Author: Suzanne Collins
Reader: Carolyn McCormick

Short Review: Creative, captivating and intense young-adult drama with a strong 16-year-old female protagonist and set in a brutal far-future. Decent reader, but I kept wishing for a bit more emotion in her reading. That said, the story was so captivating that I couldn’t stop listening!

Long Review: I am a big fan of world building done well – and Collins has built a rich vision of a far distant future both more technologically advanced and more brutal than what we might expect. In this far future, children from across former North America (now called Panem) are forced to fight to the death in a carefully wrought creation that is part reality TV, part survivor and part Roman Colosseum. The tension between the ivory tower of the capitol and the impoverished and heavily restricted lives of those in the twelve districts which support it stretches from start to finish. There is a lot to chew on here.

Against this backdrop we get to know Katniss. Katniss Everdeen is 16 and lives in the coal country of District 12 with her mother and younger sister.  Katniss spends most of her time each day hunting, gathering, or trading for enough food for her little family to survive. She has been fighting to keep herself alive for years. The transition from being the girl who brings people meat to being a tribute from District 12 fighting for her life is less startling than you might expect.

Katniss has watched the Games every year (the power never goes out when the Games are on) and she does everything she possibly can to increase her chances of survives. Collins reveals details of how things work in this world gradually. Right up to the end of the story we are learning about Panem and learning about Katniss. I appreciated hearing this story from her perspective. It makes all her choices and experiences feel closer to the surface. Even when we understand things that she cannot, usually in the emotional attitudes of those around her, we see only what she sees.

I did not love the reader. I felt that McCormick kept Katniss and the intensity of her world at arms length during the reading. It is hard to put my finger on what bothered me. The dialog was fine, with reasonable and recognizable voices for the characters. It was long stretches of narration that felt too rhythmic, too even-keeled somehow. It wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying the story – but I kept catching myself trying to imagine what it might sound with a different reader.

Overall, it is an amazing ride and I am hunger for the sequel. Collins has created a terrifying world and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Audio sample available.

The Precipice (The Asteroid Wars)

Author: Ben Bova
Readers: Scott Brick, Amanda Karr, Christian Noble, Karesa McElheny and Stefan Rudnicki(with a cameo by Theodore Bikel)

Short Review: Well-woven story set in a not-too-distant-future full of corporate intrigue and environmental chaos, both on earth and in colonized outer space. The amazing readers bring our cast of characters to life – I highly recommend it and am scheming for when I can start the next book in the sequence.

Long Review: The story is set in a not so far off future in which earth has hit what they call a “Greenhouse Cliff”. After decades of ignoring global warming, the balance of earth’s environment has gone over the edge leaving behind rapidly melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, flooding and violent weather of all types. The moon has been colonized, science and technology have made dramatic breakthroughs, governments are still generating more red tape and tycoons still want to make more money. Different countries are tackling the increasing number of disasters in their own ways, but you get a strong sense that all this is too little too late. Some folks seem to have found this book a bit too preachy on the woes of global warming and imminent worldwide natural disasters, but for me it worked well as the backdrop to the story being told. Ultimately, a lot of our story takes place up on the moon or on space ships.

What I love most about this story are the people. I especially appreciate that it was not immediately obvious to me who was meant to be the “good guys” or the “bad guys”. The story isn’t that simple. People aren’t that simple. Bova has done a fine job with giving us individuals with strengths and weaknesses. Some of them you would love to get to know over dinner, some you likely would give a lot to avoid – but the way their stories intertwine (plus the suspense and intrigue about how it all will turn out) should keep your attention.

Each shift in point of view is accompanied with a change in reader. I am not sure I always understood the logic behind the selection of which narrator used for each section or why music was included sometimes and not others – but overall it worked. After a while of listening to audio books, a familiar voice is like an old friend. Seeing Scott Brick’s name listed on this book immediately boosted my confidence that it was likely going to be a good listen – and I was obviously not disappointed.

This is just the first volume in the Asteroid Wars series and I am excited to move on to the next book and find out what Bova has in store for us. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Precipice is also available on Audible.com

Author: Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Reader: Michael Shanks

Short Review: Star crossed lovers set in an intricately woven universe including space ships, elements of magic and linguistics. The reader needed someone to insist on better pacing in an otherwise very solid performance.

Long Review: The list of things I enjoyed about this audio book is fairly long. Deeply developed characters with a solid back story, a carefully crafted universe and enough suspense to keep you guessing.

