Review: The Flying Sorcerers

The Flying Sorcerers by David Gerrold
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Narrated by Patrick Lawlor
Presented by Brilliance Audio

DNF @ 67%

This one was straight up infuriating.

The plot revolves around a scientist strange magician being stranded amongst a primitive culture, where he must teach them his science strange magic so that he can build a craft to get him back to his homeland, 'up there in the sky beyond the dust cloud'.

The 'jokes' end up all being the same, where essentially some basic scientific principle of our world is described from the perspective of morons simple folk who believe magic is the source of all. And funny old Shoogar the Magician taking everything literally and getting offended about everything.

So as if that's not enough stupidity, this is such a primitive culture that, not only are women treated like slaves, they're constantly referred to as useless, stupid, pointless and only good for what they do for men. I get that the misogyny is supposed to be a 'funny' reflection of society but, jeez, give it a freaking REST now and then. I found zero humour in any of this 'ho ho ho, what a primitive sort these folks are.'

So I made it over halfway but then switched to 2.5x speed to try and get through the rest and it STILL wasn't enough. I think this is the first time I've ever DNF'd an audiobook because they're always so easy to just kinda half-listen to if they get dull, but I found this one was just too insulting to put up with. Life's too short.

The narrator did a decent job with what he had but the screeching voices just made this story all the more unbearable. Not his fault, though, so I'd easily give this narrator another go.

I guess this is for the dudes who enjoy low-brow humour and generally hate women but it was very much not for me.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

View all my reviews