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Archive for the ‘Morality’ Category

Ally Carter–The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (2024) [audiobook 2024]

Posted in Ally Carter, Audiobooks, Funny (ha ha), Morality, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Romance, Saskia Maarleveld, Violence, Zachary Webber on December 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: December 2024] The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

This is probably the first romance book that I’ve listened to.  Technically it’s a romance mystery, but the format is pretty distinctively romance.

I can say that I really didn’t enjoy the more romancey parts of the book.  Not because of the romance, because heck, almost all books have a romance component.

But I found this romance to  be beating us over the head with the fact that a) Maggie HATES Ethan and b) Ethan is REALLY HOT.  Again, I’m fine with the romance angle and even these tow components of the romance, but jeez, how many times did Carter have to tell us these two things.

Every time she saw Ethan she pointed out his hot arms or his studly abs.  And every time she saw him she told us how much she hated him.

And, hey, Ally Carter, trust your reader that they can hold information for more than a few pages.

This may have seemed more obnoxious to be in an audio book format.  Saskia Maarleveld did a great job in both male and female voices.  But hearing some of those same phrases repeated over and over was annoying.  Zachary Webber did a good job as Ethan (towards the end of the book, Ethan starts getting his own POV), but I actually enjoyed Saskia’s voice more.

So a basic plot summary.  Mystery author Maggie Chase hates Ethan Wyatt, a fellow author at their publishing imprint. He’s good-looking, popular with literally everyone and the guy can NEVER get her name right. (more…)

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John Scalzi–Starter Villain (2023)

Posted in Adventure, Cats, Death, Funny (ha ha), Huh?, Morality, Murder, Supernatural, Technology, Villains, Violence on February 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 3, 2024] Starter Villain

My wife and I have relatively different tastes in books, but we have a large section of overlap.  And since she is a much faster reader than I, she brings home all kinds of books that I think I’d like to check out.

And this was, obviously one of them.  I mean, blah blah, books by their covers, but come on, of course I’m going to at least look at this one.

She confirmed that it was good and I jumped in.

I must say right off the bat it’s not what I thought it was going to be.  The cats are not the villains, despite how obvious that seems. Rather, the cats are helpers to the villain.  But we’ll get to that.

Charlie is down on his luck.  He’s a substitute teacher.  He’s recently divorced–this hurts even more because his Uncle Jake sent him a pair of berry spoons as a wedding present with a note that said 18 months, which was exactly as long as his wedding lasted.  And the house he’s living in was his only inheritance.  But he has three half siblings who are all owed a part of the house.  But it’s the only place he has to go.  And he’s got this stray cat that he recently brought home…

His last hope for a semblance of success is to buy a local Irish pub that is for sale.  But it costs a few hundred thousand dollars more than he has–and the bank isn’t fooled by his lies.

When he gets back from the bank, there is a woman waiting on his porch.   She tells him that his Uncle Jake (the one with the spoons) has died and left him a substantial sum.  He just has to go to the funeral and say a few words on his behalf.

Charlie hasn’t seen his Uncle since he was like five years old and has no idea what to say about the man.  The man owned parking garages.  How could he have a substantial sum?  But whatever, he has not much else going on.

The funeral home is hilarious because all of the bouquets has curses and threats on them–beautiful flower arrangements with sashes that say things like “See You In Hell.”  And when the funeral actually starts one of the men takes out a knife to make sure that Jake is dead. (more…)

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Peng Shepard–The Cartographers (2022) [audiobook 2022]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks,  Brittany Pressley,  Jason Culp,  Karen Chilton,  Nancy Wu,  Neil Hellegers,  Ron Butler, Death, Emily Woo Zeller, Huh?, Magic, Maps, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Peng Shepard, Supernatural, Violence on January 20, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The Cartographers

This book came on a recommended list and WOW did it sound great.

In fact, after the first few chapters, I was telling my wife about the great premise.  But I was already warning her about the irritating characters.  And, as the story went on, the premise got even better, but the characters got even more and more annoying.

And the repetitions in the book were endless.  She kept repeating herself.  She was saying the same thing over and over again.  Perhaps in a slightly different way.  But then she would circle back and confirm the repetitions.  So by the end of a chapter you had read the same thing two or three times.  And then she might repeat it once more.

The book grew so annoying that I almost didn’t bother finishing it (as many people on Goodreads said).  But I hate not finishing things, so I did something that I never do.  I sped up my audio book.

I’m not sure if I found the characters especially dull because of their actions or because of Emily Woo Zeller the audiobook narrator.  But holy cow, this book dragged on.  By the end of the book I had moved the audio speed up to 1.8x and for Emily Woo Zeller, it did not make it hard to follow (some of the other narrators were too sped up at that speed).  

The other narrators were Ron Butler, Nancy Wu, Jason Culp, Brittany Pressley, Karen Chilton and Neil Hellegers.  It was a little hard to tell when a new narrator came in, because they mostly seemed to be telling the story from different points of view.  But sometimes the main narrator narrated their parts as well. 

