felt believable. That was pretty much the only thing that I thought was like
really spot on. You liked the girl talk? I like the girl talk. What about Dylan Stallone run there
again? He's like running from the, you know, we're going to have to swim away from this gigantic
explosion. Nobody might die. He's like, yeah, Dylan's not going to die. And he was more interesting
than a lot of the other characters. He's just like, oh yeah, I'm just paranormal activity
searching. He's like, yeah, you can imagine this could be driving around a little van looking for
ghosts. That was actually kind of entertaining. You know, it was. And I think he, he brought
something interesting to the storyline, especially I thought was kind of cool. He was walking around
with the equipment figuring out where the ghosts were downstairs in the basement. No, I thought
that was kind of cool. And I could kind of believe that being like a paranormal activity type of
thing, you know, really down there and searching all out. The first time I listened to this book,
the download for chapter six got corrupted. And I didn't realize it. So it skipped from chapter
five to chapter seven. And the only thing I missed was who the hell are these two people with the,
the, you know, chasing ghosts? And where did this notebook come from? And when I went back and
relistened to chapter six, the whole rest of that chapter was so completely useless and frustrating.
And it's only purpose was here's these two people and they have a notebook.
What, what you're saying there is this you could throw entire chapters of this book out and it
wouldn't even make a difference. It'd be just as using and just as crazy. It didn't make any
difference. I literally threw out chapter six unknowingly and I missed nothing. It was the ghost
hunting chapter where they looked through the house and just nothing happened in that chapter.
I'll agree with that. It was really just to introduce the characters. Those are some fighting
words right there. If anyone listening is friends with Brian Holtz, the author, please don't
tell him about this yet. No, please do. So he can never write another book and save my years for
the rest of eternity. Oh, man, you guys are just lame and on a too hard. I enjoyed it. I would read
another one a, listen to another one is not me. You're in luck, Dan. He's got more. Oh, I know he
does. Dan, I think the only reason that you find him interesting is because you came into the
mindset that it was a B, it's a B list book and if you come into with the expectation that it's
supposed to be a list, then it doesn't match that. If you, by definition, say it's a B list,
then you're fine with it and it's a perfectly good book. But if you think that this should be a
book that should hold up to the test of time, then I think we all basically agree that it's not
an A list book. It's a B list book or C or D or whatever else you want to call it.
You know, the only reason Dan liked this book is because he likes dola. That's not true. I like
zombies. A good B list movie. When Dan was talking about that makes me think of like Sean of the
dead. This was no Sean of the dead. I can see this being made into a movie with Bruce Campbell in it.
No, Bruce Campbell wouldn't play this talk. Bruce Campbell would kill himself first.
Oh, come on. It was not that bad. Integral, didn't you see Baba Hotepp? He would totally do this.
I saw Baba Hotepp. I enjoyed Baba Hotepp. That at least had some interesting factors to it,
some story coherency, even if the plot was ridiculous. It had some intelligence in there.
This just maybe the handbook for the criminally insane was what he used to write this book.
Maybe I kept having the feeling. I kept having the thought that at the beginning of the chapters
when that like music came on and the old sounding recording happened. It made me think that he
found that those recordings before writing the book and he just tried to match up to what those
were because they'd be fun to have in an audiobook. Those were my favorite parts of the book actually.
They were really good. I kept hoping it would go deeper into that.
I just now went to Portio Books just to look at the reviews and amazingly the reviews seem
to be pretty high. Almost five out of five stars or at least four and a half stars.
Yeah, we've said that before that you just can't trust the star reviews on Portio Books.
You just can't trust star reviews period.
I would give this book a three. I enjoyed it. Maybe not a five.
I'd give it a three out of seven. It had some redeeming of all these but it wasn't really great out of par.
I'd give it a two and a half or a three and you know I agree with you Dan it was that good
but there's so many better audiobooks available on Portio Books and on Libravox that a two or a three
in my opinion isn't worth my time. I would say I'd give it a three. I like some of those things
that I liked about it and I guess the sport stands with me. I would give this book a two
out of all the numbers in the universe that are positive and real.
