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Audiobook Review – Suffer the Children – Craig DiLouie

20 Apr

Audies nominee paranormal

suffer the childrenSuffer the Children
Author: Craig DiLouie
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Narrator: R.C. Bray
Run Time: 11hrs 26min
Narration Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Description:
Suffer the Children presents a terrifying tale of apocalyptic fiction, as readers are introduced to Herod’s Syndrome, a devastating illness that suddenly and swiftly kills all young children across the globe. Soon, they return from the grave…and ask for blood. And with blood, they stop being dead. They continue to remain the children they once were…but only for a short time, as they need more blood to live. The average human body holds ten pints of blood, so the inevitable question for parents everywhere becomes: How far would you go to bring your child back?

Review:
WARNING: Book contains scenes that may be nightmare inducing to parents of young children
It is very rare that I need to pause listening to a book mid-way through for a mental break, but Craig DiLouie’ Suffer the Children made me do just that. I’ll be upfront and say that horror is normally not a genre I would pick up, although there are some authors that I will stick my toes into that field just for them (and I guess the same could be said for narrators I enjoy). In fact, this book never would have crossed my reading/listening path, if it hadn’t been nominated for an audie in the Paranormal category but I am so glad that I had the opportunity to listen to it.

First things first, this isn’t your normal vampire fare (or how vampire fare has come to be written recently) – if I had to draw parallel’s it is much more like the old school dracula type vampire, rather than the new romance-y ones. There was nothing nice/romantic about these but that being said, there wasn’t anything really original about the vampires either. For me, the draw in the book was more the philosophical take on how far would you go – it reminded me a lot of the questions asked in the morality class I took in college – if you had to kill 5 or 1 which would you pick? what was the solution for the greater good. I don’t necessarily know if that was what DiLouie was trying to convey in the book (I have a feeling that it was), but that is where my mind went. The prevailing question – what would you do for just one more hour, one more day with your children? I’m not a parent and the idea of having to make that choice is just horrific to me, I can’t imagine who someone who is a parent and listening to this would react.

I will say that I wasn’t expecting the book as it did – although that ending kind of makes sense…it kind of makes me wonder what happens next…

R.C. Bray, once again, brought his skillful narration to the book and it was via this that I felt myself cringing in places and ending up having at least one nightmare during the course of listening. (BTW, tweeting that to an horror author will get you a huge thanks…lol). Having listened to Bray narrate several books in different sub-genres (sci-fi; urban fantasy and now paranormal/horror), its safe to say that he is going to be an auto-buy/listen in the future. Its hard to peg exactly how his narration worked – maybe the fact that I found myself physically cringing in places as I heard his narration of different parts or the fact that I was so invested in what happened to the different characters that hearing what happened to them made me sit in my car in shock for a good 20 minutes one day.

Both the book and the narration were a solid 4 stars for me and I know that I will be checking out more work by DiLouie in the future (even if his writing scares the beejeebers out of me at times). Hopefully with more narration by R.C. Bray in the future.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on April 20, 2015 in Armchair Audies, Audiobook Review

 

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Audiobook Review – The Girl With All The Gifts – M.R. Carey

02 Apr

Audies nominee paranormal

girl of all giftsThe Girl With All The Gifts
Author: M.R. Carey
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Narrator: Finty Williams
Run Time: 13hrs and 4min
Production Company: Hachette Audio
Narration Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Review Copy Provided by Hachette Audio

Description:
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

Review:
The Girl with all the Gifts is a book that I have seen show up in my various blog feeds for a good six months now probably. I kept meaning to read it (or listen to it), but for some reason never had which I guess was great timing, because when I saw it was nominated for an Audie in the Paranormal category, I jumped on the opportunity. I will say this, take the description and just ignore it because that encompasses about the first 20 pages of the book and then you are in for a roller coaster of a ride. The first half was a bit slow (at least in places), but about 6 hours in it started to pick up and the rest was much a continual on-the-go. Although I will say it is really hard to write a review for this without divulging spoilers – because every little thing that occurs from the description on, contributes to the overall story.

I really enjoyed how the author managed to integrate different elements from Greek mythology into the story, along with the current zombie craze (and I feel safe saying that even if its technically a spoiler, because its revealed uber early on). I will say that I’m normally not a zombie fan, because for the most part, they turn out to be a less than entertaining kill kill kill fest – whereas the Girl (or Melanie as she is called) seemed to be much more thinking and developed. I was a tad disappointed with (for me) how the ending played out – based on reviews that I had read, I think I was just expecting a lot more. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad and everything was complete – I just expected more – which is why the story itself only got 4 stars, rather than the 5 it was leaning towards early on.