Often with a story like this, the author is tempted to start too early – but Lee and Miller toss us into the middle with fine results. I love books with compelling characters, and on that front this one definitely delivers. I care about the whole lot of them. I want everything to work out, but am not quite sure how it might. I also like that just when I was getting frustrated by the lack of communication between characters, one of them steps forward and starts dealing. Much of the fabric of this story is tied up in how hard it is to communicate with someone who cannot totally understand local customs. Even the learned linguist who can manage to navigate conversations that require careful use of  just the right ‘voice’ cannot anticipate culturally based responses to her actions.

It was only after I had finished listening to this book that I realized that it is in fact Book 1 of a full series set in the Liaden Universe. It does not seem that any others are available (yet) in audio form, but I like the story enough that I plan to read the rest on paper.

The biggest drawback to this audio book was getting used to the reader. Michael Shanks, who portrayed Dr. Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, does a fine job with the actual reading and voices.  My frustration is with his phrasing. The first time he shifted to a new character’s point of view I was very confused for a minute or two until I figured out that I was now hearing someone else’s thoughts. I often experienced a sort of point of view whiplash throughout the book.

I haven’t seen this book in paper – but a quick peek Local Custom on Amazon.com shows me that there are in fact numbered chapters and paragraphs separated by extra space. There is no mention of chapters and no pauses between sections. It sometimes felt like he was in a rush to keep moving through the book. I was able to adjust to this odd pacing, but your mileage may vary. You can download the first three chapters for free from the Buzzy Multimedia page for Local Custom, so you can easily see if this bothers you before you purchase it.

I wish they could re-edit it and just add in more pauses and chapter breaks. It would bring this book up to a five star experience.

 Author: Neal Stephenson

 Reader: Oliver Wyman, Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, Neal Stephenson

 Short Review: A pretty good but overly long book from one of my favorite authors, read less-than-ideally. This alternate future tale depicts a world where the intellectual elite are forcibly cloistered in pseudo-monastic communities around the world where they’re free to think and learn but denied access to many technologies and to “saecular,” (i.e., non-intellectual) society. The protagonist Fraa Erasmus is layered and likeable, but the book could stand to lose a couple of hundred pages and the narration isn’t as good as it should be. In this instance, I think I would have preferred the paper book to the audio book.

Long Review: This book has gotten a lot of attention on the web. Stephenson is a very important, very good sci-fi writer, and his work is particularly popular among web monkeys like me. He wrote The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, i.e., oh-my-god-the-best-sci-fi-book-everrrrr. My heart breaks to criticize him. He’s brilliant, and he writes great women and interesting plots, and he clearly knows more about science than I do, so I won’t criticize him there. But, sometimes, he needs to be reigned in. It feels like he just plain wasn’t this time. I don’t shy away from long books. I love long books, as long as their length is merited. This time around, Stephenson came up with a huuuuuge concept and fleshed out every little bit of it. I wish he’d paired things down.

Stephenson has a habit of going on tangents that get a bit out of hand. Some of the tangents, like the those about mythology in Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, amuse me to no end. In Anathem, some of the tangents were less appealing to me because they tended to be about mathematical theory, but in an alternate reality where each theorem has a different name. It just got to be a bit much. But, I’m a mythology buff and not a math buff, so another reader could have the opposite reaction.

Most of the major characters in this novel are compelling and likable, which is perhaps its greatest strength. Erasmus, Orolo, Ala, Lio, Jad, Sammann, Cord, and Yul are the kind of people who should populate more books. So many sci-fi and fantasy writers can only write plot, and fill their plots with little more than thumbnail sketches of people. Stephenson gives a lot of thought to his characters. He ends up constructing personalities we want to continue to follow, ever after hundreds of pages with them.

My biggest complaint about this book is the narration. William Dufris, who does the lion’s share of the narration, uses some inflections and has reading habits that really, really annoy me. In moments of tension, Dufris uses volume changes and breathiness to impart emotion rather than, you know, emotion. The result is swaths of text that are hard to understand because his attempts to emote just end up being hard to hear. Over and over, I’d be happy with the narration for ages and then I’d smack right into another instance of over-wrought, odd readings. It made my ears itch. And because this is a very long book, each instance bothered me more than the last, and each made me like the audiobook less. In all fairness, the spaces between these instances were generally good. I’d be fine with Dufris for an hour or two, and then I’d want to throttle him, and then my annoyance would pass and I’d forgive Dufris until . . . Remember, this is 32.5 hours of listening. Even if Dufris was annoying for only 5 percent of that time, that’s a lot of time with itchy teeth.

There are other narrators, who largely serve as the voice of a dictionary, introducing new words at chapter openings. Tavia Gilbert read from the dictionary several times, and her voice is wonderful. I will seek her out in other audio books. Neal Stephenson also reads some of the definitions, and I vastly preferred his narration to Dufris’. Whenever Stephenson would read a portion of the book, I would latch onto his voice and wish he’d continue for the rest of the work.

