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Archive for the ‘Audiobooks’ Category

Dan Frey–The Future is Yours (2021) [audiobook 2021]

Posted in Aneesh Chaganty, Beer, Cary Hite, Catherine Ho, Dan Frey, Dion Graham, End of the World, Joshua Kane, Kyla Garcia, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Natasha Soujek, Quantum, Ron Shapiro, Technology, Thérèse Plummer, The Future, Vikas Adam on July 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: July 2023] The Future is Yours

I didn’t know much about this book, but the blurb sounded good.

And wow, was it a a well-told future/time-travel story.  I also really enjoyed that whole cast that was employed for the book.  Usually a single narrator is fine, but there were so many different voices in this story that having multiple narrators was great.

I had known Cary Hite from a Mike Chen novel so his familiar voice was great.  He reads the part of Ben Boyce a young entrepreneur who has great ideas for how to get startups to work.  He is best friends with Adhi Chaudry (read by Vikas Adam).

Adhi is a once-in-a-generation genius.  He writes a thesis that postulates creating a kind of time travel machine using quantum computers.  Fortunately, there’s not a lot of hard science here, so you don’t really have to know what they’re talking about (I also have no idea if what they postulate is feasible in reality).  The thesis is so theoretical that Stanford doesn’t want him to defend it because they think it’s more philosophical than computer science based.

Adhi struggles with things a lot (he is bipolar) but Ben is always there for him.  Ben believes in him 100%.  So when Adhi gets a job at Google (and hates it) and Ben has tried a few startups (that have failed), Ben asks Adhi about that thesis.  And what they might be able to do with it. (more…)

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Jodi Taylor–A Symphony of Echoes [The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #2] (2013) [audiobook 2014]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dinosaurs, Fears, Feminism, Fire, Funny (ha ha), History, Huh?, Jodi Taylor, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Supernatural, Thieves, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Zara Ramm on July 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2023] A Symphony of Echoes

This is the second book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because I was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

Book 2 continues the time travelling saga of the historians of St. Mary’s.  Like the other stories there are several seemingly random adventures that the crew must go on.  The first, in this case, is with a soon-to-be-retiring historian named Kalinda Black.  She wishes to go to Jack the Ripper times and suss out what actually happened.

Things go horribly wrong when Jack the Ripper (in some form or another) hops a ride with them back to St. Mary’s.  It’s confusion and chaos trying to fight a near invisible enemy.  And that’s before anyone realizes that Captain Farrell is missing.

It is, of course, the dastardly duo of Izzie Barclay and Clive Ronan, set in a future St. Mary’s.  In a sign of things  to come, Max realizes that they cannot kill Ronan because of time paradoxes (I am not about to go into details of that) and that Izzie is much harder to kill than it seems when Max shoots her and dumps her in an elevator.

Because the future St. Mary’s has been decimated by Barclay and Ronan, Max stays on as interim head. (more…)

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Jodi Taylor–Just One Damned Thing After Another [The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #1] (2013) [audiobook 2014]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dinosaurs, Fears, Feminism, Fire, Funny (ha ha), History, Huh?, Jodi Taylor, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Supernatural, Thieves, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Zara Ramm on July 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: July 2022] Just One Damned Thing After Another

This is the first book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because i was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

As we meet Madeline Maxwell (Max), she is in a bad way.  She has few prospects and fewer coins in her pocket.  She’s pretty desperate until she gets a surprise visit from a former teacher who tells her about a job with poor pay and worse conditions.

This leads to a job as a historian at St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research.  The cool thing about St. Mary’s is that historians travel to the past to “confirm” details of things that happened.  Essentially University researchers get to experience historical events first hand, including all of the dangers involved.  The Institute is a part of University of Thirsk. (more…)

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Peter Swanson–All the Beautiful Lies (2018) [audiobook 2018]

Posted in Drinking, Feminism, Guns, Maine, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Peter Swanson, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Sex, Sexism, Unlikable main character, Violence, Yuck! on June 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: June 2023] All the Beautiful Lies

I loved Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders.  I hated the characters in The Kind Worth Killing (but I loved the twists).  So I had this third book as a kind of final litmus test for if I would listen to anymore books by him.

And the answer is no.

Once again, Swanson’s twist and surprises (and the ending) are really good.  But if possible, he made main characters who are even more horrible and unlikable.  How was that possible?

There’s a few spoilers in this review, although none that reveal the twists or who the murderer(s) is/are.

I’m just going to get this over with, so yes, there’s a spoiler here.  One of the main characters is a pedophile.

