Tales Of The Left Hand - Both Our Hands Are Clapping

 Lately we have been jumping on new PB.com releases, hope as at Christmas to unwrap a wondrous surprise.  Our luck day arrived in the form of Tales Of The Left Hand, Book One (TOTLH), by John Meagher.  At the time of this review, TOTLH Book Two is already out, so Mr. Meagher promises to be prolific as well as entertaining.  This, our friends, is a welcome and novel combination.  There are a few hyper-productive authors on PB.com and, to an author, their offerings are weak, weird, and worthless.  Not so with Mr Meagher and for this our hat is off to him!  Here is the author's blurb:

  In the tropical-island region known as the Frees, magic is growing stronger, and gunpowder is becoming less reliable. Amid this world of "swashbuckling, intrigue, and a dash of magic," two adventurers literally run into each other and are forced to fight together against pirates, sinister assassins and powerful merchant families, in the process developing a most unlikely friendship.

Tesca is the Left Hand, a spy and assassin serving the Duke of Kohaya, ruler of one of the independent realms within the Frees. Kayrla is a sailor and sometime pirate with a few magical tricks up her sleeve. While fleeing the wrath of her former captain, Kayrla collides with Tesca, who’s on a mission of his own, and her captain, assuming them to be partners, sics his crew on both of them. Cutting their way free of the pirates' wrath, the pair come to realize that they make a very effective team, but will their combined talents be enough to stop an assassin seeking the Duke’s life, and who appears to be more than a match for either Tesca’s blades or Kayrla’s magic?

NARRATION:  A surprisingly good job of it here.  We specifically were caught off-guard because the narration seemed at first to be run-of-the-mill.  Mr. Meager's natural speaking voice is, while pleasant and clear, rather bland school-boyish.  By the end of TOTLH we were, however, most impressed with the range and consistency Mr. Meagher displayed.  Both women and men were credible and expertly reproduced.  Having done a good deal of podcasting ourselves, we can attest to the non-triviality of such a gift.  There was, to our ears, however, a negative with TOTLH's read.  Mr. Meagher chose rather inflexible and stereotypical characterizations for many players.  The sailors all spoke Pirate, the 'very dark skinned' race sounded Nigerian, and the boorish assassin-renters sounded awfully Teutonic.  To precognate, we shall site a few more examples from Book Two (We know, unfair you cry, this is a review of Book One - no fair precognating!  Well, get over it - this is our blog.  Our tongue is stuck out at all neigh-sayers, but at none of our true friends).  The French captain slurps his wine and the 'light skinned dark fellow' has dreadlocks and sound remarkably Jamaican.  Hum.  The problem here is what, in biology, is termed convergent evolution.  This is the process by which widely differing creature separated by great distances adopt the same trait.  So here, on this mystical far-off world, everybody just happens to speak with Earther intonations.  Hum.  So, while Mr. Meagher might have gotten a 15-18 for narration, we will ding him to a 14 for his annoying predilection.  In fact, dare we ever think it, we were reminded of that retched movie The Phantom Menace more than once!  Saints in Heaven, protect us against such drivel!  Nota bene:  When TOTLH was written The Frees was fine, but when narrated, it is identical to The Freeze.  We wondered for half the story how all those tropical plants could live at the North Pole.

EDITING/TECHNICAL:  This aspect, especially give that this is Mr. Meagher's first PB.com effort, was flawless.  Even the larger names on PB.com have a few fumbled splices or stammers.  Flawless is not, however, spectacular.  Nowadays, the bar for this category is way-high.  Several authors have posted remarkably complex and professional-quality material.  All students of physics are not Einsteins, but we must insert this caveat.  Intros/outros were blessedly short, which was especially since Mr. Meagher elected to chop his opus into relatively short episodes.  All-in-all, we shall grant 16 for technicalities.

