Monday 17 February 2014

Audiobook Review: True Strength by Kevin Sorbo, Narrated by Kevin Sorbo and Sam Sorbo

Look at this smug git! Ugh.
This is the first book I have ever returned because it was so damn bad. That's the upside of Audible - if you don't like an audiobook you've just listened to, you can exchange it for a credit. And it felt oh-so-satisfying to select "I didn't like this book" and hit return.

It. Was. Terrible. I went in thinking I'd get a nice nostalgia hit, having been obsessed with Hercules growing up, as well as learn a thing or two perhaps about resilience through Kevin Sorbo's medical issues, which I hadn't been aware of before.

Resilience, ha! He spent the whole book raging against everything and everyone. Whyyyyy has this happened to him? Don't you know who he is, God?! HE'S HERCULES HE'S PERFECT HE DOESN'T GET SICK?! He actually seems to have believed that he was Hercules in some way. Perhaps it was because of his Herculean ego. This guy is so far up himself he comes out the other side. It oozes from ever sentence. He just thinks he's so damn wonderful.

Through the whole book he keeps on going on about his great sense of humour. He uses example after example of his "sarcastic jokes". Really? He's just being an asshole. And that's when he thinks he's actually being endearing! The rest of the time he's an outright asshole. He gets angry at the doctors, his wife, his colleagues, everyone. Now, I can understand being angry and frustrated when people can't tell you what's wrong with you (believe me, I know), but he spends 80 per cent of the book that way. Towards the end he states how he learned to accept his situation and he's not angry anymore... well, you could have fooled me, Kev! I honestly don't know how his wife put up with him. He just seems like such a selfish human being.

Sam Sorbo, his wife, actually narrates a few chapters herself, telling her perspective on things - mainly how gorgeous and amazing she thinks he is. Every time either of them recounts something about their love story it is so incredibly cringe-worthy. It was like they were saying, "ha, we were so clever, we were so flirty and edgy with each other" but what I was hearing was "CHEESY CHEESY CHEESY WITH EXTRA CHEESE ICKINESS."

Hmmm what else... oh yeah, Kevin Sorbo is a terrible actor. He tries to do accents for various foreign people in the book, including Italian, Kiwi, Australian and Chinese. It is so horrendous it is bloody offensive.

I could go on and on but I feel like I'm starting to resemble Kevin Sorbo too much and just raging against the world here. The only way I finished this book was by listening to it on 3x speed. And it still took too long. It actually makes me sad because I have such fond memories of Hercules...

Rating: 1/5
That's being generous.

13 comments:

  1. That sounds horrible. I'm amazed you managed to get that far with it. Adds new meaning to True Strength huh?

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  2. Gosh, somehow this makes it seem even worse. Good job sticking with it and keeping your sanity! Personally, I think it sounds so bad that it should get negative stars - it actually sucks stars away from other defenceless little books like some literary black hole.

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    1. Haha it definitely deserves negative stars

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  3. :/ Sounds awful - hooray for being able to return it!

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  4. How sad you didn't like it. Was it easy to return? I have a few audible books i've been meaning to return. Mostly because I accidentally got an audio and a print copy of the same book. Plus Game of Thrones which I realized is too hard to listen on audio.

    I miss being in Australia! I loved it there. I wish we could move there. I wish we could have seen more of the country - like Melbourne or Perth, but I loved Sydney and Cairns.

    We came home with tons of Tim Tams. Yum! And I discovered the tea store T2 at a mall in Cairns. Do you ever shop there? It's like our Teavana, but I really liked it. Too bad international shipping is so expensive. My favorite part of Sydney was Kinokuniya. I could live in that bookstore. Biggest manga section I've ever seen. Plus, I bought two of Kirsty Eagar's books and another Australian author.

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    1. Super easy to return, Audible does a guarantee if you don't like it you can return it. Amazing! Was Game of Thrones too hard because of all the characters etc?
      I'm so glad you had a good time! If it makes you feel any better I haven't been to Melbourne or Perth and I live here!
      I am obsessed with T2! And Kinokuniya is amaaaazing. Glad you picked up a few books :) Yeah shipping sucks to and from Australia alas!

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    2. My husband and I have been trying to think of ways that we could move to Sydney. It's so wonderful. Like a combo of San Diego and San Francisco (with San Francisco price levels too). We went to Manly Beach on Saturday which was idyllic. I would have liked to hit Bondi too, but Manly was so gorgeous. And I loved the Circular Quay area. We did the Bridge Climb which was a lot of fun. And went to an outdoor concert at the Opera House for one of my favorite bands.

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    3. Awesome! I'd love to do the Bridge Climb one day. I work near Circular Quay and I love it.

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  5. Haha, thank you for that. That was awesome. Sorry you had to suffer for me to get to the awesome, but it was still rather awesome. So many giggles.

    Ahem, SO: It sounds so hilariously awful that I'm kind of tempted to listen to it just so that I can laugh at how bad it is but just imagining myself doing that is making me want to rip out my hair and scrape off my skin and cry and make awkward squealing noises until it goes far, far away. Quite like listening to the audiobook of Nine Uses for an Ex Boyfriend (one of the Sarra Manning books I was telling you about).

    Seriously though, I'm actually quite eager for the hysterical crying that would result from reading this book.

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