It’s bad enough when, at some point in the middle of the book, we learn that he is happily going to essentially make a new life with the daughter of his second wife (step-daughter, so not incest, but Jesus Fucking Christ).  And then we find out that this guy was introduced to sex when he was a teenager by a bored housewife.  So he is basically “paying it forward.”

How did Swanson even write these words?   How did his moral compass allow these words to pass his fingers onto the page?

I mean, the blurb on Goodreads starts with this:

Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and beautiful, in an “otherworldly” way. She has always been kind and attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years.

I mean, who reads that blurb and wants to read more (I go into my books totally blind, so I had no idea this was coming). (more…)

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Peter Swanson–The Kind Worth Killing (2015) [audiobook 2012]

Posted in Airplanes, Drinking, Feminism, Guns, Johnny Heller, Karen White, Kathleen Early, Keith Szarabajka, Maine, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Peter Swanson, Sex, Sexism, Unlikable main character, Violence on June 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: June 2023] The Kind Worth Killing

I had enjoyed Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders so much that I wanted to get more audio books by him.  I had heard that he was creating a sequel to one of his popular books, but I didn’t know which one.  It turns out it was this one.

So this seemed like a good one to start with.

As it opened, I absolutely hated it.  It may have been Johnny Heller’s voice, which I did not like.  Although it also sounded familiar and I wondered if I knew him from reading a children’s book and I didn’t like him in an adult role.

Why did I hate it?  Because within the first few minutes, his character, Ted Severson says something to the effect of, “My wife cheated on me.  So I have to kill her.”  I mean, who the hell thinks like that?  And who bases an entire book on that?  That is psychopathic.

Interestingly, I have read many complaints about Swanson’s bland characters, and while I’m not sure they are bland, exactly, they are certainly deadpan or flat or disinterested.  At least that’s how the narrators read them.

So when Karen White took over as narrator for Lily Kintner’s parts, I enjoyed the book more.  Lily was a flat character, but I found her dispassionate voice to be kind of interesting.  (more…)

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Jennifer Estep–Kill the Queen (2018) [audiobook 2018] (Crown of Shards #1)

Posted in Assassination, Audiobooks, Death, Fantasy, Jennifer Estep, Lauren Fortgang, Magic, Revenge, Romance, Supernatural, Trilogy, Unfinished series, Violence on February 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: February 2023] Kill the Queen

One of the fun things about the Chirp audiobook app is that it is constantly recommending books by authors that i have never heard of.  Since I have learned that I really enjoy listening to genres that I don’t especially enjoy reading, I ‘ve been thrilled with all of the unknown (to me) authors that I’m now exposed to.

I didn’t know anything about Jennifer Estep, but the blurb seemed promising.  And, yes, there was something cool about the cover–a medieval looking story but the protagonist is in leather pants.  I know–don’t judge, etc.  But whatever, I gave it a try.

The one bad thing about audio books is you don’t know how certain words are written.  The narrator (Lauren Fortgang–absolutely excellent with a great diversity of voices at her disposal) kept saying Bolognian.  But I now see that it is written Bellonan,  Oh well, no harm.

As the book opens we meet Evie.  Her parents were once King and Queen.  But they were killed when she was young and she had been orphaned and taken in by the Bellonan people.  She was more or less relegated to the level of hanger-on.  Since then, she has been dismissed and even mocked by her more prominent cousins (Evie is 17th in line for the throne now).

She spends her time as an apprentice to a metalsmith.

As mentioned, there’s some anachronism about this story.  It is fantasy with the whole swords and gladiators thing running through the story.  There is also magic.  I rather like the way the magic is presented in the book.  Certain people have it.  Certain people can accentuate it with magical objects.  But some people have none or, as in the case of Evie, they are mutts and their magic is diluted. (more…)

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Lindsay Buroker–Battle Bond [Death Before Dragons #2] (2020) [audiobook 2020]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dragons, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Lindsay Buroker, Magic, Morality, Murder, Supernatural, Tigers, Urban fantasy, Vampires, Violence, Vivienne Leheny, Werewolves on September 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: September 2023] Battle Bond

I had listened to a couple of different Buroker stories before getting to this second book in this series.

But as soon I started this one, Vivienne Leheny’s narration dragged me back in.  I could listen to just about anything she reads.

So this book picks up where the previous one left off.  Val Thorvald is a 40 -something elf/human assassin.  The elf part helps her heal faster than humans, but she is just as flawed as any other human (some critics say far more flawed).  She is still driving the government loaner Jeep that she requisitioned after Zav (before she got to know him) threw her old Jeep into the upper branches of a very tall tree.

