Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Graveyard Shift by M.L. RioGraveyard Shift by M.L. Rio
Narrator: Jess Nahikian, Max Meyers, Si Chen, Susan Dalian, Tim Campbell
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Gothic, horror, mystery, thriller
Pages: 144
Length: 3 hours and 9 minutes
Published by Flatiron Books, Macmillan Audio on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.
Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.
One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?
Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.
Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.

My Review:

I almost saved this one for Halloween, because it’s just the kind of horror-adjacent book that I love to pick for spooky season. But it’s out this week – and I simply didn’t want to wait that long!

Even though this particular “graveyard shift” takes place in an actual graveyard, the story doesn’t start out all that creepy. Unhealthy, maybe, but not creepy.

The ‘Anchorites’ are a group of insomniacs who meet up at midnight in a graveyard for a quick smoke. The ancient but historically significant cemetery and the church it’s attached to just happen to be the only location in the middle of a busy college campus that is the requisite distance from ALL of the various campus entrances. It’s the only place where it’s OK to smoke that anyone attached to the campus can reach during the length of a typical work break.

Two of the ‘Anchorites’ hang around because they work an actual night shift. Theo, the manager at a nearby bar, and Tamar, working her second job as a hotel night desk manager. Edie, the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, is too stressed out hunting for the paper’s next story to sleep. Tuck, a washed-out grad student with no place to go, is squatting in that derelict church and can’t resist the temporary camaraderie. Hannah, a rideshare driver, has had chronic insomnia for so long that she doesn’t seem to sleep at all.

The graveyard hasn’t been used – except by desperate smokers – in at least a century. They’re safe smoking in the middle of campus in the middle of the night. Or so they assume.

Until the night when they arrive for their not-exactly-arranged, never-truly-spoken-about, midnight rendezvous – and discover a freshly dug grave in the middle of their usual meeting place. Led by editor-in-chief Edie, they can’t resist speculating about whodunnit? Or perhaps this time it should be ‘who dug it?’

A question that gets answered when the gravedigger comes back, dumps a load of dead lab rats in the grave and covers it over – while they collectively hide all around and watch.

This game really is afoot – and so is one escaped lab rat making a literal meal out of one of the petrified Anchorites.

From there the story is off to a surprisingly twisted race, as Edie sees a story that might win her and her paper a prestigious award, Tamar sees a chance to use her library degree and her research talents for something other than merely checking in hotel guests or checking out books, Tuck sees an opportunity to use his experience with scientific laboratories and his knowledge of mycology to investigate a rogue project, while Theo sees a way to help the only friends he has. Hannah, however, seeks revenge on the people who gave her hope – and then snatched it away.

What they’re going to get is likely to be considerably more than any of them imagined, for good and definitely for ill.

Escape Rating A: Graveyard Shift wasn’t at all what I was expecting – it was better! It’s not really horror, although very Gothic in tone in spite of its contemporary setting, at least until the very, very end where the reader is left wondering – as are a couple of the characters.

But as it goes, it sucks the reader – or listener in my case – into this story, every bit as much as the ‘Anchorites’ get sucked into following Edie in pursuit of the potential newspaper story.

That story is told as snippets of the night, each slice of time from a different character’s point of view. This worked even better in the audio, as the five characters are voiced by five different narrators. (Insert here my usual rant at the lack of information about who voiced whom. As a group, Jess Nahikian, Max Meyers, Si Chen, Susan Dalian and Tim Campbell did a fantastic job but I very much wish I knew who voiced which part.)

One of the things that makes this story so riveting is the way that the tension seems to build almost minute by minute – and how we’re inside each character’s head as they experience their particular slice of that tightening noose. Particularly as the investigation continues feverishly through the single night of the story, and the identity of the person or persons who are about to get hung out to dry – figuratively if not literally – zeroes in on the real target.

Even as the group of investigators gets deeper and deeper into their own personal fog of jittery exhaustion.

I got caught up in this story in multiple ways. I always love a good story about an investigation – and this was definitely that. While Edie, the editor is at first idly speculating, she does have the threads of a big scoop in her hands – even if her moral compass has been knocked more than a bit askew after chasing stories for so long. There is something rotten going on, and it needs to be brought out into the light.

The ‘Anchorites’ as a group are fascinating, and part of that fascination is in their unacknowledged interconnectedness. They ARE friends, but they are each so used to being friendLESS that they’re pretty much incapable of acknowledging that fact. The way the telling of the story bounced from one to the other keeps the story hopping and the reader on their toes.

