Ripe

By: James Hider

Narrated by: Doug Greene

Everyone remembers exactly where they were, the day the ships came.

What no one knew back then, though, was that there were people who were already expecting them.

Scottish psychologist Elspeth McGann thinks her patient Lester Rains—a suave, enigmatic man who claims to be have been alive for 2,000 years and to be part of a team of extraterrestrial "farmers" waiting on Earth for an alien harvest—is a delusional schizophrenic. But when vast ships suddenly appear over Moscow and vacuum up 50,000 people in a matter of hours, she realizes she must track down the elusive Rains. In her search, she stumbles upon a group who are already trying to track down the farmers. This band of renegades is led by Cassius C. Trenton, a former NSA analyst who has been on the run since he broke the code on a mystery transmission beamed into space from Earth years ago, and which bore a single, chilling message: Ripe.

With the aliens set to return, and some world leaders complicit in their plans, Elspeth and Trenton must seek out Rains and find a way of escaping the impending apocalypse, a hunt that takes them from Edinburgh to the White House, only to discover the harvest is just the beginning.

©2023 Black Rose Writing (P)2023 Beacon Audiobooks

Oh boy the narration!

The story is quite good. It did get a little rushed in the end and to be honest I didn't quite understand what was going to happen moving forward, but it didn't detract from being an overall real good book. The narration... well Alexa would have done it better. Or an AI, No intonation, no change from character to character and no attempt at one of the main character's British accent which is actually mentioned more than a couple of times throughout the story. I almost gave up, but the story was good enough to keep me going.

Disappointing

Both the story and narration were big issues for me.

The idea behind this book was very good, but the actual execution of the story felt stilted at best. By the end I found myself not caring too much what happened.

When the narration first started, I thought he was reading a news headline….but then in the next chapter I realized that no, that’s just how he was going to read it the whole time! It was agonizing to listen to this book. I think I could have had a much better experience had I read it instead.

Terrible narration

Great story. Horrible narration! I wish I had just read it. It was very difficult to finish.

the aliens

very weak story line not what I expected, I really tried to give it a chance but it never took off for me.

This is a great book, well written.

The narrator is monotone. I have heard 4th graders read better. His lack of talent almost caused me to stop after the first chapter. I had to push myself to finish the book. I will make note of this narrator and never purchase any work of his.. This may sound harsh, but as a professiona driver, I should not be falling asleep while listening to a book.

Narration ruined this one for me

The narrator was so monotone and had no energy. I kept falling asleep while listening. The story was “ok”. Wasn’t very invested in the characters and it took a weird turn at the end.

Buy/Read the Kindle instead - narrator unbearable

My wife and I stopped listening after 12 minutes of this pain, after which I attempted to post a review warning others. Audible said, "You haven't listened to enough of the book." So now I have fully suffered 60% of the audio and am now posting the review I could have posted just as easily and accurately at 12 minutes in.

The narration is the worst I have heard of any audio book title from any publisher ever and I am not exaggerating. This book should be re-recorded with a narrator that has more than just the skill to read.

Critical concerns for the narration:
-monotone
-all characters are the same
-emphasis and exclamation sound the same as EVERY OTHER SPOKEN WORD FROM THE BOOK

I have to ask if there is someone whose job it is to review these performances before publishing. I have listened to so many good books on Audible and this one sets a new low for me.

Not for Audio-Listening!

I’m not being mean when I give this book 2-stars, honestly. The story carried a deal of potential, but it didn’t quite flow as I’d hoped. The characters didn’t get cleanly developed and the narration was… what’s worse than horrendous?

WARNING: slight spoiler
The story on aliens coming to life is mindless humans in with promises of growth and prosperity never gets old, but we never got to find out what was made available to us and if the aliens actually took us to another place, or dumped our headless bodies into the Arctic. There was no clarification. And the Queen dying… no answer as to why. The drones- did they stop alien advances? Is there another book to clarify? What the heck did I listen to??

Lastly, the characters were from Europe and England, yeah? The narrator, other than stating such info didn’t give any voice adjustments whatsoever! The men and women all were deadpan. And I mean Deadpan! His voice was worse than my 19 hours of labor with my firstborn- and I barely remember that! But this guys voice… it’ll never leave me. I’ll always remember and if I see his name on another book, I’ll be sure to avoid is as quickly as I’ll avoid listening to this book ever again!

Weak narration.

Decent premise but the acceleration of plot towards the end was abrupt. The narrator was one of the weakest I've heard on this platform.

Editors, we don't need no stinkin' editors!

This plays like the 'launch" entry for a planned series, but failure to launch is the dominant vibe here.

First - the narrator. His voice had all the emotional flexibility of a concrete pillar. His monotone should have made it difficult to follow which characters were speaking.

Which leads to - the writing

The author almost always telegraphed every characters speech with "[insert character name] said". It gave the impression of a young child relating an argument at school more than a narratior weaving an engaging story. And the story itself was not truly engaging - the pieces that propelled the narrative were more anticipation of what horrors would be revealed than what would happen to the characters themselves.

There were some emotional horror doozies revealed, mind you. But, not enough to keep me from constantly asking myself - where were the editors on this? Especially given the author's deep journalistic background, there should have been good editors in his writing community to draw on.

My hope is that if this series continues, James Hider gets a good, insistent editor to help polish his prose. There were small gems of potential in Ripe, but all were buried in piles of poorly edited, poorly thought-out story telling.