Author: Ali Shaw

Reader: Heather O’Neill

Short Review: An enchanting mythic fantasy about a woman searching for a cure or explanation for the mysterious ailment that is causing her feet to turn to glass, read beautifully by one of my favorite readers.

Long Review: Ali Shaw was working at the famous Bodleian library at Oxford when he wrote this book. I can’t help but think that that storied collection crept into his first novel. The book is set on the fictional St. Hauda’s Land, a remote northern archipelago peopled by unusual people and animals. Ida Maclaird returns to the island seeking a strange man she met there on a previous vacation and an explanation for her unique ailment. She meets and befriends Midas Crook, an awkward young photographer, and asks his assistance in her quest. As the story progresses, Ida attempts to help Midas come to terms with his family and his feelings.

Heather O’Neill is a fantastic reader, and I think her tone and pacing were just right for this book. I was excited to get to listen to her narration again, and enjoyed this book ever more than I did The Likeness.

Shaw’s book is so entrancing because of how he plays with mythic themes. You can tell he’s fully-versed in myth and fairy-tales, but this is no retelling of a classic story. He draws from that imagery and makes gorgeous, subtle allusions, but he creates something wholly new for us. The fantastic animals he invents for the story are particularly interesting, and help establish the strange, magical locale where such unusual things can happen. This isn’t fantasy in the sword and sorcery vein. St. Hauda’s land feels real and modern, though uncomfortably different. And his characters-his characters! I want to know Ida and Midas and Henry Fuwa. I feel as if I could meet them on the train.

I look forward to Shaw’s next book, and I’m crossing my fingers that O’Neill will read the audio version.

Available from Audible.com

Author: Daniel Woodrell

Reader: Emma Galvin

Short Review: A stark, beautifully written and expertly read novel about an overburdened girl in dire straits.

Long Review: Set in the Ozarks, Winter’s Bone follows Ree Dolly as she tries to locate her missing father, care for her broken family, and save their home. Ree, 16, is the oldest of three children, and her life seems to be made entirely of danger, neglect, and undue responsibility. The Dollys are part of a larger near-tribal community of outlaws bound by strict rules of secrecy, respect, and gender roles. Ree’s one dream is to join the Army so she can escape, but she’s too young to leave, and her father’s disappearance leaves her family with only her to lead them.

Emma Galvin does an amazing job reading the book. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I find it extremely annoying when readers voice teenage girls with breathy, high-pitched, weak voices. The book follows Ree closely, so we have largely her voice throughout the audio book. Galvin’s reading is spot on. Ree sounds strong, and smart, and desperate–exactly as she should. During the descriptive sections, Galvin’s pacing and diction are excellent as she gives voice to Woodrell’s sparse, dense prose. She is thoroughly believable and restrained. As the book progresses, we learn that Ree’s relationship with Gail, her best friend, has grown beyond the bounds of friendship. Galvin’s reading remains true, without any veering towards stereotypical butchness. She doesn’t ask or answer any more questions than the author did.

Woodrell’s style is often referred to as “country noir.” I find that a lot of books set in the South or Appalachia are down-right condescending and inaccurate. I’m certainly no expert on the Ozarks, but I never got the sense that Woodrell used this imagined community for target practice. He shows their faults, but he shows strength as well. He stares right at their poverty, drug problems, feuds, and failures and relates those things without pity or judgment. His characters are engrossing and layered, and Woodrell never gives us too much. Often, I feel like he’s leaving us wanting for information on purpose, knowing it will keep us entranced. Because of my own academic interests, I was particularly intrigued to know more about the roots of Ree’s strange community–are they descended from Travellers, are they the remnants of a charismatic cult? We never know for sure, which is both annoying and brilliant.

As an aside, after listening to the book, I also watched the film adaptation of the story. It’s been very well received by critics, and it has some real strengths. But, as is almost always the case with films made from movies I love, it was lacking. The filmmakers omitted Ree’s sexuality entirely–as people are wont to do with stories like this. A son turns to a daughter, the mysterious origins of Ree’s community are erased–but overall it’s a very good movie.

Author: Jim Butcher
Reader: James Marsters

Short Review: Harry Dresden, Wizard of Chicago, gets pulled into a murder investigation riddled with werewolves and betrayal. Marsters remains the perfect reader to bring the Dresden Files to life.

