Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa

By: Steven Campbell

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Collection of short stories featuring Delovoa and his life pre-Belvaille. Print Length: 66 pages Includes: -How Delovoa became so intelligent -How Delovoa first joined the military as a scientist -Early experiments with artificial intelligence -Where ZR3 came from -Meeting the Ontakians -Delovoa's advanced work with mutations -Delovoa's exile as a criminal -Early life on Belvaille and his unique, and pervasive, impact on the city NOTE: while the stories are stand-alone, it contains many references to characters and events in Hard Luck Hank novels.

Nice backstories, but VV? I give it a three 'mehs'

It easy to overlook how much a story is enhanced by the narrator. These stories cry out for Liam's Delovoa, A Delovoa story without Delovoa's voice is a Hero sandwich, hold the Hero. Best wishes to Mr. Campbell for a speedy recovery and for an equally speedy return of a tanned and rested Hank & Co.

Did Delovoa create Virtual Voice?

Great and fun stories completely ruined by the narration software. It is the type of uncaring destructiveness that Delovoa would haphazardly release into the wild. Seriously? Doesn't anyone bother to check to see if the software actually works? This should come up during someone's next performance evaluation and not in a good way.

The mispronounced words and lack of emphasis on anything

This book was free but it’s hard to give it a good rating due to the AI narration. None of the humor, mostly dark knowing the author, comes through. Mispronounced words really stick out. For example bahm instead of boom, dee R instead of doctor. The later was really egregious as it was a chapter title. I hope Audible will strive to improve the narration and not let this be the only extant version. That would be a crime.

Virtual voice almost ruined it

Great story, dead tone to narration was a bummer. Hope this is not a sign of the future of audible

I prefer Humans

I liked the story as it filled in a lot of holes. As for the reading, that’s all it was. A lifeless, miss pronouncing, narration. Good thing it was free.
DWG

I hate the virtual voice

Liam, who narrates the regular books in the series, knows how to emote. The generated voice, although WAY better than any other generated voice I've heard, is still very monotonous. I haven't even gotten very far in the story yet, but I felt compelled to write a review because of this. So far it's not as playful as the other hard luck Hank stories, but it's still very good and very interesting because Stephen Campbell is a talented writer.  but that computer generated voice… I am not about that 

Liam Owen’s absence.

The AI voice while better than any other I’ve heard is a hard sell on a series that had such great voice talent attached to it for so long. I’d pay to hear it read by Mr. Owen, just sayin’.

bummer about the narrator

if your gonna use an ai narrator on a series with established name pronunciations get it to match them please