Rating: WARTY!
Kamran Smith is American-born, but his mother is from Iran. He gets into trouble when his older brother, in the US Army, is suspected of carrying out a terrorist attack. The plot sounded interesting, but the writing was juvenile, so this was another failed audiobook experiment. I knew this was likely to go south when it began with music, devolved into first person (aka worst-person) voice, and then the main character turned out to be a violent, self-centered whiny little bitch. So three strikes against it to begin with.
Seriously, what's with putting this pointless music on audiobooks? Did the original author write the music? No! Does the music have anything - anything at all - to do with the story? No! So what's the purpose of it other than to annoy people who want to get right to the story? You buy an ebook, or a print book, you don't get music and you can skip straight to chapter one. But audiobooks want to lard you up with music, all manner of spoken introductions and prologues that you can't easily skip, and on and on, it's annoying. Publishers, stop it! Stop it now! I'm looking at you, not-so Brilliance Audio, and you, too Audible, and you, Harpy Audio, and many others. Quit irritating your readers!
Anyway, the blurb tells us that this boy can't wait to enlist in the army like his big brother, Darius, and this is no surprise given how belligerent he is. I didn't like the guy. I didn't like the voice and I quickly lost interest in what happened to him. I further lost interest when the story absurdly went into a raid on this kid's home because his brother was suspected of terrorism - his brother who'd been accepted into the US military and been away from home for some time. What? They don't even come and question the family or put them under surveillance, but launch straight into a raid their home and tip them off that they're suspects? I can see that happening under this administration which is the most racist administration we've ever had, but even given that, it was too absurd to take seriously. Based on the portion I could stand to listen to, I cannot commend this at all.
