- Title:
- Siphon
- Author:
- Jay Boyce
- Release:
- January 3, 2019
- Format:
- Audiobook
- Narrator:
- Samara Naeymi
I went into this a bit biased … against the genre. I originally purchased this while attempting to purchase a different book called Siphon. It didn’t take long for me to realize this was a “LitRPG”, a genre I utterly fucking despise. I decided to push through it, because I’d already spent the munny on it, and because it was pretty decent so far.
I generally find it pretty engaging and interesting. The main character is sassy and makes me laugh, she’s by far my favorite aspect of this book. The exposition is done well, in that the main character is as out of her element as we the reader are in this world, so she learns alongside us. That being said, I could seriously do without the goddamn minutes of stat regurgitation that made me despise this genre in the first place. It’s not interesting, it’s fucking ANNOYING! Maybe that bullshit works in physical copies or eBooks, but not in audiobook format.
Minor gripes include a character putting her hand on her “stomach”. If she’s putting her hand on her stomach, AN INTERNAL ORGAN, she needs to seek immediate medical attention. As far as I’m concerned, this passes from “lazy, shitty writing” into misinformation territory at this point. Here’s my pre-written rant about the shitty green-eyed characters trope:
If you’re reading this, I’m knocking points off of this book for annoying writing. I’m sick of this lazy bullshit of “piercing green eyes” in fiction. Somebody wrote a blog post in 2012 pointing out this issue in fiction, meaning this has been an issue for over a decade. It’s lazy and uninspired. I highly doubt most people give random strangers eye colors a second thought in public, let alone bring it up constantly. Green-eyed people are rare, but that doesn’t make us a goddamn circus exhibit.
As for the audio narration, for the most part, it’s excellent. I take issue with the narrator saying “O” instead of “Zero”. O is not a fucking number. If you wanna say that stupid bullshit in your day-to-day life, have at it. But don’t do it in an audiobook, it’s unprofessional. Additionally, in one chapter she said “famriliar”, and then went on to pronounce it properly a few seconds later. If you’re going to mis/pronounce a word, do it consistently! Aside from that annoying bullshit, this audiobook was like a breath of fresh air after DNF’ing an author-narration.
Overall, I’m genuinely interested in continuing this series, if they’ve been released in audiobook format. I found the whole “LitRPG” elements to be utterly fucking insufferable. Had the world not been so interesting, and had the main character not been so likable, I’d have shitcanned this book and tore it apart from cover to cover. The whole idea of the “fish out of water” who can siphon other people’s talents doesn’t require this shitty LitRPG bullshit to work, it really only detracts from the experience. Especially as an audiobook, as the Audible player only allowed me to skip 30-second intervals, which led to me bouncing around to find when the book actually got back to the fucking plot.