Val has an ex-husband and daughter.  She has left them so that they will be safe.  Her ex-husband kind of understands, but her daughter doesn’t want anything to do with her.  This gives her much angst.

Val has no real friends, so she relies on her magical tiger companion, Sindari, for companionship and some great banter (he knows what’s what).  She “won” Sindari in a battle.  I enjoyed that she is ethically conflicted about “owning” a tiger, but Sindari seems to like her, so I guess it’s okay.  Sindari lives in some other realm but comes when she calls him through a magical charm.

Most of the other characters have returned: Val’s mom is a cool hippie (who once married an elf) with a dog and a guy who lives in a trailer on her property.  That would be Dimitri, a large, imposing dude who make delicate wood works (which can also be used as defensive weapons).  There’s also Zultan a vampire with a massive YouTube presence.  And then there’s Nin, a woman who runs a small food truck and makes magical weapons in her spare time. She’s awesome.  And Val’s boss Willard is still around, providing sage wisdom, hi tech help and other good things.  Willard is still recovering from the magical cancer that the dark elves infected her with.

But this story focuses on dragons.

A dragon, Dob, has come to Earth to harass Zav.   It turns out there’s a power struggle on the home world and Zav’s family has been in charge of things for a long time.  This dragon hopes to prove that Zav is not behaving according to dragon standards.  He is also underhanded and violent–unafraid to harm anyone.  He has kidnapped children. And hikers.  By the middle of the book he has taken over a large but remote area of the wilderness.

The politics of Zav’s homeworld are unfolding in  the story and more will clearly be revealed as the stories progress.  It’s good that Buroker doesn’t throw a ton of world building at us, but gives us glimpses of things.

There are dark elves causing trouble in this book as well.  This involves Nin.  They say that her weapons are encroaching on her business.  Translation: her weapons are much better than theirs but there are more of them to bully an independent woman.  Val helps her.  The discussion of payment is pretty hilarious with Val not wanting to take money but Nin, being a businesswoman, insisting on paying something (which turns out to be food).

The relationship between Val and Zav is expanding (I wish I didn’t accidentally hear a spoiler when I listened to another series) and the humor between them is getting much funnier.  Zav brought Val a poster of himself for Val to practice her axe throwing and Val continues to try to teach him contemporary slang–I love the way Leheny deals with these section–her inflections are perfect.

There’s some really cool moments in the story as well–Val rescuing the children in an abandoned building.  Val and her friends getting stuck under a house of evil cat-shifting humans.  They are memorable and you can really visualize the scenes.

The ending of the story is pretty dramatic.  Val winds up crossing a line (in Zav’s mind) and it instantly puts friction between them.  And what she has done puts her own life in danger.

Buroker must spend all of her time writing as all of these items have come out in roughly the last fifteen years.  I’m not going to listen to everything she’s written I don’t think, but here’s what I’ve started.

Death Before Dragons
almost all written in 2020!

  • Mist and Magic — Book 0.5
  • Sinister Magic — Book 1
  • Battle Bond — Book 2
  • Tangled Truths — Book 3
  • Elven Doom — Book 4
  • The Forbidden Ground — Book 4.5
  • False Security — Book 5
  • Storm Forged — Book 6
  • The Box — Book 6.5
  • Secrets of the Sword I – Book 7
  • Secrets of the Sword II – Book 8
  • Gifts — Book 8.5
  • Secrets of the Sword III – Book 9

 

 Legacy of Magic
1-3 written in 2022, the rest in 2023
this is a spinoff series set
in Death Before Dragons world.
It features a new heroine with a new mystery
and threat that she must deal with, but
it also brings back some of the
characters from the original series.

  • Hammered — Book 1
  • Betrayed — Book 2
  • Trolled — Book 3
  • Tested — Book 4
  • Wrenched — Book 5
  • Fused — Book 6
  • Legacy of Magic Short Stories — Newsletter bonus
  • Wanted — Book 7
  • Cursed — Book 8
 Tracking Trouble
2023-2024 (#5 not out yet)
Another urban fantasy series set in my Death Before Dragons and Legacy of Magic world!

