I just meant that I spent most of the story being more interested in the tangents he went off onto about the world, his past, and characters in it than in the actual plot. I would have loved this story if it were part of an anthology of stories set in the same world. As a stand alone, it felt like it promised a bit more than it delivered.
I call this a Miéville issue, and I did have it with this story, where I was way more interested in the set dressing than the author was, and was only going to be shown brief glimpses of the bits I want to see on the way to a plot that I'm barely following because meh.
Though I, too, am not trying to give the impression I hated the story. I didn't like it as much as last week's, but it didn't make me want to cry either, so we're at a neutral place afaic and I'm not likely to unsubscribe from the feed yet.
The reading, otoh, rocked my world (and takes me above the neutral place into 'this is good' territory). It just so happens that I listened to "
We are Very Lively Here" just in the past week and "
Stockholm Syndrome" fairly recently as well and I got to say, Cheyenne has an incredible voice for reading horror. Also, he's a GREAT reader, injecting just enough drama without going over the top. A man not afraid of judicious pauses. Those first person narrations work beautifully when he does them, and he makes the authors sound better than they otherwise would. More Cheyenne, please! (this can also be considered a request for more post-apocalyptic zombie stuff, as I dig that too, and he mostly seems to read that).