Long Review: The second installment in the Dresden Files is perhaps stronger than the first.  In this  all our enemies have either claws or guns. Not satisfied with simply one bad guy, Butcher has thrown a whole arsenal of people and creatures to complicate Harry’s life. Not just werewolves, but multiple kinds. Not just the cops of Special Investigations are not on his side, but the FBI is in town. Gangs not enough for you? Never fear, we have the Mafia too!

Can you read this without having read the first book in the series, Storm Front? I suppose so, but you will have more fun with it if you start at the beginning and meet everyone along the way.

In this book we also get a bit more background on Harry and the world he lives in. We learn a few Wizard secrets and get to know his allies a bit better. Butcher’s characters are not cardboard cutouts – even those just passing through get enough detail to make them feel real. To top it off, Marsters has all the right voices for this wild assortment of characters. Most importantly, his voice for Harry, both his speaking voice and the one inside his head, is just perfect. He makes it sound so easy, so natural.

I don’t want to spoil any of the story for you, so from here I just say – go listen!

You can download the first 3 Chapters for free.

Available from Audible.com

Author: Sarah Waters

Reader: Simon Vance

Short Review: An intriguing, unusual gothic novel set in post-war England, read beautifully by Simon Vance. It’s intriguing and gorgeously written, and it asks more questions than it answers.

Long Review: With this novel, Waters takes a step away from her usual focus on sexuality and instead plays with questions of psychology, unreliable narrators, class, and mystery. The resulting novel is intriguing, but some readers may be frustrated by the lack of a clear resolution to the story.

The story opens as a country doctor pays a house call to the ailing maid in a crumbling estate house called Hundreds. Dr. Faraday insinuates himself into the daily life of the Ayers family, owners of Hundreds. He befriends eldest daughter Caroline Ayers, endears himself to Mrs. Ayers, and offers experimental treatments to Roderick, injured war veteran and only son. As the book progresses, Faraday’s presence begins to trouble Caroline and Roderick, and the reader begins to question Faraday’s motives.

Simon Vance is an excellent reader. His pacing is wonderful, his diction is clear, and his differentiation between characters is clear and easy to follow. Dr. Faraday is the speaker of the book, and Vance doesn’t make it clear whether or not we should trust the doctor. I love that Vance didn’t steer the listened towards one view or another in this novel. As some of the residents of Hundreds begin to believe the house is haunted, Vance doesn’t push us towards believing in the ghost or deciding that the supposed haunting is really a devious plot or a strange psychosis. He allows the mysterious to remain just that.

Available from Audible.com

Author: Philip Pullman

Reader: Anton Lesser

Warning! If you have not yet read The Shadow in the North, stop reading this review. There’s no way to review this book without giving spoilers for the previous book in the series.

Short Review: The third Sally Lockhart mystery continues Pullman’s engrossing story of a young Victorian woman, expertly read by Anton Lesser. This book delves further into questions of women’s and children’s rights in Victorian Britain and also examines worker’s and immigrant’s rights and antisemitism.

Long Review: This book opens three years after the last closes, and we find that Sally is now a mother to Fred’s child and grieving his death. Jim and Webster are out of the country, and Sally is living at a country house and still running her financial advisory business, now with the aid of a partner and a house staff. Sally is visited by a process server who serves her with divorce papers for a marriage she never engaged in, and as happens in this series, all hell breaks loose. This entire series is full of intrigue and danger, but I found this one the most frightening because the threat is against Sally, but also against her daughter Harriet, and Sally has so few people to help her and so few tools to aid her. It’s truly terrifying.

I found Pullman’s inclusion of the London Jewish community in the story incredibly interesting. I’m no expert on Jewish history, and the book made me want to study more. I love it when that happens. I am more familiar with British women’s history, particularly the history of Suffragists and other early women’s rights activists, so I found that aspect both comfortably familiar and very interesting.

Anton Lesser reads this book as fantastically as he read the two prior books in the series. The sense of desperation and drama tightens as the book progresses. He does a great job with the broadened array of accents and characters in this book. I cannot wait to listen to more books read by Lesser.

This book has been criticized for being overly political and for containing content that is inappropriate for young readers, as were the earlier books in the series. In this novel, I agree that Pullman puts too much emphasis on the political, which slows the book down a bit. I don’t think the book contains anything inappropriate for young adults though, particularly in light of the standard fare for teens available on TV and the web. For me, Pullman’s writing and Lesser’s reading are enough to bolster the weaker parts of the book.

