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Audiobook Review – Pleasure of a Dark Prince – Kresley Cole

16 Apr

Audies nominee paranormal

pleasure dark princePleasure of a Dark Prince
Author: Kresley Cole
Series: #9 in the Immortals After Dark series
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Narrator: Robert Petkoff
Run Time: 12hrs and 12minutes
Narration Rating ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Description:
A DANGEROUS BEAUTY…
Lucia the Huntress: as mysterious as she is exquisite, she harbors secrets that threaten to destroy her — and those she loves.
AN UNCONTROLLABLE NEED…
Garreth MacRieve, Prince of the Lykae: the brutal Highland warrior who burns to finally claim this maddeningly sensual creature as his own.
THAT LEAD TO A PLEASURE SO WICKED….
From the shadows, Garreth has long watched over Lucia. Now, the only way to keep the proud huntress safe from harm is to convince her to accept him as her guardian. To do this, Garreth will ruthlessly exploit Lucia’s greatest weakness — her wanton desire for him.

Review:
I’ll admit that I was glad to see this book nominated for an Audie in the Paranormal category because I have been slowly working my way through the series in the last few months – although listening to this installment meant that I had to jump a couple of books in the series (from #6 to this one), but the good thing is that while I was missing a little bit of the back story, it wasn’t enough to detract from my listening pleasure. The heroine in Pleasure of a Dark Prince is Lucia, who has been a constant feature in previous books – so even though I did skip a couple, I was well-versed in who she was and some of her antics in the past. The same with Garreth – while I don’t remember specifically meeting him previously, the MacRieve family had been present in several of the previous books and he had been mentioned.

Pleasure of the Dark Prince was pretty much a roller coaster ride from the get-go – the last few that I have listened to seem to be much more quest based – i.e. a quest to find a weapon or a person, than just a straight paranormal romance. Don’t get me wrong, I love this and it makes for something different, but at times, I find that the quest and the characters desire to complete it, sometimes overshadows the romance. In this case, Lucia was kind of like that – I saw the passion between her and MacReive – but at the same time, she drove me batshit crazy because she did some dumb shit in order to fulfill her mission. But since it was an idiotic move that had originally caused her to end up in trouble, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised…

As usual, the hotness level between the two main characters was bordering being off the charts and I felt the need to fan myself in a few places. Not sure if it was the narration by the fabulous Robert Petkoff or the combo of the writing and narration (either way, do yourself a favor and listen to one of his narrations – I dare you to disagree). I will say though that while the romance between Lucia and Garreth was hot, it was the zany cast of other characters who I have come to appreciate – especially Nix – in fact, I think one of my twitter posts while listening was something about getting my Nix Fix.

When it comes to audiobook listening, there are a few narrators that I will pick up book description unseen because I have had such a good experience with them previously. Robert Pekhoff is one of them – his narration has the ability to make my knees go weak in places (which is potentially bad when you are listening while on the treadmill). He also has the ability to make all the characters sound unique in their own way, which is impressive when you consider that this is book 9 in a series and each book has a variety of different characters and many of them appear in other books. I have no idea how he manages to keep them all straight.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince was a solid installment into Cole’s Immortals After Dark series and Pekhoff continues his narration prowess. I can’t wait to go back and listen to the books I just skipped and continue the series. Its going to be hard picking a winner in the Paranormal category, because they are all solid so far. Pleasure of a Dark Prince got 4 stars for both story and narration.

 
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Posted by on April 16, 2015 in Armchair Audies, Audiobook Review

 

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Review – The Great Zoo of China – Matthew Reilly

27 Jan

great zoo of chinaThe Great Zoo of China
Author: Matthew Reilly
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Review Copy Provided by the Publisher

Description:
It is a secret the Chinese government has been keeping for forty years.

They have found a species of animal no one believed even existed. It will amaze the world.

Now the Chinese are ready to unveil their astonishing discovery within the greatest zoo ever constructed.

A small group of VIPs and journalists has been brought to the zoo deep within China to see its fabulous creatures for the first time.

Among them is Dr. Cassandra Jane ‘CJ’ Cameron, a writer for National Geographic and an expert on reptiles.

The visitors are assured by their Chinese hosts that they will be struck with wonder at these beasts, that they are perfectly safe, and that nothing can go wrong.

Of course it can’t…

Review:
I’ve been a fan of Matthew Reilly for years, since I bought and read Ice Station in one afternoon – I mean, I devoured the book. And since then I’ve made it a policy to always buy or read his books when they are released (although, since he is an Australian author, there is sometimes a delay between release in Australia and the US – but thankfully, my mother supports my addiction and buys me his books). So when I got the notification that his new book, The Great Zoo of China was available for review, I KNEW that I had to get my hands on it. It was different from his previous ones that fell within the Scarecrow/Jack West Jr World, but going back to his thriller background, after the deviation with The Tournament.

