Short Review: A team of government agents try to stop predatory fairy tales from taking over the world by solving fairy tale crimes in this episodic tale where happily ever after isnâ€t nearly as wonderful as it sounds. An exciting overarching story told through episodes reminiscent of the very best crime shows.

Long Review:The ATI Management Bureau is people with men and women whose lives have been hijacked by fairy tales, their flesh and their minds made over to suit the predatory Narrative. Henrietta “Henry” Marchenâ€s mother was taken by the Sleeping Beauty story, casting Henry right into the Snow White mold. Skin as white as snow with lips as red as blood arenâ€t nearly as attractive as Disney would have you believe. Henry leads her own team of agents comprised of an Evil Stepsister (the embodiment of feminine evil in fairy tales forever stuck in a teenage body), a Shoemakerâ€s Elf (because someone has to do the paperwork) and a man who lost his brother to a Sleeping Beauty that manifested in a remote small town whose inhabitants died of starvation before anyone realized what was going on. The team solves cases in the best traditions of all the crime shows youâ€ve ever seen.

The book comes from a deep love of all things fairy tale. McGuire clearly knows her fairy tales, enough to find the weird, obscure references, the points of divergence. She knows just where to twist to get the biggest effect. She knows just which parts of fairy tales to play straight for the most horrific effect. She is very good at finding the points where fairy tales meeting reality cause tragedies. She is also very good at finding the humanity in age-old stereotypes.

The crime aspects of the book are interesting and varied, the mysteries behind each of the episodes are engaging, each of them a twist on some well-known fairy tale. But these are no “monster of the week” episodes; each novella drives the larger story forward, toward an ending that is both satisfying and exciting.

Mary Robinette Kowal is easily one of my all time favorite readers. She has the skill to bring characters to life in a way that many others lack. Sheâ€s amazing at conveying emotion without letting it take over the story sheâ€s telling. Iâ€m prone to cry at narratives with convenient bends to them, but I have never made it through a book Mary has read without crying. She is a master craftsperson who uses her voice to cause pain and suffering as well as joy and laughter. I canâ€t get enough of her reading.

I love this book more than I can say. I’m generally a fan of Urban Fantasy; women doing heroic things in modern cities with speculative fiction trappings is entirely in my wheelhouse. Seanan McGuire is one of my favorite authors for many reasons, but the fact that she writes books like that alone would automatically make her a clear favorite. But on top of these, Indexing specifically also taps into my eternal addiction of crime shows. I recommend it to everyone who likes fantasy or crime.

My only quibble, the only thing that makes this book less than perfect, is the fact that it ends too soon. Like the crime shows that clearly act as inspiration, Indexing ends in a series cliffhanger that will most likely be resolved in the second book. And frankly, I get somewhat impatient with cliffhanger endings. While no author is the readerâ€s bitch I generally try not to get too into books that have cliffhanger endings without the next book in the series being available.

Full Disclosure: Iâ€m a student of Mary Robinette Kowalâ€s and might, therefore, be slightly biased in her favor. That being said, she was one of my all-time favorite readers before she ever started offering classes that I could attend. And I attended her class because I really enjoyed her work. See, how thatâ€s a vicious cycle?

Available from Audible.com

Short Review: Elizabeth Wein continues the heart wrenching legacy begun by Codename: Verity. This is the story of Rose Justice, an American ATA pilot, who gets captured in by Nazis and is thrown into Ravensbrück concentration camp. What follows is a brutal story of trying to find hope in a hopeless situation. Wein delivers a book that will leave you emotionally spent, read by Sasha Pick.

Long Review: Rose Justice is an American ATA pilot whoâ€s come to England to help with the war effort. While transporting an Allied plane from Paris to English soil, Rose is forced to land and is promptly captured by Nazis and taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Wein details the daily humiliations of concentration camp in a way that feels viscerally real.

Although the book is set in a series with Codename: Verity, there is very little that remains from the first book in the series. Rose Under Fire focuses on the survival and search for hope of a single individual who, unlike the protagonists of Verity, is American. There are planes and heartbreak for the reader but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Rose Under Fire is a much more brutal and a much darker book than Verity ever was. This is not necessarily a bad thing as such but it’s important for the reader to know that this is an emotionally draining book, which is not entirely unexpected from Wein as an author.

As it was for Codename: Verity, Rose Under Fire is extensively researched and while fictional, no doubt shows a composite of many real lives. The atrocities described in the book really happened in Ravensbrück and the visceral details Wein provides only serve to make it more real. She does not pull any punches.

Sasha Pick does a good job of setting the scene with her voice acting and distinguishes characters easily. She conveys the emotions in the book in an understated way that manages to not take away from the listener. However, some of the voices she lends to the characters start to get a little tiring with the sheer brutality of the book.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loved Codename: Verity and anyone who is a fan of historical fiction, especially books set in the second World War. It gives a voice to rarely heard viewpoints. However I don’t think anyone should go into this unprepared. The book will leave you chewed up and spit out. Allow me to recommend spending some time on Emergency Kitten! afterward.