  • Marked by Magic — Book 1
  • Bound by Blood — Book 2
  • Driven by Destiny — Book 3
  • A Goblin Christmas — Book 3.5
  • Pursued by Peril — Book 4
  • Tested by Temptation — Book 5

 

Key to this Linday Buroker audio-verse
Red means I’ve listened to it
Green means I’ve downloaded it
Blue means it’s available on Chirp
Black means it’s not available or is a short book

Dragon Gate
2021-2022
(these books are HUGE)

  • Kingdoms at War — Book 1
  • Art of the Hunt — Book 2
  • Broken by Magic — Book 3
  • Chosen for Power — Book 4
  • Sky on Fire — Book 5
  • Orbs of Wisdom — Book 6

 

 A Witch in Wolf Wood
2021-2022
Set in the made-up town of Bellrock, Washington
bookish introvert heroines and surly werewolf heroes.

  • Mind Over Magic — Book 1
  • Spell Hound — Book 2
  • Any Witch Way — Book 3
  • Hoot and Howler — Book 3.5
  • Moment of Tooth — Book 4
  • Charmed and Dangerous — Book 5
 Agents of the Crown
2018

  • Eye of Truth–— Book 1
  • Blood Ties — Book 2
  • Duty Bound — Book 3
  • Elven Fury — Book 4
  • Dragon Tear — Book 5

Haven’t decided on these series yet

Swords & Salt [3]
2013

  • A Question of Honor— Book 1
  • Labyrinths of the Heart— Book 2
  • Death from Below— Book 3
 Chains of Honor [4]
2015
You may want to start with the Chains of Honor Prequels,
three novellas that were originally published as the Swords & Salt series.

  • Warrior Mage — Book 1
  • Snake Heart — Book 2
  • Assassin’s Bond — Book 3
  • Great Chief — Book 4

she also has these series:

The Emperor’s Edge Series (9 primary works).

Forgotten Ages /Encrypted series, set in the same world, approximately eighteen years earlier.  (2 primary works)  PLUS:

  • Swords & Salt series, set in the same world, after the events of EE.
  • Chains of Honor series , set in the same world (Nurian Empire)

also

Dragon Blood Series  (8 primary works)

Heritage of Power (5 primary works) is a sequel a few years after this series

AND THESE SCI-FI SERIES

Fallen Empire Series (8 primary works) SCI-FI

  • Fractured Stars Series (1 book, three stories) stand alone but in this same world

Sky Full of Stars (3 primary works)  sequel

Fallen Empire Universe Series (13 books for kindle only) same world

also

Star Kingdom Series (10 primary works) SCI-FI

AND THESE STEAMPUNK SERIES

Flash Gold Chronicles Series (5 novellas)

AND THIS SERIES TOO

Rust & Relics Series (2.5 books)

 

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Kim Gordon–Girl in a Band: A Memoir (2015) [audiobook 2015–Kim Gordon]

Posted in Artists, Audiobooks, Autobiographies, Beck, Bill Nace, Body/Head, Ciccone Youth, Coachmen, Fluxus, Introjection, Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Real Life, Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, Yuck on December 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 2021] Girl in a Band

I didn’t really have that much interest in this book when it came out.  I love Sonic Youth, but I didn’t really think I cared all that much about their origin stories.  Then I saw that there was an audio book read by Kim and that sounded pretty cool.

I realized that I had no idea anything about Kim Gordon’s life and it was fascinating to learn just how much of a bohemian artist she was before she joined the band.

The memoir starts with the final Sonic Youth show.  Kim and Thurston’s divorce was already going to happen.  They simply wanted to finish out their final shows.  So Kim played while watching her disappointment of a husband absorb all the adulation.

But Kim’s book isn’t a salacious tell-all. It’s the story of her life and how she wound up where she did.  In fact, there’s very little about Sonic Youth (a lot more about the earliest records and then bits and pieces about the later records).  And, while she’s obviously pissed at Thurston for what he did, she’s restrained in her need to thrash the guy.

Perhaps the biggest take away from the book is that after thirty years of being in a rock band, she doesn’t consider herself a musician or a Rock Star (maybe a small letter rock star).  That eye opening statement is a kind of lead in to the fact that she has been an artist for most of her life–just not necessarily in music.

She moved to New York from California in 1980.  It’s crazy thinking that Kim was a California girl.

It’s even crazier thinking about her older brother Keller who was manipulative and mean and ultimate institutionalized. Kim idolized him and he abused her terribly (more than an older brother might normally do).  All of this made Kim into the shy and sensitive woman who you would never think was responsible for some of the most iconoclastic and then iconic music of the 20th century. (more…)

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Marie Brennan–A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir of Lady Trent (The Lady Trent Memoirs, 1) (2013) [audiobook 2013–Kate Reading]

Posted in Audiobooks, Death, Dragons, Fantasy, Feminism, Kate Reading, Marie Brennan, Rhys Davies, Sci-fi, Science, Sexism, Threats, Todd Lockwood, Unfinished series, Violence on November 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 2021] A Natural History of Dragons

This book sounded interesting. I knew nothing about it (aside from the title) and had no idea it would unfold the way it did.