That the guilty parties got their comeuppance in the end was absolutely righteous, and the way that the story ended with just that shivery touch of frightening possibility made for the icing on a deliciously creepy horror-adjacent, Halloween-anticipatory reading cake. I’ll certainly be looking for the author’s next book, Hot Wax, when it comes out in January.

A- #AudioBookReview: The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee translated by Sandy Joosun Lee

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee translated by Sandy Joosun LeeThe Dallergut Dream Department Store by Lee Mi-ye, Sandy Joosun Lee
Narrator: Shannon Tyo
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, magical realism
Pages: 288
Length: 6 hours and 27 minutes
Published by Hanover Square Press, Harlequin Audio on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Before the Coffee Gets Cold meets Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore in this whimsical, poignant novel about the inner workings of a department store that sells dreams
THE #1 KOREAN BESTSELLER WITH OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD
In a mysterious town that lies hidden in our collective subconscious, there's a quaint little store where all kinds of dreams are sold ...
Day and night, visitors both human and animal from all over the world shuffle in sleepily in their pyjamas, lining up to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor in the department store sells a special kind of dream, including nostalgic dreams about your childhood, trips you've taken, and delicious food you've eaten, as well as nightmares and more mysterious dreams.
In Dallergut Dream Department Store we meet Penny an enthusiastic new hire; Dallergut, the flamboyant owner of the department store; Agnap Coco, producer of special dreams; Vigo Myers, an employee in the mystery department as well as a cast of curious, funny and strange clientele who regularly visit the store. When one of the most coveted and expensive dreams gets stolen during Penny's first week, we follow along with her as she tries to uncover the workings of this wonderfully whimsical world.
A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers' minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.

My Review:

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, part of the Chronicles of Narnia, one of the places that the Dawn Treader voyages to is the “Island Where Dreams Come True”. What made that part of their journey stick in my head hinges on the definition of “dream”. Because it doesn’t refer to daydreams, the things we think we might like to do or be or have, but rather to the things that our subconscious throws up at us at night.

Some of those dreams may be good, but a lot of them are not – and all of them have the potential to get very, very weird.

If there were a place like the Dallergut Dream Department Store, things would be so much different!

We see Dallergut’s through the eyes of Penny as she interviews with Mr. Dallergut for a job at his store. Through her eyes, we see how the store and the little corner of the world in which it lives and works, well, works.

It’s never called “Dreamland”, but that is what it is. The living, breathing, wide-awake residents seem to be relatively few – and not necessarily human. Whatever they are, their jobs are to either serve the people who work in the dream industry – or to serve the dreamers who pass through each night to buy their nightly dreams at Dallergut’s.

Penny doesn’t so much work her way UP the store’s hierarchy – because it’s a pretty flat organization – as she works her way IN to how the system works.

Dreamers don’t remember they were ever there. They don’t really remember their dreams – as one generally does not. But they do wake up feeling refreshed and with a lingering sense of whatever it was they were looking for within those dreams.

And it’s the lingering sense, that rising emotion, that powers the entire dream economy.

So, as Penny learns how the whole thing functions, we have the opportunity to see what a charming place it is, filled with (mostly) charming people and a whole lot of creativity – along with a strong sense of found family – that makes it a delightful read for a day when all you really want is to escape and (day)dream of a magical place that brings dreams to life!

Escape Rating A-: I’m going to use the word “charming” a lot here, because this story is absolutely that. What makes it work, and what pulls the reader across that hump of “but this isn’t the real world” is that we see the whole thing through Penny, and she’s a newbie at everything.

Not that she doesn’t seem to have grown up as a citizen of the little corner of magical realism – although that’s never really clear – but rather than she’s young and this appears to be her first real job post-graduation and she’s learning about how THE world works and how HER world works and we’re able to piggyback on her learning process.

And she’s just a really nice person to tag along with!

But in spite of the magical realism aspects of the story – what makes it interesting are the personalities of the people that Penny meets and works with, the structure of the dream economy and how it does and doesn’t mirror reality, and the way that the story gently explores the function of sleep and dreams for everyone.

So it’s a found family story and a coming of age story and a bit of a training montage and a lovely, thoughtful metaphor all rolled into a delightful ball of a sweet story that even manages to have a bit of the effect of the “Calm cookies” that Mr. Dallergut likes so much.

In short, The Dallergut Dream Department Store is utterly charming, and I was absolutely charmed – even in the places where I had to tell the logical side of my brain to go to sleep and just dream the whole thing.