Author: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Reader: Julie Eickhoff

Short Review: The ultimate guide to anyone considering going into a freelance business or already working as a freelancer. Filled with useful examples, good advice as well as commiseration.

Long Review: Kristine Kathryn Rusch has always been a freelancer of one form or another. In her own words she’s made every mistake so that we don’t have to. She covers a wide range of topics from getting started to knowing when to quit. Rusch has extensive experience in freelancing besides writing. She has worked in radio, retail and editing. On top of that she has friends who are also freelancers in many other fields. It follows that the examples she gives around any given topic are from many different areas of freelancing.

The examples are by far the best thing about the book. They often induce sympathetic groans, sometimes laughter. But no matter how much you as a hopeful or new freelancer feel like you’re just flailing around in the dark, the examples will certainly let you know that at least you’re not the only one doing so.

It should be mentioned that The Freelancer’s Survival Guide can be read for free online. Rusch is also known to update the content as updates become necessary. The book started out as a series of blog posts that was retooled into a full book. Some of the book’s chapters were further cut down into minibooks for people who are only interested in a specific topic.

Julie Eickhoff is easily one of my favorite non-fiction readers. She has a no-nonsense type of voice that is still filled with humor on occasion. I know there are plenty of people who find her type of voice grating so I would advise on listening to a sample before purchasing the book.

Personally I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is practical while also encouraging you to dream big, realistic but also inspirational. I suspect this will become one of those books I’ll listen to over and over again, because most of the content is not tied to time in any way.

Author: Delilah S. Dawson

Reader: Rebekkah Ross

Short Review: Hit by Delilah S. Dawson is an engaging, at times painful YA story about what happens when the banks completely take control of America.

Long Review: Valor National Bank has taken over America. There is only the United States of Valor. 911 calls get relayed to Valor voicemail. And then the men in black start showing up at the doors of a few select debtors. Each of them is given a choice; be killed or hunt down the debtors whose name appears on their list during the five days of service they sign over. Patsy has been a good girl all her life whose most rebellious act has been yarn bombing. But her motherâ€s been sick and the bills have been piling up. When given a choice of going on a killing spree or watch the man in black kill her mother, the choice is obvious.

What follows is the harrowing journey of a young woman being forced to grow up in a rather brutal fashion. She has five names on her list and she has to give each of them a choice: pay the debt on the spot, agree to work as a contract killer, or be killed at the hands of the person offering the choice. Because itâ€s YA, the talk never gets too maudlin but all the feels are present and accounted for. The main character Patsy’s loss of innocence is heartbreaking to follow. On top of that, the book is a really interesting take on connecting dystopia and the world that we know and at least sometimes love.

Rebekkah Ross, the narrator, has only narrated YA and New Adult books as far as I can see and that shows. She has a voice that is very well suited for the genre, capable of delivering so much emotion without becoming hysterical, despite the characterâ€s occasional bouts of the same.

Overall, I think Hit is a good choice for anyone who likes dystopian YA books. Itâ€s fresh and original without veering too far from the genre norms. Itâ€s engaging enough that even though there are undoubtedly holes in the plot or the world, I never noticed them. This is a book that will grab hold and wonâ€t let go until the very last words.

Author: Sam Sykes

Reader: David DeSantos

Short Review: The City Stained Red is like the love child of Skyrim and Arabian Nights. Action packed and compelling, great if you like that sort of thing, it none the less got a little old for my taste.

Long Review: The City Stained Red is the first of a new series called Bring Down Heaven set in the same world, with apparently a lot of the same characters as his Aeonâ€s Gate trilogy. Iâ€ve been following Sam Sykes on Twitter for at least a year or so and Iâ€ve been meaning to pick up a book of his to read so when the offer of a review copy came along I jumped at it.

After I suffered an overdose of epic fantasy as a teenager, I havenâ€t really been reading that much of it. In many ways The City Stained Red was a return to the things I used to love about epic fantasy; strange creatures having problems and taking care of things. The plot is pretty straightforward as the main character, Lenk, and his companions go about trying to get paid for a job theyâ€ve already completed. Each of them has their own problems and hang-ups and they keep trying to deal with them in the best ways they know how.

The narrative is compelling and very much like a video game for all the good and the bad that entails. Around the halfway point the constant battles against more or less meaningless monsters started to feel like grinding. It says something about the quality of writing though that it took that long. The writing is compelling, the characters and world interesting.

The reader, David DeSantos, is highly competent, even entertaining. He’s a solid narrator but nowhere near to being among my favorites. But that’s most likely just a matter of taste.

This book is a solidly entertaining piece of epic fantasy that becomes excellent if you love epic fantasy and video games.