ORIGINALITY OF STORY:  For our money this is a very important element of a good book (okay, the podcast is free, so none of our money is actually at risk, but, please, allow us metaphoric range).  We are reluctant to be overly negative, but we think TOTLH is, at a heart & soul level, not all that original.  That does not mean it is not entertaining, but it added no novel insight, no remarkable twist to our collective experience. We have a mean pirate captain, a good-of-heart pirate elf (never understood how good-at hearts could spend some of their lives murdering and stealing, but, then again, we are probably just quit provincial), a civic-minded assassin, a benevolent duke, et cetera, et cetera.  Swords, bad-guys, a lust for gold, a predictable ending - you know the story.  Were there new quirks, unexpected elements?  Sorry, we cannot recall any.  Again, that does not mean TOTLH is not worthy, it just ain't fresh.  A middling 10 here.

QUALITY OF WRITING:  As with Best Movie of the Year at The Oscars this is the really quintessential consideration - the Big Kahuna (a term from a 1959 Gidget movie, of all things).  After all, these are podcast novel, n'est pas?  Linear and 'round-the-camp-fire are adjectives which spring to mind.  A tale told 'round the fire at night is off-the-cuff, unprepossessing, and uncomplicated.  By linear, we would signal a plot-line which goes from A to B to C, ending in Z.  There are no real detours, twists, or convolutions.  If you have read any quantity of our reviews, you will recall that a good many PB.com podcasts are similarly - simple.  The best example we can site is a work we never reviewed because it stands as one of the most popular.  Nathan Lowell's Solar Clipper series is 'round-the-camp-fire and is enjoyed by a multitude of paying fans.  No sin here, no condemnation to readership hell, but, needless to say, not very Bradbury-like.  In fact, until the introduction of the unstoppable assassin character, we were drifting toward a WSRH due to lack of interest.  Everybody was so darn happy and nice, unless they were evil and hence unhappy.  TOTLH told of a world where you literally bump-into a trained killer on a mission and he not only aids you but becomes your BFF inside of - well - no time at all.  Such a happy place!  Pity Sidney Carlton from Tale Of Two Cities or Cosette from Les Miserable were not similarly fortunate.  A final note.  The Kayrla character was painted too-simply.  She was naive, trusting, and altogether rather dimensionless.  We would have liked a bit more edge, insight, and maturity mixed-in with her persona.  Not to bash, but to discuss Mr. Meagher's style, we will say no more.  A 12  for writing.  How, you query, could we award that high a score to a work so humble?  Simple.  You try to write a cohesive novel and make it entertaining and get it published and podcast and then ask us that question again.  Yeah, that's why.

WOW FACTOR:  There is, in TOTLH, some real wow.  The aforementioned excellent voice acting of wowful.  Sympathetic characters, that's nice.  A tale told well, that's good.  Being thoroughly entertained while listening, that's great.  So, we allow 8 wow-points.

TOTAL:  60.  We were quite entertained by TOTLH and recommend it to fantasy listeners without reservation.  In spite of what might be interpreted to be harsh criticism above, know this - we liked TOTLH.  It was fun.  Yes, that's the best way to sum TOTLH in a word - FUN!

Bedtime Tales: Stories For the Wayward and Churlish - It Worked, We Were Put To Sleep

  Bedtime Tales: Stories For the Wayward and Churlish (really, that's you title? Kind of long and over-cryptic, perchance?)  (BT) is a collection of short stories by Dar Qwynd, Narrated by Norman Chisolm III (again, really, eponymous for "Dark Wind", why not use that nom de plume directly, and why "III" what is the point of the over-embellishment?).  We listened, with one eyebrow raised skeptically the entire time, to the first short story, Blankie.  So completely underwhelmed were we that the WSRH axe fell immediately upon the alleged conclusion of the story.  Let us summarize the story for you.  A boy loves his blanket.  The blanket is made of the remains of a demon who died for unclear reasons (and we listened really hard to determine why it died).  That's it.  Cue the sound of crickets buzzing.  In this over-produced, dare we say maudlin, podcast, the intro's/outro's were sooooo long and stilted, gratuitously repetative and most off-putting.  Please see the discussion in the review immediately proceeding this one, of Every Picture Tells a Story for a detailed discussion of plot-elements.  Blankie violated so many plot elements that it was infuriating.  There was no plot, just a boy playing word-games with squirrels interrupted by a demon who died.  A completely unacceptable climax and no resolution.  People, please, if you write a story, make certain it has a point to make and that it does not just end, but has an ending!  'Nuf said 