Flinty Williams was a new narrator to me but it won’t be the last time that I listen to her. Imagine my shock when I googled her name (because I wanted to see if she had twitter so I could tweet that I was listening to her) and found out that she was Dame Judy Dench’s daughter…right there, that just solidified my like of her. I thought that she did really well with Melanie’s POV’s – they sounded like a younger girl (although you never really know how old Melanie truely is). I also liked her narration for the SGT (since that is what he was called the majority of the book) – Ms Williams was able to give a gruffness (for lack of a better word) to his voice that I would expect from a military person. I will admit that her narration for the 2 main females – the teacher and the Dr – kind of blended together after a while – but thankfully, they weren’t talking a lot together, so I could at least keep them separate that way.

I also gave the narration of The Girl with All Gifts 4 stars and will be intrigued to check out more books by the author in the future/ more stuff narrated by Ms Williams.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on April 2, 2015 in Armchair Audies, Audiobook Review

 

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Review – A Book of Tongues – Gemma Files

20 Jun

A Book of Tongues
Author: Gemma Files
Narrator: Gordon Mackenzie
Length: 10 hours 58 minutes

Review Copy provided by audiobook producer as part of Audiobook Jukebox Solid Gold Reviewer program

Book Description:
Two years after the Civil War, Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow has gone undercover with one of the weird West’s most dangerous outlaw gangs-the troop led by “Reverend” Asher Rook, ex-Confederate chaplain turned “hexslinger,” and his notorious lieutenant (and lover) Chess Pargeter. Morrow’s task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook’s power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself.

Magicians, cursed by their gift to a solitary and painful existence, have never been more than a footnote in history. But Rook, driven by desperation, has a plan to shatter the natural law that prevents hexes from cooperation, and change the face of the world-a plan sealed by an unholy marriage-oath with the goddess Ixchel, mother of all hanged men. To accomplish this, he must raise her bloodthirsty pantheon from its collective grave through sacrifice, destruction, and apotheosis.

Caught between a passel of dead gods and monsters, hexes galore, Rook’s witchery, and the ruthless calculations of his own masters, Morrow’s only real hope of survival lies with the man without whom Rook cannot succeed: Chess Pargeter himself. But Morrow and Chess will have to literally ride through Hell before the truth of Chess’s fate comes clear-the doom written for him, and the entire world.

Review
It was like book serendipity when this book showed up as a review copy on AudiobookJukebox. The previous weekend, I had been at a get-together for one of my Goodreads groups and one of the people there was talking about this book and how she highly recommended it. I went ahead and bought it on my kindle and then as I was browing audiobook jukebox, I saw it up for review and thought what the heck, why not ask for a copy and see what happens.

The premise of the book itself was intriguing, the historical setting with the use of Pinkerton agents, mixed in with hex-slingers so the magical aspect and then the GLBT factor of the 2 main characters made for some entertaining listening. I have to say in all my time of listening to audiobooks, this is the first time that I have actually listened to anything featuring m/m romance and I’m pretty sure that my face was probably an interesting shade of red at some points during the listening.

The use of a character who had previously been a reverend and his use of biblical passages scattered through-out provided an interesting theme, and you could tell that the author had done her research and had picked what appeared to be appropriate passages for various phases of the book. However, towards the end, my mind was starting to wander and it felt like overall, some editing and maybe paring down of the book would have been good – even if it had only been a few pages to tighten up the storyline.

This was also the first time that I had ever listened to Gordon McKenzie narrated and I actually went into his narration cold. I tried looking on my normal sources for audiobooks to see if I could get a voice sample, but apparently on that day my computer just decided to not like me and wouldn’t let me do a preview. But I don’t regret it for a minute. I really enjoyed his narration and felt that I could easily identify all the various characters that appeared through-out. I loved the voice of Jess that he came up with and he was probably the most entertaining voice of all of them. I will definately be on the look-out for more books narrated by him in the future.

The production, done by Iambik Audio, was also high quality and I have no complaints about the product received. It was nice to see that the product was easy to download and nicely priced. I’m looking forward to getting the next books in the trilogy.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on June 20, 2012 in Book Review

 

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