Reader: James Marsters
Short Review: A well read interesting blend of airships, vampires, alternate history and a strong princess coming of age and discovering her strength.
Readers: Katherine Kellgren & Jeff Woodman
Short Review: Fairly standard 'boy meets girl, boy turns out to be vampire' romance - but with a few twists you likely won't expect. A pair of excellent readers, endearing characters and a fresh take on Romanian vampires make this a very enjoyable story.
Reader: Johanna Parker
Short Review: Well read first installment of the Southern Vampire Mysteries series (better known now as the books that inspired HBO's TrueBlood series). Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress in a world in which vampires have "come out of the coffin", and her world is getting more dangerous with each passing the day.
Reader: Ilyana Kadushin and Matt Walters
Short Review: Your patience is rewarded and the camera pulls back to show you the full picture of where we have been headed across the landscape of these 4 extravagant novels. For me this was a very satisfying conclusion to the Twilight Saga.
Reader: Neil Gaiman
Short Review: Neil Gaiman reads his Newbery Medal winning book beautifully. His nod to Kipling's The Jungle Book is just scary enough, intriguing, inventive, well-written, enchanting . . . it's downright wonderful. I loved Bod, Silas, Scarlett, Liza, Miss Lupescu, and the rest of the graveyard's denizens and rooted for them throughout the story. I miss them. I'll return to this book again and recommend it to adults and kids.
Posted: February 25th, 2009 ˑ
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Filled under:
Audio Books Read By The Author,
Award Winning Audio Books,
Best Audio Books,
Children's Audio Books,
Fantasy Audio Books,
Intrigue Audio Books,
Mystery Audio Books,
Mythology Audio Books,
Vampire Audio Books,
Young Adult Audio Books
Reader: Stephen Briggs
Short Review: This fun, funny, and often thoughtful story follows Sam Vimes as he investigates the murder of dwarven leader Grag Hamcrusher. Vimes is a father and husband, an unwilling member of the nobility, Commander of the watch, and a good old copper. He is pressured into hiring the first Vampire on the watch and has to manage religious and racial tensions between humans, vampires, werewolves, igors, dwarfs, and trolls while simultaneously solving a murder and preventing the outbreak of a troll v. dwarf war. The book is read by the wonderful Stephen Briggs, a regular reader for Pratchett's books and one of my absolute favorite audiobook narrators.
Reader: James Marsters
Short Review: Down on his luck detective Harry Dresden also happens to be a real, live wizard. This introduction to Harry's world includes magic, potions, a talking skull named Bob, werewolves - and of course a murder mystery. James Marsters is brilliant.
Eclipse (Twilight Saga, Book 3)
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Reader: Ilyana Kadushin and Matt Walters
Short Review: Meyer gets better with each book. With this book, she has found a good rhythm. The quieter bits of this story have a stronger voice than those in the first 2 books of the saga. Book 3 digs deeply into Bella's relationships and finally starts to ask the question of "Why?". We still get good action scenes (because there is always action in a world that has vampires and werewolves) - but we also see Bella make conscious choices with an eye to the consequences in her future.
Reader: Ilyana Kadushin
Short Review: The good: a fresh and creative version of vampire and werewolf legends with characters you care about and great action scenes. The less good: lots and lots of Bella's internal angst-ridden dialogue (not that there is anything wrong with that, if you have a taste for that sort of thing).
Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Reader: Ilyana Kadushin
Short Review: One 17 year old girl who always felt different (and is a klutz to the extreme) crosses paths with a family of exquisite vampires. Romance and intrigue ensues. It grew on me, but it took a while.
You Suck: A Love Story
Author: Christopher Moore
Read By: Susan Bennett
Audio Bonuses: Interview with Christopher Moore
Short Review: Super fun and irreverent vampire romp through San Francisco, stellar reader to whom I could listen all day long.