Every Picture Tells a Story, Volume 4 - Underexposed Film

  Every Picture Tells a Story, Volume 4 is offered to us via the combined efforts of Katerina and Mick Bordet.  We assume, but have not read, that Volumes 1-3 are out there somewhere.  The Bordets apparently post a photo and have followers write a short story based on this image.  An intriguing concept, but as we quickly found out, a concept whose success depends wholly on the skill of the contributors.  We only listened to the first short story, titled Digby the Travelogue, and we were most unimpressed.  We reasoned that the lead story would be a strong one, so when it was unacceptable, WSRH.  Rash and over-reactive of us?  Perchance, but after we read a tale which is irritatingly bad, it leaves us feeling off.  The influence of a poor story is akin to how we feel after we've eaten WAY to much pizza an are over-full yet full of regrets for the over-consumption.  Yeah, lousy fiction has that effect.  So, while we could have listen to more, we literally did not wish to risk it.  What was wrong with Digby?  It violated a scared rule of story telling.  Remember from school, that a story consists of various elements.  One outline defines exposition (plot), rising action, conflict, climax, and then resolution?  Well, Digby lacks plot, climax, and resolution.  It just ... ends.  No tale is told, no moral learned, not episode cataloged.  It is not a short story, it is a short thought.  We smell in Digby one of the oldest failures a writer falls into, that of having a really cool idea, but no point to make with it and no ending to be found with it.  Listening to Digby emoted from us the expression, "Not in my house!"

The Phoenix Conspiricy - Falls Back Into Its Own Ashes

  Arg!  Darn, oh bother, and WTF!  Okay, we have vented our frustration, now we may proceed with an orderly review of The Phoenix Conspiracy (TPC) by Richard L. Sanders, narrated by Matthew Ebel [who has no middle name, we presuppose].  TPC received a very late WSRH.  We were into Episode 10 or 11 when the podcast took the torpedo a-midships and sank into the abyss of ignobility.  We were rather stunned when we found that Mr. L. Sanders made us reach-up and first hit the stop, and then the delete icon, so far into the book.  Why, good sir, did you so force our hand?

  Competent fiction writing involves but a few key elements.  The aspiring author must have a story to tell, a plot to carry that story passsably, credible characters, and an ending which does not suck.  Naturally, great fiction excels at all these components, but we're just talking about competent fiction here - the kind which would receive a C+ from the teacher.  It was one of these torpedoes which done-in TPC.  First, there was much to speak well for TPC, aspects which lead us into the bowels of the book.  We were, as implied, assuming we'd finish the book and were blind-sided by the fatal implosion.  On the plus side, Mr. Ebel proved to be a journeyman voice actor.  We were initially off-put but the hissy, high pitched quality of the production, but quickly learned to ignore this flaw.  Mr. Ebel has an unspectacular voice, but his characterizations were well thought out and very consistent.  Strong work, Mr. Ebel.  In TPC, we also loved the 1950's space-opera genre.  Very nostalgic, very inviting.  Though TPC was probably only going to score in the 40-50 range had the dreaded WSRH not fallen, TPC was entertaining and acceptably engineered.