A Sally Lockhart Mystery: The Shadow in the North

Available from Audible.com

Author: Philip Pullman

Reader: Anton Lesser

Short Review: The slightly-less brilliant sequel to The Ruby in the Smoke, read just as brilliantly by Anton Lesser.

Long Review: In the six intervening years between the first book in the series and this sequel, Sally has opened a financial consultancy business and Jim and Frederick have become private investigators. This books opens as a ship vanishes in the Baltic. Soon after, Sally becomes interested in the ship’s destruction when she learns that one of her clients lost a great deal of money she had invested in the shipping company whose ship went down. Sally begins investigating the shipping company in the hopes of returning her client’s money to her, while Jim and Frederick are asked to provide protection to a magician who claims to have knowledge of a murder. All hell breaks loose, of course.

I enjoyed this book, but I also saw some weaknesses in it. There are a couple of plot points that are a bit hard to swallow, but I don’t tend to focus much on that as long as they don’t apply to something I study personally. More importantly, Pullman definitely brings a political mindset to his work, and I can see how someone whose political views differed from the author’s would find that annoying. In the first novel of the series, Pullman criticizes colonialism, the opium wars and trade, and Victorian limits on women’s rights. I doubt many readers see his platforms as controversial. In this book, however, Pullman is examining the excesses of corporations and the growth of the military-industrial complex. I don’t find fault with his criticisms, but I’m much farther to the left than most Americans, so I also don’t see myself as representative on this subject.

The book also begins exploring Victorian sexual mores and it has a number of violent scenes. I’ve read a number of criticisms of this book based on the fact that a “young adult” novel depicts sexual relationships and/or violence. Here, I think the problem is really how publishers classify novels, not the content itself. Sally was 16 in the first book. She is 22 in this sequel, and no longer a minor by today’s definition. But some parents really don’t want their kids reading books that contain sex or violence, so they should how mature their young readers are before handing this audiobook over. I think that audiobooks can make certain things, including sex and violence, seem more intense than they would seem on the printed page. Lesser’s astounding skill as a reader intensifies such material even further, so the violence seems sharper and the sexiness sexier. I was fine with it, but I’m and adult and my Mom hasn’t monitored my choice in books since I was 10.

The Ruby in the Smoke

Available from Audible.com

Author: Philip Pullman
Reader: Anton Lesser

Short Review: A beautifully read story about a resourceful young woman who finds herself orphaned and embroiled in a deadly mystery.

Long Review: This first novel of a series is set in Victorian England, one of my favorite settings, and it follows a head-strong, resourceful young woman, my favorite sort of character. I’m a fan of Pullman’s, and I was bound to like this book. What surprised me though was how much I love the narrator. Lesser does an amazing job as reader. I know I have an obvious predilection for English readers, but Lesser is uncommonly good. He switches from character to character and accent to accent smoothly and believably. He alters his pitch and tone for different characters, but his voices for women aren’t those ludicrous falsettos that would bounce you out of the story. His natural pitch is in the tenor range, so he drops for men’s voices rather than climbing too much for women’s. It may not make much of a difference for some listeners, but for me his technique made the audiobook. In addition to his excellent accent and pitch work, his pacing and acting are wonderful throughout. The book was absolutely engrossing. I didn’t want it to end.

The book opens as Sally Lockhart goes to the office of her recently-deceased father, a shipping agent, to inquire about a note she received from his former business partner. Her brief conversation with an office worker named Jim lays the foundation for their friendship. Her conversation with her father’s Secretary Higgs leaves him dead on the floor. As the story progresses, questions about colonization, the opium trade, women’s rights, family, friendship, and betrayal all loom around Sally. As she delves into the mystery hinted at by the note, Sally reveals herself to be an uncommon young woman, and I loved rooting for her and the allies she draws to her side. This is a great start to an entertaining series.

Author: Diane Setterfield
Readers: Jill Tanner and Bianca Amato

Short Review: A gothic novel of intrigue about family history, fame, women, writing, truth, and secrets. It is read gorgeously by two readers who both have velvety, rich voices and lovely diction.