Ouch. Boy, I thought brome was harsh. You said that you don't see this book standing up to
the test of time. Do you see shadow magic standing up test of time?
In comparison yes by far. I've listened to shadow magic probably seven times and I've enjoyed it
every time. That's six more times than I have. Only seven? Well you know Luna said it was kind of
great on you. I mean look shadow magic was a book even with some of the pronunciation
errors like that and glaring. John Lennon knows how to pace and it's how a story he's a career
magician. Brian Holtz knows how to do a good audio recording at least that's the summation I've
been getting here. His book is just not very coherent and it drives us nuts. It makes me think that
if he had given it to somebody to proofread first who would be harsh you know with him and honest
with him and maybe not as harsh as we've been but someone who would be honest he probably could have
fixed it up because there were several storylines there that he could have gone with.
Several storylines for several different books if that you know or continuation of a book you know
they could have had these characters that they had and built up into several books that's
precisely what I mean. Wait a second maybe he wrote you know 14 different books but they were
also short so he just shoved them all together at the one. No I might have it like you know there's
a certain amount of archetypes of stories and one of them is like heroes journey and you see it
everywhere. I did not see any element of heroes during there was no growth of Monica there was
some growth of Betty that was us discovering Betty it had nothing to do with you know everything
was already there it was like oh yeah I did this and then and then this happened oh and I'm really
like this and then I read my dead husband and she cried a robot cried. Hey he was a good
emotion programmer remember it's hard doesn't mean she has tear ducts. So I'm reading here I'm kind
of looking over some of the website and seeing if there's any other details the gleam it said it's
a funny yet dark tale do you all think it was funny in the least. I said I found the zombie
humorous there were funny parts and it was intended to be humorous so yes I believe that's an
accurate description. I found a lot of the cup it seems as I said like the cup getting handcuffed
to the goat naked that was hilarious I left out loud when I heard that and other things that were
pretty funny a lot of the come up but just someone was just like come on. Yeah the the copy and
handcuffed to the goat was a humorous thing and it was funny to picture but the goat was so
convenient and I really hate convenience in a in a story that it who's still getting over
they're trying to get over that when the humor came around and missed me. That's why you hated
this story because like everything was convenient. Some convenience is okay you're allowed to have
like oh hey there's this thing here that you know we wrote in and you know I saw it is like oh
what can we do to those comments absolutely oh oh there's a goat here we can just hand
cuff and naked to the goat that'll be perfect. You know we talked earlier about the secret weapon
that destroys everything like in the sci-fi movies you know they got this perfect weapon that can
destroy everything with one click those kind of conveniences I dislike because I think it ruins
the whole plot line of the story. Yeah and that's what you had here with the goat. Had the author
decided that it would be really really funny to push the guy out of a plane there would have
conveniently been a plane in the field or he could have fallen into pig's line that would have
conveniently been pigs you know whatever it was he just keep threw it in there just for the punchline
you know. For example the guy hated manure he would have driven his old Chevy into a truck that
poured manure all over him. I hate you McFly. Oh my god man tough crowd. I'm glad you guys
are doing local recordings because I know there's laughter there trying to make you know work now
you're gonna have tons of mumbling as well like what the heck what what I'm talking about now.
So yeah I've said about all I have to say. So do I involve the book that I've decided now
or is it some day in the future or what? I'm excited yeah you but I that's the only reason why I'm
on here tonight. To hear my book suggestion? Yes yeah we've been waiting for this. I thought you
liked us. I did. I like doing these things for us. I do and I'm excited to do another one.
So I'm in between two books and I don't know which way to go. So say one or two and that's
how I decide. Seven. Okay the book the book is called Dead Hunt by Ken Crawford. And this is
one we can get for free somewhere right like audio books. Yes it's on audio books. Correct sir
it is on audio books. That that dead hunt or dead with the C word. H word. Oh H word okay.
You guys know it's not that you know like he's coming from killing up and I was
that would have been something in the book we just read. Not something in the next one.