  Okay, why the WSRH?  Mr. L. Sanders made one too many errors in the plot.  This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon flaw among authors who never quite make-the-grade.  Without revealing too many spoilers, should you choose to listen-in anyway, we will paint a picture of the death-giving gaffs.  First, a ship's captain commanding a ship-of-the-line in combat with an addiction issue?  Hum.  And this lunk-head never remembers to put his illegal narcotic away, perennially leaving in plain site?  Again, hum.  And the ship's doctor is his dealer?  Double hum.  But, we did not WSRH these soft-spots, we just groaned and bore-it.  Then, the same ship's captain ignores orders to discontinue his personal-interest driven investigation during a war-footing and commandeers his ship on a private quest?  Ah, wait, that's mutiny, treason, and desertion all rolled into one!  You know, the kind of nasty things they hang you for.  Really?  Ya think a military officer would risk brutal exicution to sate his curiosity?  Yet, still we read-on, daunted but not detered.

  The coup-de-grace concerned the "strong" female character, the ship's Executive Officer, or XO.  Mr L. Sanders went well out of his way to construct a hyper-rigid, by-the-book military officer in this XO.  She was stern and inflexible to an annoying and unrealistic extent, but, hey, L. Sanders is the author so there she was.  Then, when the XO decides (based on one episode) to topple the captain from command, she slips into something slinky and pseudo-seduces him?  She injects chloral hydrate into a full bottle of wine, fills her mouth with it, and literally forces it down the captain's throat while swallowing neigh a drop herself, and Cap passes out like a rag-doll dropped?  All this, again, on a war-footing in a combat zone?  Wow, we mean, wow!  There are so many things wrong with that scene!!  So many WTF's that...  WSRH

  Look, chloral hydrate, famous as a "mickey-fin", is used to knock someone out so you can shanghai or date-rape them - whatever.   If an adult takes 500 milligrams, they will fall asleep in about half an hour - longer if "stimulated" (as in, oh we don't know, say about to have sexual abandon with the most beautiful woman you've ever seen).  So, if she spit a mouthful, approximately 20 milliters into his mouth, the wine-solution would need to have 25 mg/ml of drug, minimum.  The XO would have had to inject 40 milliters into the 750 ml bottle.  That means the bottle was holding 790 mls, which it cannot, so, since she did not remove the cork, it is impossible.  Plus, no way she would not swallow some herself.  If she had mixed such a high concentration, even a small volume would lay her out too.  Plus, she's a hyper-rigid military officer.  Now, durning a war-time period, she willfully and knowingly commits assault, battery, unlawful imprisonment in the form of sedation, the dissabling of a superior and commanding officer on a combat mission, in effect mutany, and then either burglary after he passes out if she serches his quarters or entrapment if she turns him in for drunk and disorderly?  If the XO was very lucky, she'd only be stripped of her rank and imprisoned for twenty years, even if she proved the captain was an addict and insubordinate.  We picture the JAG investigator questioning the XO as  Cappie is haul-off in chains.  "SO, XO, how exactly was it that you were able to search the captains' quarters?  Were you romantically involved?"  "Ah, no, I mean, not as such."  So, if I may, how were you able to discover the drugs?"  "Well, I jumped to a quick conclusion, played slap-and-tickle just long enough to incapacitate him, then rifled his room."  With a smile, she proclaim, "It only took me a minute to crack his government issued safe, you know, where secret orders are stored.  Oh, and I found these girly magazines and these computer-inhanced photos of the women's locker room on Deck Five taken right after the girl's volleyball playoffs.  Look what that girl is doing in the shower!  She' next on my hit-list, the dirty slut!"

   Realistically, she'd be hanged.  Really really, this stick-up-the-butt duty-driven-by-the-book officer does all that on a hunch, on a whim... ever in the first place.  What a sloppy job of officer vetting they do in the future.  Two ship's captains and one XO all needing to be executed in such a brief moment in time.  Everyone in command or medically trained if morally bereft and in need of euthanasia.  The future, it seems to us, is not very bright.