This was, also and absolutely, the perfect book for the mood I was in and the frantic stuff going on in real life, so it was a terrific read for this week. It also fits into the same branch of magical realism, found family and cozy fantasy (or at least fantasy-ish) of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Kamagawa Food Detectives and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – and I’m going to dive into the next book in all of those series pretty much immediately because I need more of this.

But I also need to confess that my impatience got the better of me a bit – so even though I was enjoying the audiobook I still had that urge to see the whole of Penny’s first year at Dallegut’s and switched to the ebook about halfway through.

It’s charming either way, lovely and oh-so-cozy a fantasy. Just perfect for days that you wish you could dream away.

A- #AudioBookReview: Earthlight by J. Michael Straczynski

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Earthlight by J. Michael StraczynskiEarthlight by J. Michael Straczynski
Narrator: Erik Braa, Pete Bradbury, Jonathan Davis, William DeMeritt, Robert Fass, Jeff Gurner, Ryan Haugen, David Lee Huynh, Mars Lipowski, Saskia Maarleveld, Kathleen McInerney, Brandon McInnis, Sean Kenin Elias Reyes, Stefan Rudnicki, Salli Saffioti, Kristen Sieh, Christopher Smith, Marc Thompson, Will Watt, Michael Ann Young, Beka Sikharulidza, Stephanie Walters Montgomery, Robin Atkin Downes
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: military science fiction, political thriller, science fiction
Length: 2 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Penguin Random House Audiobook Original on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

International tension is rising as the Russian military forms an Eastern Alliance to create a new age of Russian supremacy. The rest of the world is scrambling for a united response.
Enter Project Earthlight.
Earthlight is a NATO operation under U.S. command based in the ultimate military high ground: space. A group of the best fighter pilots is handpicked from around the world to fly the first generation of advanced planes capable of maneuvering in the vacuum of space and inside the atmosphere.
Learning how to fly experimental planes while learning to trust their new squadron, our pilots are plunged into a high-stakes life-and-death mission with everything at risk. Can Commanding Officer Colonel Scott Dane get the other pilots on the same page in time to prevent World War III?
With cutting-edge soundscapes and an action-packed plot, EARTHLIGHT will keep listeners on the edge of their seats from start to finish.

My Review:

Even when there is something that pretends to be peace on Earth – there’s brinkmanship and stepping up to the terrible line that leads to World War III. So far, we’ve always stepped back – but someday we won’t.

The story in Earthlight posits a near future – possibly too damn near – when the U.S. and its NATO allies step up to that line because a post-Putin Russia is already there. What makes Earthlight just a bit different from similar stories by Tom Clancy and M.L. Buchman is that the brinkmanship takes place – not somewhere on Earth, or at least not exclusively somewhere on the planet – but in space.

Not “outer space” but somewhere a LOT closer to home. Specifically Low Earth orbit – or LEO. Far enough out to see an entire hemisphere of the planet – and close enough to strike anywhere on it – especially from planes that can go faster than MACH 20.

Those planes have the advantage – the literal high ground – as long as they don’t overshoot their targets.

Project Earthlight is a secret – because of course it is. And of course it’s been leaked – because big secret projects are incapable of staying secret for very long – especially once they go into production.

And Project Earthlight – and its space-borne aircraft carrier, the Alexander – is very much in production, on-line, and waiting for its first mission and its first squadron of pilots. Which is where this story begins, as Colonel Scott Dane of the U.S. Air Force is on a recruiting mission to sign the best, the brightest, and the most out-of-the-box thinkers from ALL of the NATO forces to fly the first planes assigned to the Alexander.

He hopes they’ve got time for all the training they’ll need – but he knows they don’t. Because those plans did leak, and the Russians have a space carrier of their own – the Gagarin. And they have a bunch of fanatics in the Kremlin – all promising a return to Russia’s glory days.

The path to which leads straight through a NATO allied Eastern Europe, and to a head to head dogfight with the Alexander for the highest stakes of all.

Escape Rating A-: There’s a whole lot of SQUEE in this review because WOW what a ride.

Although I have to admit that for a good chunk of the story, as much as I was totally caught up in it I was desperately worried that it was all a tease. There just didn’t seem like enough time left in the recording to come to anything like a satisfactory ending. (I was half-heartedly looking for the reading equivalent of ‘coitus interruptus’ because it sure seemed like the story was heading that way.)

But fear not, Earthlight does come to a satisfactory conclusion – although it is still more than a bit of a tease as most listeners will want to know what happens afterwards. At least the story certainly does make clear that there IS an afterwards and that’s a gigantic relief.