So the premise of the story (and I hope this isn’t a spoiler) is that if a map is made with an error (intentional or not), whatever is on that map actually exists–but only if you have that map.  I mean, this is an amazing premise.  And it is based on a real event. (more…)

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Anthony Horowitz–The House of Silk : A Sherlock Holmes Novel (2011) [audiobook 2011]

Posted in Adventure, Anthony Horowitz, Arthur Conan Doyle, Audiobooks, Death, Derek Jacobi, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Pedophilia, Religion, Sherlock Holmes, Violence on January 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The House of Silk

I’ve been really enjoying some various Anthony Horowitz adult books.  I particularly enjoyed his Hawthorne and Horowitz books.

I had noticed that House of Silk seemed to be a really Big, Important book for hi, but I didn’t really know why.  When it went on sale at my audiobook supplier, I grabbed it.  That’s when I discovered it was a Sherlock Holmes story.

I went through a brief phase where I was reading as many Holmes stories as a I could.  But it has been a while since I read one.

In no way can I compare this story to an Arthur Conan Doyle story, nor do I think you are supposed to (even though this is an authorized part of the series).  I can’t quite imagine the pressure that one must feel in Horowitz’ situation.  There is no way he was going to please people by doing this.  I also don’t know anything about his fondness for Holmes.  I assume it must be great, but who knows.

The fun setup for this story is that Watson has written this book but has asked that it not be opened for 100 years because the information contained within is quite damaging to some important people in English society.

And so, although this story is set at some time during Holmes’ tenure as a detective, it’s not his “final” case or anything like that.

The story is fairly convoluted (it is a Holmes story, after all), but it actually has two mysteries intertwined.

It opens with Edmund Carstairs coming to Sherlock for help.  He is an art dealer and when a group of valuable paintings were shipped to America, they were robbed/destroyed  in a train robbery.  The culprits were actually after money on the train, but they still cost the art dealer a fortune.  He hired a man in America to round up the thieves who were known as the flat cap gang.  The Gang is headed by two Irishmen, the O’Donoghue twins.  During the investigation, one of the twins is killed.  Carstairs is convinced that the surviving twin, Keelon O’Donoghue has come to kill him. (more…)

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Lindsay Buroker–Sinister Magic [Death Before Dragons #1] (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 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 2022] Sinister Magic

I’m not sure what attracted me to this author.  I suppose she came up on my Chirp Audiobook suggestions and I was looking for something a little different.

I like fantasy, but sometimes it gets too much up its own world building of for me to get into the story.  I hadn’t really read much urban fantasy, but from the little I’ve read, I rather like it.  The stories feel contemporary and feature alternate-reality takes on things we already know.  And I rather like that.

Linday Buroker is a self-published author.  This typically raises a red-flag, but this book has almost 10,000 ratings on Goodreads, so it’s not like no one is reading her.  She is also absurdly prolific as you can see by the massive chart down below.

But what hooked me on this series was narrator Vivienne Leheny.  I don’t know much about her, but I absolutely loved her voices, her tone and her ability to really get sarcasm across (Buroker’s characters are very sarcastic).  And, amazingly, Leheny seems to read most if not all of Buroker’s books.

So, in summary, the main character is Val Thorvald.  As she says, “I’m an assassin.”  But she’s not that kind of assassin.  She only goes after “magical bad guys.”   When magical bad guys come to earth, she takes care of them. Permanently.

This doesn’t make her popular with the rest of the magical community.  But thanks to her half-elven blood, a powerful sword named Chopper, and a telepathic tiger with an attitude, she’s always been able to deal with any threats that come her way. (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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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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Aaron Blabey–The Bad Guys: Episode One (2015)

Posted in Aaron Blabey, Children's Books, Fairy Tales, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Morality, Piranhas, Sharks, Snakes, Wolves on January 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: January 12, 2022] The Bad Guys Episode One

A movie is coming out about this book series (Scholastic must have SO MUCH MONEY!).  S. brought it home from the library and I figured I’d give it a read.  And five minutes later I’d finished it.

It’s pretty funny (although not as funny as I would have liked).

It’s also clearly designed for young readers since there are usually no more than five words per page.  I guess it’s a graphic novel, although there are chapters.

The book opens with Mr Wolf staring at us and telling us to come closer.  But we are smart, we know he is a monster so we do not get any closer. (more…)

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Oscar Wilde–“The Young King” (Ireland) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #24] (1891)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Children's Books, Children's Fable, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Ireland, Morality, Oscar Wilde, Religion, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 24, 2021] “The Young King”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

I was pretty delighted that Oscar Wilde was selected for this short story (with the caveat that there are hundreds of more recent Irish short story writers to choose from of course).  And it started off with Wilde’s wit with the king’s courtiers needing Etiquette lessons because most of them still had natural manners–a very grave offense.

But then, good lord, this story dragged on so torturously.

A 16 year old lad is named to be the next king.  He was raised by goatherds so he is blown away by the sumptuousness of the castle.  But, as is the case with children’s stories, of which this is apparently one, he has three bad dreams.

Long dreams.  Elaborately detailed and yet rather tedious dreams. (more…)

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