WSRH, nuf said

Strigoaie The Romanian Witch - We Were Not Enchanted

  Strigoaie, The Romanian Witch (STRW, we helped you, author by inserting the comma), by Mark Vale is a new release on PB.com.  We, always hungry for a great tale, scooped it up greedily.  We listened to a full hour before the WSRH axe fell.  We did not dis-like STRW, we simply found nothing to like.  First, Mr. Vale, an absolute point-of-order.  When your podcast begins with the first three notes of the Star Trek intro music, you had better be good - damn good!  Aside from How To Disappear Completely, Toothless, Write Now!, and precious few others, nothing on PB.com rises to that lofty level.  STRW falls well short of Mt. Olympus.  Second point, good author.  Are you of an age to remember the ever so cute Archie comic Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, or the even cute late-90's sit-com of the same name?  You take an awful risk titling a book S-T-R-W when it veritably rhymes with S-T-T-W.  Please accept this as another kind suggestion.

  So, why the WSRH?  Several issues.  First, the basic concept.  In STRW we have a male author writing what, at least in the first hour, is a woman's story.  Four teenage girls in the 1960's, a contemporary babe, and a couple old women populate the story.  We are always...  nervous, when someone fully male takes it upon them selves to write a novel from a fully female perspective.  We cannot say it has never been done well, but we've never read it.  Hemmingway never attempted it, nor Bradbury nor even Shakespeare.  Us fellows have such a heck of a time trying to figure you gals out on an historic and an ongoing basis that it is inconceivable that a man could get y'all right.  Further, - and, please, we are supremely to-each-his-own - we cannot understand why a man would set-about to elucidate the female essence.  However, we know full well that an author must write what they must write (please research to concept of vates), so we scold not.  We did not like the fundamental error we heard either, not in the context of STRW.  The granny speaks of her wicked aunt as a disgusting Gypsy.  Gypsies, more properly, Roma, are an ethnic group especially common in that part of Eastern Europe.  However, if the aunt is Roma, the mother must be one too - they are family.  We guess they could be introduced as step-sisters to make the insult work, but that's getting pretty far-afield.

  The basic flaw, however, which caused the axe to fall, was the very blandness of the story.  The writing was crisp enough, and the plot not unpromising, and the narration was gentle and pleasing, loving, if you will.  But, - and darn-it-all, there always has to be a but - the story is dull, lifeless, uninteresting, and unpromising.  Like a tofu steak, or a date with one's sister, STRW looked to be a poor investment of time.  Maybe, if there was action and tension to take place, and it were introduced sooner, Mr. Vale might have set-the-hook, but, alas, we easily spit it out.  Sorry, Mr. Vale.  We really admired your kind effort and appealing yarn-telling, but... eh.  Having stopped after hour one, we clearly have no idea what transpires in STRW.  We will expose ourselves fully here and predict what happened.  PS: the reader should NEVER be able to do this, so if we are even close, Mr. Vale, please return to the word processor and mix-it-up a bit.  The cute babe gains magical powers as she enters her true native land.  As she struggles to be a full-fledged witch, she must combat the darkest of forces, probably her great aunt, yet, despite all odds and wishes-to-hope, the beauty triumphs...  but wait, if you buy now STRW will throw-in that she meets Mr. Wright and... well, we'll stop here.  We do not wish to be snarky, just illustrative.

PS:  Because we are ever so worldly, a correction of sorts.  We do not know what a "strgoaie" is.  The male 'witch' in Romanian would be "strigoi" and the female "strigoaica".

