Review: Poor conversion to kindle and below Foster's usual standard in storytelling and writing.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 11, 2013
While I have enjoyed Alan Dean Foster's books in the past and have read all three of these stories previously, this kindle edition falls short in a number of areas. And once you start noticing some minor nits, you also start to notice some larger nits, as well.First, the conversion is sloppy at best. If this work was proofread against the printed copy, it doesn't show it. There were numerous errors in the conversion, including paragraph breaks, and one case where a "G" was converted to a "C", making up a new word in our alphabet. This happened in numerous places across the work, although not so often as to destroy enjoying the story.Then there was Foster's writing. Normally, he's right on with his characterization, but I got the feeling that he didn't spend a lot of time going back and rethinking what his characters were saying (or thinking). There were numerous places where the Tran used human slang in their speaking. In a number of places (and part of this could be the fault of the conversion), it was difficult to tell whether a human was speaking or a tran. There were not enough distinctive "voices" to clearly separate the individuals and after a while, it made the story somewhat boring.And finally, Foster spent a lot of time telling the story, rather than showing it. It was very hard to become emotionally involved with any of the characters, even the major protagonists. This isn't classic Foster, but something less. I was disappointed in the result, especially with the conversion of the text.