I have never been happier to have an MP3 player that has the ability to speed up tracks. Maybe for some, the slow pace would have worked - increased the tension or drawn out the drama or something - but for me, it was just excruciating.
I also found it too quiet. (I bet Zorag did, too!)
I remember reading (or maybe hearing) somewhere that the length of the typical (average? median?) EP story was chosen so that it would be about half an hour to forty-five minutes*, to match a typical commute. I'm not claiming that it's true, just that I heard it. However, if it
is true, then I'd like the audio engineers to keep in mind that people who are driving have to contend with the sound of tires on road, wind past windshield, cars and trucks going by.
Also, more and more audio device manufacturers - spooked by the possibility of being sued for causing hearing loss - are making their devices with a lower maximum volume (they only go to 9
) so it's not even possible to compensate for low levels. I had mine as high as it would go and was still straining to hear the narration for much of the time. It really distracts from being able to listen to and appreciate the story properly.
It's not that hard to boost the audio levels without creating distortion (or at least not enough to worry about); I've done it. I wish I'd done it with this before listening to it. (Hm... would that contravene the non-derivative ("don't change it") part of the license?)
*Which this one would have been, if it had been read at a faster pace!
As to the story itself: I liked it, on the whole.
I didn't realize that
homo sapiens and
homo neanderthalensis were genetically compatible (not that anyone knows for sure, of course, but from a quick search, there does seem to be evidence to support that possibility).
Most of the examples of racism (or is it species-ism in this case?) in the story were, of course, reprehensible, but I found myself pondering the issue of the Olympics that the author raised. Even now, we recognize that not even all humans are equal; that's why the Special Olympics exist (or is 'Para-lympics' now? I can't keep track).
Pitting
h neanderthalensis (as described) against
h sapiens is like racing a German Shepherd against a Greyhound (or, conversely, pitting one against the other in a fight, if one were to stoop so low). It would be, in a way, "not even wrong," * just pointless. So,
unlike the idea of separate Olympics for different colours of human, separate Olympics for the story's 'ghosts' doesn't bother me.
I don't
think that's species-ist, but maybe I'm wrong.
*Yes, I know that phrased was coined for a completely different purpose.