All in all, this is perhaps my least favorite book of Stephenson’s, and I’m not happy with the main reader. It is the longest audio book I’ve listened to, and I knew that the whole time I was listening. I couldn’t forget its length. Far too often, it felt like a lengthy homework assignment rather than an enjoyable passtime.

Author: Terry Pratchett
Reader: Stephen Briggs

Short Review: Another very entertaining Discworld novel read wonderfully by Stephen Briggs. This story follows forcible-reformed former con-artist Moist von Lipwig (a.k.a. Albert Spangler) as he attempts to reform the Ankh-Morpork post office at the behest of Lord Vetinari. The story teems with great characters, intrigue, technomancy, bureaucracy, golems, ponzi schemes, small gods, mail, stamps, secret societies, and a pirate.

Long Review: As I mentioned in my review for Thud!, I love Briggs’ narration. Love it. Again, he does a wonderful job voicing a variety of different characters, keeping the story moving at a good clip but maintaining clear diction, and generally just being a damn good reader.

Pratchett plays with a lot of current events in this book, as he does in several discworld books. In this instance, we’re looking at amoral business practices, monetizing of information transfer, competition between old and new methods of moving information, and labor law and ethics. Pratchett elevates the importance of the written world within the discworld universe in general and this novel in particular, which is a downright common trope among writers and one whose absence would make me wonder. He also comes down firmly in favor of workers’ rights. As usual, the ideology Pratchett serves up goes down easily because it’s sweet and easy to chew. I guess some people would take umbrage with Pratchett’s political content, but I tend to agree with the man so I don’t quibble.

Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart make a great pair of central characters, and I look forward to reading more about them in future books. I also prefer layered characters to flat ones, and Lipwig and Dearheart are both craggy enough to hold a lot of interest. I also loved getting a closer look at Lord Vetinari and learning more about the Golems of discworld.

Author: Michael Chabon
Reader: Peter Riegert

Extra features: The audiobook includes an interview with Michael Chabon about his inspiration for the book, his favorite books and genres, and his writing process.

Short Review: Chabon’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning alternate history of a world without Israel but with a temporary Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska. Hard-boiled detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a junkie chess-player with his partner and cousin Berko Shemets, a half-Tlingit, half-Jewish cop who is a good father, a good Jew, and a good partner trying to save Landsman from himself. As the case progresses, more and more connections to organized crime, shady US government machinations, separatist Orthodox communities, and zealotry reveal themselves. Riegert is an ideal reader, comfortable with accents, Yiddish, noir, and sadness.

Long Review: I love this book. I read it on paper first, and was anxious to hear how well Reigert would handle Landsman’s voice. He does a masterful job. The book is written in the third person, but Landsman is on just about every page, so we hear his speech over and over. Reigert is careful to give Lansman, Berko Shemetz, and the other major characters distinct voices and rhythms, and he does a very good job of it. Like all of the best audiobook readers I’ve heard, Riegert balances acting with diction; maintaining a good rhythm and drawing a complete character while also keeping his accented speech easy to understand.

The novel is set in Sitka, Alaska in an alternate history. In the world of the novel, Israel fell to Arab attack in 1948, and the US agreed to make a temporary semi-autonomous federal district in Sitka for Jewish refugees. Sitka’s term of independence is ending, and all of the Jewish refugees there must prepare to leave for new homes elsewhere. As the local police are wrapping up their case files to hand over to the Americans, a junkie is murdered in the hotel where Landsman lives and Landsman takes the case. He should file the case away as quickly as possible but can’t let it go. The deeper Landsman investigates the victim and his connections, the more entangled he becomes.

Chabon writes wonderful characters, in this and all of his novels. Landsman, his ex-wife and boss Bina, Berko Shemetz, and the rest of the characters in the novel are engaging and deep and fascinating. You root for Landsman, but you also want to strangle him. Riegert’s narration intensifies that connection to Landsman and the rest. I found myself worrying about them all while listening to the novel, even though I already knew what was coming next.

Chabon does amazing things with language and speech in this novel. I’m no expert on Yiddish, of course, but I love the way Chabon intertwines Yiddish with noir phrasing and settings. It flips the whole hard-boiled detective genre–in a good way. I doubt there will ever be a sequel, but I would absolutely love the chance to follow Landsman and Shemetz on another case.

All in all, this is a fascinating, entertaining, beautifulky-read audiobook and one I know I’ll return to.