17 chapters of goodness huh. Have you started listening to this already?
I listened to the first chapter and that's where I stopped. I listened to about maybe about 10
minutes of the first chapter. Wow that is one creepy book cover. It really is. So according to
to the audio books description here, Dead Hunt is Ken Crawford's chilling tale of a desperate
father's undying love. A daughter frozen in time and the small group of teens trapped in the
aftermath. If it's as good as the cover looks, I'm not going to like it because I don't like horror.
But it's I'm interested in it and I'm definitely going to enjoy it but I'm not going to like
enjoying it. I can I can predict that already. You're going to enjoy it but you're not going to like
do that's creepy. Yeah I just I don't like horror a whole lot and this is going to like keep me
up at night. Okay this that one is is horror slash dark something. Supposedly handbook for the
cramely insane is humor. Supposedly. Hey Rezno you said you liked the conversation in this book a
lot and that the conversation was really believable and good and you enjoyed that and if you
enjoyed that in a book, there is a audio book that I think you would really really like a lot
and you should check out when you're done with of course Dead Hunt. You should check out
Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell. If if it's the conversation and the realism of the book you liked,
you're going to go insane over that. Really insane wow that's that's a bold words.
Daniel backed me up on that he's read them. I read the first one and it was really good.
Wait this is a sequel? No it's not a sequel there's there's sorry Quarter Share is the first of
like five or six books and they're all just very good. Okay well I can see like Dan would like this
next upcoming title. I mean Ken Crawford spells his name with two ends. Double N Ken.
Ken double N. Dan just was to pipe up with something there. Anything. To busy looking at her face
can't tell if it's a little girl or a heroine addict. Does it matter? Not at this point. They're
all heroine addicts in the end aren't they? Only in Brian Holtz's view. Watch she's going to turn
out to be a robot too. You just wait. I'll quit. As long as you don't have a catchphrase like
well I am about us. Let's hope the one liners are down to a minimum.
I can that little girl on the cover that book I can picture my little girls like dressing up
like that just to make the silly face and just having a blast with it. Totally hope that it was
like a family project. I know there are multiple voices in it so let's hope I was hoping that
that would bring something a little bit different to the scene. You mean somebody did voices better
than in this one or there's different actors doing the voices? There are different actors. So
let me whenever this thing pops up again I'll tell you with the other what I was up the other
choice but I listened to this one and it had multiple people in there and I thought that might
if there was multiple people maybe that might bring it something different I guess. Just looking
through the chapter list I don't thought of the author narrating anything in here or performing in
this at all. I think he does the prologue but then kind of like hands it away to some of the people
to do all the rest of the acting. Yeah the official website actually has like some bonus episodes
on it where they have like audio comments for the cast of Dead Hunt and there's like six people,
eight people. I really enjoy audiobooks with like a full cast those like a full cast audiobook
those are really good. I think I like them even more than I like audio dramas. You see that you
put some thought into picking something here not like mine I just chose randomly popped up.
Oh we know you just chose randomly.
It took me maybe five, ten minutes but I put a little bit of thought so I didn't want to be the
person to kill but the book review like some people were. But aren't you better for it?
I'm struggling through it. I made certain Dan to keep telling Resno ahead of time that he has to
pick a book he has to pick a book just so he wouldn't get because I did this same with you and you
blew it off till the last minute. Well on the upside for the next time that it ends up being my
decision again I have another book. Why you've already pre-selected a book? I have already
pre-selected a book. And this book will be awesome on a stick?
And then I got one too. I can't wait for my next turn. I got nothing.
You'll get something. Dan you don't get another choice. He's just too bad.
You've been voted off the island. You are the weakest link goodbye. Oh no he has to stick around.
The vote kick in this show means the rest of us hang up on Dan.
Somebody translate that please. He said thank you for listening. We'll join you next time
for the audiobook review of Dead Hunt. Please be sure to listen to the audiobook before listening
to the show so that you don't have to hang up on or quit the show on us after the review.
Yeah because Dead Speak is really efficient. Good night everybody.
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