Long Review: The book opens in the voice of Margaret Lea, a bookseller and amateur biographer, who receives a letter from Vida Winter, a famous (fictional) English author. The pathologically secretive Winter asks Lea to write her biography. Lea has never read Winter’s novels, so she borrows a copy of Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation from her father and discovers that it is one story short of thirteen. Captivated by Winter’s writing, Lea accepts the commission. As the story unfolds, Lea has to dig through fiction upon fiction to reach the truth of Winter’s life story, but also to rehash and reminisce about her own family history. Throughout the novel, the role of speaker switches back and forth between Winter and Lea.

This book is right up my alley. I love the author’s prose, both readers, the setting, the exploration of cultural mores and the roles of women, its bookishness, its pace. I think it’s masterful. I’ve listened to it a couple of times now. The mystery of it isn’t the thing for me anymore, of course. Now I’m looking at the architecture and trimmings, and I still love it.

Short Review: A fantastic picaresque novel about a man traveling throughout the US, working for and with American Gods. It’s expertly read by one of the most respected narrators in the business.

Long Review: Jeanne and I regularly joke about the need for more negative reviews on this site. This review won’t help to moderate our reviews one jot.

I love this novel so much on paper that I was slow to choose it to listen to. I loved Anansi Boys as much as Jeanne did, but knew that I wouldn’t have Lenny Henry as a reader this time around. I know many people who are fans of Guidall’s narration, but I wasn’t wild about his reading of Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, so I was a bit hesitant to hear his version of one of my favorite books. But then I was staring down a long, intricate project that I knew would require a good long audiobook to keep me going, and in stepped Guidall.

He did a fantastic job with this novel. His reading is well paced, his variations in accent and tone for different characters is consistent and strong, and he obviously enjoyed the book. His smokey natural voice is particularly suited to many of the characters in the novel, but particularly Wednesday and Shadow. My only complaint is that Guidall mispronounces the names of a number of Gods who show up in the novel. I know not everyone will catch the errors, but they set my teeth on edge.

The novel itself is one that I think everyone should read. It appeals particularly to mythology buffs like me, but I think other people enjoy it for a hundred different reasons. It’s a good Road novel, and it’s a mystery. It touches on prison, and family, and marriage and love, heroism and bravery, grifters, sensuality, small towns and cities, trust and betrayal, sacrifice and belief. Finally, it’s a winter novel that passes over the holidays but isn’t about them–that’s exactly the antidote I need at this time of year. I’m tempted to hit the back button and listen to the whole thing again right now.

American Gods

Short Review: An intricate, beautiful, arguably overlong book beautifully read by a very talented narrator. This isn’t a book for everyone, but it was definitely a book for me.

Long Review: I decided to listen to this audiobook as part of 12 books in 12 months, a reading project floating out there in the blogosphere which encourages people to finally read at least a dozen of the books that have been haunting our shelves for ages. This one seemed apt, because I’d originally picked up a paper copy of Possession at the beginning of my graduate school program. At the time, I was too discouraged by how sad the protagonist’s life is at the outset. As a new grad student contemplating a transfer to a more fitting but probably less marketable program, it scared me away, and fast.

The book is very dense and incredibly detailed, and as I listened, I wavered between loving the layered detail and thinking Byatt should have edited out more and simplified the book. Possession follows a frustrated, underemployed, unpublished English Literature graduate student working on the (fictional) poet Randolph Henry Ash, who discovers some heretofore lost drafts of a letter to a woman. Roland becomes obsessed with tracking down the unnamed addressee and discovering the nature of his relationship to the woman Ash addressed. He meets Maud Bailey, a young professor and expert on the under-appreciated (and also fictional) poet Christabel LaMotte. The two contemporary academics studiously pick through letters and poems and search for lost or unknown correspondence, and end up uncovering wonderful connections between the historical writers and developing an interesting relationship of their own.

What’s fascinating about this book is how layered it is, and how much attention it pays to topics that are very dear to my heart. It delves into Breton and Scandinavian mythology, poetry, feminist theory, embroidery and knitting (though only touches of those, sadly), the nature of love, the nature of poetry, the nature of translation and retellings of myths (my nerdy heart sings!) . . . it’s so rich. One could argue that it’s too rich. Byatt gives us stories within stories within stories within stories. We get Ash and LaMotte’s letters to each other, wherein they discuss mythology and poetry. We get their original works, which are of course actually Byatt’s original works. We get so very much detail about the vagaries of modern academia, and the fights between feminist academics and “traditionalists.” It’s all just so very entwined.