Inside The Whale - Outside of Tolerable

One cannot judge a book by it's cover.  We saw the cover, very much liked it, and read the blurb.  We dismissed Inside the Whale (ITW) several times based on that blurb, but finally decided, what's there to lose?  Oh myyyy, ask that question and you're answered with a pie in the face.  ITW is billed as in the bardic tradition of Beowulf.  Ah, as if!  We have read Beowulf in Old English with parallel translation on the opposite page, and in two other straight translations.  Beowulf ITW is not!  We always listen to one full episode, but oh how we were tempted to break our pact here.   A poorly narrated, poorly produced, and oh so poorly written podcast is this.  The quasi-poetry is unpaced, rhyming here and not there, and the story is awful.  A drunken brat who kills a nice girl in a DUI who haunts him because he killed her, but she was drunk too and went voluntarily with him.  WTF!  And so many lines and ideas were repeated that we thought our iPhone had an auto-replay feature we were unaware of.  An the vulgarity.  The dead couple make love in the In-Between.  This nice girl asks the drunkard to bring his shaft (penis) and grabs it!  Argh!  That is not the worst vulgarity, only the most pictorial, which pollutes most our fading memory. 
  Yes, our vitriol boarders on the personal, but really, this is one of those podcast where all one can mumble is wtf as one shakes their weighty head.

The God Conspiracy - A Plot For Entertainment

We are late comers, as it were, to The God Conspiracy (TGC) by Derek Gilbert.  It was released in The Before Times, 2009, and was under our pod-dar all this time.  This is a shame, as Mr. Gilbert offers-up a very nice novel for us to enjoy, well worth a listen.  We advise potential listeners not to be off-put by the interlacing of evangelistic Christian messages.  Thankfully we are not pummeled about the head and shoulders with The Good News, but rather, the Christian element is worked into the plot as an essential.  Plus, as we count ourselves among the intelligencia of Christian lore (not, not the silly Illuminati, gag me with a Dan Brown), we are happy to report Mr Gilbert sites correct examples and informed interpretation of the religious elements, demonstrating true knowledge of the subject matter.  There is, in TGC basically a soliloquy where a evangelical minister is explaining The End Times to an FBI agent.  Mr Gilbert sites reasonable interpretations of Scripture and doctrine, not bible-thumping misunderstandings.  [Well, that is of course except for the rookie mistake, Mr Gilbert, if you ever read this, of interpreting Revelations to be anything other than a political statement from it's author directed against the Roman government couched in words which would not, hopefully, result in the authors instant lion-ization, but we digress.]  In fact, Mr. Gilbert's overall fund of correct facts, as opposed to the all-too-common contrived facts, boded well for the quality of his book.  For example, Mr Gilbert, unlike most 'Mericans, understands the Preamble to mean "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property" when the word 'happiness' is used.  Our Founding Fathers did not mean to scream Toga Party like John Belushi when defining a fundamental tenet of our nation.  So, on to our review.

  Here is the book's blurb:

     One e-mail. Five lines.
          4,000 dead.
And it is only just beginning…
When a small boy in Iowa forwards a mysterious email from ‘God’ to a small group of friends, he unwittingly releases a trigger that sends blood pouring throughout his farming community.
Thousands more are dead across the country in dozens of simultaneous terror attacks and the government blames fundamentalists who want to trigger the Apocalypse.
FBI Agent Joe Unes reluctantly teams with reclusive Internet radio host Barney Ison (from Sharon K. Gilbert’s The Armageddon Strain) to expose the plot -- and discovers that he's not contending against flesh and blood.

  Our general summary is Christian thriller in which unsuspecting every-day Joes and Janes find they are immersed in a world-gone-mad struggle between the forces of good and evil.  Will we all be cannon-fodder and mindless sheep, and therein victims, or shall we rise as one and fight the fight for freedom?

NARRATION:  Mr. Gilbert elects do do his own solo-read.  His voice is pleasant and he is at ease with the microphone so his voice tells the story, as opposed to us listening to someone read a line of text.  There is a local-news-weekend-anchor quality to Mr. Gilbert's voice.  That is to say, his voice is middle-of-the-road-upper-key bland, but this quality was over lookable once we bought into the story.  We will award 14 points in this category.

Editing/Technical:  Run-of-the-mill, we would surmise.  There were, the Mr. Gilbert's credit, not searing gaffs.  A few bad splices were left in, but nothing egregious.  We fully concur with commentators on PB.com the the intro/outro music was jarringly loud.  As this is an easy fix, even now, it is hard not to ding points for this annoyance.  A pale 11 here, where the unspectacular is coupled with the offensive.