Turns out that Kate Reading, whom I didn’t know, was an outstanding reader. She did male voices so compellingly that I forgot it was just one reader.

The book is a memoir.  The book feels like a Victorian novel (where a woman is not allowed to have the kind of adventures she ultimately does).  Reading reads Lady Trent in a kind of slow, deliberate, older, upper class lady voice.  It felt a wee bit slow at first, although I couldn’t imagine her doing it any other way.

Lady Isabella Tent is the leading scholar on dragons.  Indeed, the book starts:

All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth into the clear light of modern science.

Each chapter even has an olde-fashioned style in which the chapter heading summarizes what’s to be found within.  Lady Trent is an old woman now, finished with the excitement of her life and all that she has accomplished and she has decided that rather than answering all of the letters she gets all the time, that she would set the record straight and write her memoirs.

She starts from her early childhood and her tone is at one approving and occasionally disbelieving in the kind of person she was.

When Lady Trent was young Isabella, she had a unladylike desire to be scientific.  When she first captured a “sparkling” (this book is written as if we would know what she’s talking about since it is a memoir of a famous person’s exploits.  If you don’t know what a sparkling is, well, where have you been?).

Her mother was horrified by her behavior.  I mean what kind of girl dissects a bird to see how it can fly?  A scientific genius, that’s what kind. (more…)

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Grady Hendrix–The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (2020) [audiobook 2020–Bahni Turpin]

Posted in Alan Paton, Bahni Turpin, Book Club, Death, Fraud, Funny (ha ha), Grady Hendrix, Marriage Trouble, Monsters, Murder, Nazis, Quirk Books, South, Vampires, Violence, Yuck! on November 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[READ: Summer 2021] The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

I loved the name of this book.  The fact that it was put out by Quirk Books was a major plus.

This book was read by Bahni Turpin and she was magnificent.  I was hooked right from the start.  I loved her Southern accents and the way she made each character unique and easily recognizable.

In the preface to the book, Hendrix explains that this novel is a kind of apology for his earlier novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism.   In that novel teenagers were the protagonists and parents were cast as trouble for them.  He felt the need to address the concerns of the parents this time around.

I love the way the characters clearly love their children but are also realistic about them:  “Being a teenager isn’t a number,” says Maryellen. “It’s the age when you stop liking them.”

The story opens in a hilarious way.

It’s 1988 and Grace Cavanaugh had started a book club,  She wanted all of the women in her circle to read the classics.  This month’s book was Cry, The Beloved Country.  Grace was the quintessential Southern woman.  Her house was perfect.  Her thick pile carpets were white and immaculate (the way she inwardly cringes as cheese straws land on the carpet is hilarious).  She did not allow for anything improper.  She expected people to do what was proper.  Like finish the book club book.

The story zooms in on Patricia Campbell.  She needed the book club,  But she did not read the book.

She was given twenty minutes to talk about the book.  And the way she tries to stretch it out is hilarious.  Eventually Grace calls her out on it.  And is very disappointed in her.  Soon enough, though, the other women reveal that they didn’t read it either.

On her way to her car Patricia is stopped by Kitty Scruggs, another book club woman.  She invites Patricia to join the book club that she has just started.  It’s going to be her and Slick Paley, a conservative Christian (with an amazing accent, thank you Bahni) who seems dumb but is far from dumb, and Maryellen, a Yankee transplant (who has a very different accent which is nice to hear).  Eventually, even Grace joins because they are going to be reading the most salacious true crime books they can find.

Each of the women is married and their families are very different.  Patricia’s husband is straight-laced.  Her daughter is just old enough to be sarcastic to her and her son, Blue (that name is explained about 3/4 of the way through the book) has suddenly become obsessed with Nazis.  Basically, she needs these women.

Five years later, the book club is still going and the women feel closer to each other than ever (although Patricia doesn’t feel super close to Grace, because who could, really).  Then one night, a night that Blue didn’t take out the garbage, Patricia walks to where the cans are stored and is attacked.  The assailant is an old woman.  She acts crazy and even though Patricia knows her, she can’t talk sense into her. The old woman bites off part of her ear (which becomes quite a conversation piece, obviously). (more…)

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