Byatt was so brave to write this meta-romance. I honestly don’t know how she pulled it off. The greatest danger in works like this is that the supposed masterworks the characters are studying need to be excellent enough for the characters’ interest in them to seem just. Byatt does manage that, for the most part. As a writer and quasi-academic, I felt Byatt’s role so keenly. She wrote those pieces in a way that seemed so familiar to me. It’s odd to be a writer who works in a form and genre that is essentially lost to most readers. This book turned out to be such a fantastic outlet for many forms of the author’s creativity. I think I love it. I certainly love many aspects of it.

Virginia Leishman’s narration is one of the strongest aspects of the audiobook, and I think she truly saved the book for me. Whenever the details were too intricate or the infighting between the academics came too close to home, Leishman’s honeyed voice coaxed me back into the story. She truly has a gorgeous voice. Her diction is precise, her shifts from character to character are clear but not distracting, and her changes in accent reveal a great deal of acting and vocal skill. I will absolutely seek out more books she has narrated.

Under The Dome: A Novel

Author: Stephen King
Reader: Raul Esparza
Available on Audible.com

Special feature: Author’s Afterword read by Stephen King

Short Review: A beautiful autumn day in the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine is interrupted by a clear impenetrable dome which cuts it off from the outside world. Our story carries us along to meet a broad cast of local characters. Great reader and a captivating (but long) story.

Long Review: This massive, intricate and suspenseful novel drew me in and kept my attention from start to finish. I will admit that I am a sucker for character driven stories. I love getting to know people – learning their stories and watching their paths cross. About half-way through the story (so about fifteen hours in) I remembered this was a Stephen King novel. You have to know that he is going to take you on a wild ride. I like that there are some clear good guys and some clear bad guys, but most everyone we meet is somewhere in between (just like in the real world).

Thirty-five hours is a long time to listen to one person talk – so it was crucial they found a great reader. I feel that they did a great job. I cannot speak to the accuracy of Esparza’s accents – but I can say that I enjoyed his reading. His voices were creative enough to make character identification easy. His narration had a nice rhythm to it. Looking for a good story to listen to as you make a long distance drive? I suspect that Under the Dome could get you nearly across the country and keep you very entertained along the way. I also particularly enjoyed the afterword read by the author that shares some of the story behind the story.

There are only two things I would change. First – the MP3 CDs I listened to broke the book up by the large named sections – some as long as forty-five minutes. I usually listen to books in my car, but sometimes (especially when I am as engrossed in a book as I was in this one) I want to bring my CDs into my house to keep listening. Because of the very long sections this was basically impossible unless I was lucky enough to end my drive at the start of a new section.

The second change I would make would be to include the map of Chester’s Mill apparently included in the front of the print edition. A lot of the story depends on your mental mapping of this small town. Chester’s Mill is not just the setting – it feels like another character in the story. It would have been fabulous to be able to open up the CD case and look at the map while listening.

Overall, a big thumbs up for King’s latest effort. Not sure if this will be too scary for you? Well, I don’t love horror movies and I don’t seek out scary stories as a rule but there are a lot of not nice things in store for our merry band of small town residents. It did not give me nightmares but your mileage may vary.

Audio sample available online.

Under the Dome

Author: Kathy Reichs
Reader: Dorothee Berryman

Short Review: A very average mystery delivered by a very average reader. I liked a lot of the characters, but it was really only my curiosity to know how the author would tie up the mystery that kept me listening.

Long Review: I decided to give this a listen after becoming a fan of the TV series Bones. I knew that the show had diverged from the books – but really it seems that there is not much more in common between the two beyond the name and chosen career of the Temperance Brennan.

On the positive side, I did like the main characters. The fabric of Tempe’s  relationships is textured and believable. If this book has a saving grace, it is that there is a descent mystery on deck for solving.

On the negative side, the story seemed to spend a lot of time going in circles and the reader spent a lot of moistening her lips. I wonder if the series improved as it progressed. If you have read others in the series and recommend that I try another – please leave a note in the comments.

There is an audio preview of Break No Bones available, so you can see if you like the reader better than I did.