Originality of Story: This is, for us, a bit of a tough one.  We are not very familiar with the Christian apocalyptic genre.  It is possible this is a very fresh and original story.  We suspect there exists a large body of such stories and that this is a common enough tale.  We made it though five or six pages of the mind-numbing Left Behind series ( to quote Dr. Smith from Lost in Space "Oh, the pain!").  Well, it's original to us, little fish in the big pond that we are, so that counts for something.  Based on our vacillations, we will score a neutral 10.

Quality of Writing:  As we've said - time and again - it's all about the story.  The mix of writing prowiss, deeply developed characters, and an enthralling tale are the stuff of magic.  Well, have a seat, pour a cold one, and be patient with us, we are going to set our soap-box right... here... and lecture a bit, expound upon our opinions, as it were.  Forever void of malice in our hearts and in our pens (keyboards keys sounds too sterile, so, please pens it is), we wish to drill a bit deeply into TGC.  The characters are, lamentably, two-dimensional, off-the-shelf kind of folk.  The preacher who prays cheerily (we were reminded of Ned Flanders cheery) while death is quite literally on the door step (maybe run now, pray later?) and the treacle-flock of loving white husbands who cannot stand to be apart from their wives.  The couples all love each other as much now as the day they first met.  They are all white, too, except for a token Asian wife.  The black football player with a son raised by his single mother ex-girlfriend.  Ah, does anyone sense a rigid stereotype here?  Moreover, the black single mother is an unreasonable bitch.  When her ex is called to active duty in the setting of a world gone mad, she is pissy about her plans and won't allow a visit.  She is the only negative character in the book who is not one of the bad-guy.  Very thin ice here, Mr. Gilbert, very thin indeed.  And, when all the world is threatened and The Common Man unites to defeat the beast, no common man is gay.  We have written several novels and short.  We think we only have one cameo-type gay character, but includcivity was not a central theme for any of our books.  It very much was in TGC.  Moreover, when you write Christian fiction, if you don't add a LGBT character, we think you are declaring your uncharitable opinion as to the right of consenting adults to do as they choose behind closed doors.  And each character acted exactly as you anticipated.  We read a few comments on PB.com before starting TGC and noted someone was surprised by the ending.  Really, we saw it half way through with clairvoyant clarity.  The stark predictability of the climax were not so onerous as to earn a WSRH, but a little imagination peppered in would have been nice.  After you've read TGC, or if you are Mr. Gilbert, splice-in this example.  Cut to the scene where the FBI agent and deputy trap the Special Ops in the house.  The captain comes out, nervously faces the agent, then asks the whereabouts of the deputy.  She steps forward and punches him in the nose.  What if...  instead of that, she recognizes him.  They served together in Afghanistan, fell in love, but duty tore them apart.  She has not seen him since - lost track of the ghost warrior.  She insist on going with the captain to confront the bad guy.  When the bad guy *spoiler* she pulls the crucifix the captain gifted her at their parting, which she later had the Pope himself bless while she was visiting Lourdes, and the sanctity of the amulet, when impaled into the *spoiler* eye causes the *spoiler* to *spoilered* into  *spoiler* for some unpleasant time.  You see our point.  It is not difficult to enrich a story, to multi-dimentionalize a character, so as to tell a more non-linear tale.
  All that said, we enjoyed TGC, in spite of it's devote simplicity.  For writing, we will aware a bland 9.

Wow Factor and Extra Credit:  We will award 5 points here, mostly to acknowledge the effort it takes to write and produce a podcast, and the generosity to do so with only a hope of recompense.  Study, practice, and call-upon your imagination, Mr. Gilbert, and afford us these thing next time out.

TOTAL:  49   Yes, this is the lowest rated podcast so far, but, know this.  It stands head-and-shoulders above the debris of WSRH'S who never even made it to the dance.  Seriously, this is a worthy podcast and you should listen to it.