 Short Review: A solid book of short stories read beautifully by the author.
 Long Review: I am a fan of Gaiman’s, so I was bound to pick this up eventually. Jeanne’s glowing review spurred me to pick it up at the library, and I was not disappointed in the least.

As is often the case, Gaiman’s publisher released this anthology of short stories not long after his novel Anansi Boys became such a huge hit. Sometimes those volumes of short stories, collected from periodicals hither and yon, are a waste of paper. Well, not this one. This is a solid collection of stories, as evidenced by the number of awards won by individual short stories in the anthology.

The Huge-Award winning “A Study in Emerald” is one of the standouts in the collection. I’m a Lovecraft fan and a Conan Doyle fan, so I was a bit wary of that story in particular. I didn’t see how the two could be blended. Well, of course, Gaiman did, and he melded the two giant’s universes gorgeously.

“October in the Chair” is another gem. It’s a story within a story, and the frame story in and of itself is one of the most enchanting things I’ve ever come across. I will never think of the months in the same way again. Gaiman built a new mythos and dropped it right into my head with a satisfying clink.

“Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire” is pithy and funny and good, and a great way to flip classic horror onto its head.

A few of the stories fell flat for me, but the best stories in the anthology were so intriguing that I know I’ll listen to at least those again and again. And the listening is truly enriched by Gaiman’s narration. Many authors have no business reading their work aloud–that’s not true of Gaiman. His voice is expressive, his timing is great, and his diction is beautiful. I’d actually like him to take work as an audiobook reader for other writers, but I don’t think that’s terribly likely. Instead, I’ll just cross my fingers and hope he narrates some more of his own work for future audiobooks.

Short Review: Meyer’s first foray into sci-fi is very satisfying. Officially an adult novel (in contrast with the young adult label applied to the Twilight series), The Host explores a post-invasion world from the perspective of one of the invaders. It is well written, well read and is still haunting me weeks after I finished listening to it.

Long Review: Before listening to this book I had already listened to three other Meyer audio books (first 3 books of the Twilight Saga) and at least one other book read by Kate Reading – all of which I enjoyed. Initially Reading’s choice of voice for the protagonist bugged me. Her tone was very flat and her reading rhythm very repetitive. But the story hooked me and I lasted long enough to realize that this voice was perfect for the protagonist and her inner thoughts. We spend this book in the mind of an alien not used to human emotions and motivations – an alien living in a human woman’s body and struggling to make sense of it all.

For those who are used to the Twilight Saga, starting over in a new Meyer world might be a bit of a jolt. Rather than vampires and werewolves we have aliens and long-distance space travel. This is a world set apart from ours by major events, rather than the Twilight world in which the supernatural is alive in the midst of the world in which we live. But Meyer’s stories are about characters finding their true paths – and this book is no different.

I don’t want to tell you too much about the story. I want you to hear it and experience it and let it carry you along as it carried me. I will say that Meyer created some very real characters – alien and human alike. She explores what makes us human right alongside examining the experience of being an outsider, of being so different you think you will never find where you belong.

This is one of those books that grew on me in a very gradual way. I was startled to realize I had found another story that made me not want to get out of my car when I got home from work because that meant I had to stop listening. At the same time, as I neared the end of the book, I got sad at the thought of having to let go of these characters and their world. I started to ration the story so I could think about what might happen next. Once I was done – the main players stayed stuck in a corner of my head. I know I have found a ‘keeper’ when the people created by the author and brought to life by the reader stay with me long after the audio stops playing. Need a book like that? You found it!

Mostly Harmless

Author: Douglas Adams

Reader: Martin Freeman

Short Review: A good reading of my least favorite book in the series.

Long Review: The disappearance of Fenchurch, the appearance of Random, the multiple Trillians–it’s all too much, and too dark to fit well into the series. Adams himself was open about his disappointment in the tone for this, the sort-of-ending to the series. I enjoyed hearing it, nonetheless.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Author: Douglas Adams

Reader: Martin Freeman

Short Review: Another decent reading of a book I love, which suffers by comparison to the Stephen Frye reading of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Long Review: Er, fourth verse, same as the second? Thankfully, no.

I love this series, as I said in my review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I think Martin Feeman is a pretty good reader, apart from that whole Zaphod thing. Thankfully, that’s not really an issue with this book. Another plus: we get the addition of Fenchurch. I’m sure some readers wish Adams had just left the musky stuff out of the series, but my sappy little heart sings when something nice finally happens to Arthur Dent.

Unfortunately, this is probably the weakest book in the original four-part trilogy (blame Adams for that misuse of trilogy, not me). This story isn’t as tight as the previous books in the series. Even so, I like reading and listening to it.