As with any Matt Reilly book, I knew exactly what I was going to get when I picked it up – the plot would be highly implausible, bordering on ridiculous; it would be fast paced and action packed with lots of blood/guts and gore and I wouldn’t be able to put it down. And he succeeded on all levels – I saw down to read this at about noon on a Saturday and literally didn’t move from my bed until early that evening when I finished reading it. I kept saying, just one more chapter, just one more – and before I knew it the book was finished. I always find it interesting that I enjoy these books since I am primarily a romance reader and I love a happy ending and quite often his books leave me with more questions than answers – yet I keep picking them up. I will say though that this book was a stand-alone and from what I could see, I don’t know if it could be turned into a series, which could be good. While I love his other books, my favorite it still Temple, set in the jungles of South America.

One of the things about Matt’s writing, aside from the thrill a minute, is that he typically has strong female characters – who while they may have some moments of questionable actions, for the most part, they are kick ass and CJ was no different. I really enjoyed how he managed to mix her expertise and passion for a subject into an action adventure plot. He really shows that there is nothing a man can do that a woman can’t (CJ is a great example, as is Mother from his Scarecrow series). And while the secondary characters are normally well developed, I always find myself particularly attached to one character and rooting for them (and yes, it was CJ in this instance).

I’ll agree with other reviews that say the plot was highly implausible – I mean, a nest of dragons being found and kept secret for 20+ years (I mean, I know its China, but really). But at the same time, that is what I like about Matt’s writing – it is completely farfetched and would never happen in a million years. I always feel, when it comes to fiction, authors either need to be as plausible as possible, or as completely farfetched as possible when it comes to developing their storylines – when they try to toe the line between the two, it often doesn’t work for me.

Really, this is a hard review to write, because every time I start writing something around the plot, I type a spoiler and this is a review that could easily turn spoiler ridden (but I won’t do that to you). Here is my advice – get it, read it if you like completely whacked out action adventure. I gave The Great Zoo of China 4 stars and now, I have to go back to waiting for his next book.

 
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Posted by on January 27, 2015 in Book Review

 

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Audiobook Review – The Martian – Andy Weir

16 Oct

the martianThe Martian
Author: Andy Weir
Narrator: R.C. Bray
Audiobook Length: 10h4s 53 min
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Description:
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first man to die there.

It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he’s stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive–and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to get him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills–and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit–he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Review:
Every so often (although more frequently), there are books that people rave about, and rave about and sometimes I avoid the temptation to jump in and read and other times I take the plunge. I’d been hearing about The Martian on and off for probably a good year nearly from various online reading groups, so when it was selected as a group read in one of my Goodreads groups, I toddled off to Audible and grabbed the audiobook. Of course, as usual, I had several other books to finish up first before I could start it, but when I did, holy roller coaster of a ride. As I started listening, the whole storyline reminded me of that 1980’s TV show MacGyver (with the fantabulous Richard Dean Anderson). You know, where you give RDA a carrot, a battery and a spoon and he constructs a working bomb – that is who Mark Watney reminded me of. Of course, he wasn’t hunting (or being hunted by bad guys), or blowing things up (well…not on purpose at least) – but the problem solving mentally was perfect.

I’ll admit that I am not a science geek by any stretch of a means, so a lot of that kind of stuff went right over my head – especially when they had the guy talking about orbital physics (I can barely spell it – I just had to resort to using spell check to spell physics…). But even with all that, the technically stuff was for the most part, addressed in a way that even a lay person could attempt to understand – which the author used technie words/theories, he also tried to dumb them down for normal people. I think if the story had just been limited to Mark’s POV, it would have been a lot weaker overall – however, the integration of the NASA scientists who are trying to rescue him and his former crew-members who left him for dead, made the storyline much more intriguing.

The narrator, R.C. Bray, is brand-new to me but I can tell you that it won’t be the last time I listen to him. He managed to toe the line between comedic inference and serious moments perfectly. There were times when I was laughing so hard at his narration that I was crying. I found that his voice distinctions between Mark and the assortment of other characters was well-defined, even down to his narration of the Chinese astronaut and the Indian astrophysicist. I highly recommend him as a narrator to try.

Overall, I gave both the book and narration 4 stars, and glad that I took the opportunity to listen to it. Personally, for me, I think it worked better in audio, than reading, but that might just be me.

 
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Posted by on October 16, 2014 in Audiobook Review

 

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