The elements that make up the story are familiar to readers of military SF. There’s a recruitment phase, a training phase, a getting-to-know-each-other phase, and there’s the inevitable potential romance that runs into the military frat regs (shades of Stargate).

The process of the squad pulling itself together is jam-packed and doesn’t give all the characters the time needed for readers – or their squadmates – to really get to know them. And of course the characters who are mostly reduced to (admittedly well done) accents are the ones that get lost early.

But in spite of that necessity, we do get a good feel for the leaders, and we do feel like “we are there” because we’re not just reading this story – we’re in the thick of it by listening to their distinct voices.

Laid on top of the military side, there’s also the side that gives us the historical and political side. The part that’s going to remind lots of listeners of Tom Clancy or M.L. Buchman because the shenanigans, including the brinkmanship, the short-sightedness, the glory-seeking to the exclusion of common sense and the epic levels of paranoia are all out of the political thriller playbook.

That part of the story works, even with a bit of necessary shorthand for the length, because we’ve seen them before – even in real life. That part of the story feels entirely too plausible.

This listening experience is edge-of-the-seat, you-are-absolutely-there, nail-biting compulsion filled with a surprising number of crowning moments of awesome. There were plenty of moments when my heart was literally in my throat even though I knew the worst-case scenario couldn’t possibly be the ending.

So the story of Earthlight, taken as a whole, is a fantastic experience even if many of the elements that make it so compelling are also just a bit familiar. It’s a great three hours of listening – I just wish there were a hell of a lot more.

But OMG I wish there was a text for this thing.

I NEED a text so I can hunt for quotes AND have a full list of characters, how their names are spelled and who played them in the audio. Because the cast was outstanding – every single one.

It is a pet peeve of mine that full cast or even multicast audio productions don’t generally tell the listener exactly who played whom – and I always want to know. But in this particular case, that lack of a list led to a bit of serendipity. To my ear, the political officer aboard the Russian ship sounded a LOT like the Romulan officer Tomalak in a couple of Star Trek: Next Gen episodes. When I checked out who portrayed Tomalak, I discovered that the character was played by the late Andreas Katsulas – who embodied Ambassador G’Kar on the author’s beloved TV series Babylon 5.

One reviewer opined that Earthlight could be seen as a very, very, very early prequel to B5 if one squinted a LOT. And it’s possible. Certainly it captured something of its spirit – without squinting at all. If it turns out that that spirit continues into another chapter of Earthlight – this listener/reader would be thrilled to be aboard for another mission.

#AudioBookReview: To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> D Reviews
#AudioBookReview: To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X ChangTo Gaze Upon Wicked Gods (Gods Beyond the Skies, #1) by Molly X. Chang
Narrator: Natalie Naudus
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: coming of age, dystopian, epic fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, space opera
Series: Gods Beyond the Skies #1
Pages: 368
Length: 10 hours and 41 minutes
Published by Del Rey, Random House Audio on April 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

She has power over death. He has power over her. When two enemies strike a dangerous bargain, will they end a war . . . or ignite one?
Heroes die, cowards live. Daughter of a conquered world, Ruying hates the invaders who descended from the heavens long before she was born and defeated the magic of her people with technologies unlike anything her world had ever seen.
Blessed by Death, born with the ability to pull the life right out of mortal bodies, Ruying shouldn’t have to fear these foreign invaders, but she does. Especially because she wants to keep herself and her family safe.
When Ruying’s Gift is discovered by an enemy prince, he offers her an impossible deal: If she becomes his private assassin and eliminates his political rivals—whose deaths he swears would be for the good of both their worlds and would protect her people from further brutalization—her family will never starve or suffer harm again. But to accept this bargain, she must use the powers she has always feared, powers that will shave years off her own existence.
Can Ruying trust this prince, whose promises of a better world make her heart ache and whose smiles make her pulse beat faster? Are the evils of this agreement really in the service of a much greater good? Or will she betray her entire nation by protecting those she loves the most?

My Review:

I picked this up because I had the opportunity to get the audiobook from Libro.fm, saw that the narrator, Natalie Naudus, is one of my faves, looked at the summary and thought to myself that this had terrific possibilities and figured I’d be in for a decent if not outright excellent listening/reading time.

It was not to be. It was not to be so hard that I bailed on the audio at the 30% mark and it’s not the narrator’s fault. Really, truly, seriously, it’s not her fault. Natalie Naudus, as always, does a great job with the first person perspective of a protagonist who is expected to be kickass or at least grow into that role. (In this case, it may have been a bit too good of a job, as it felt like I was right there with her in a story where I’d have much preferred to be at a remove or ten.)

That decent to excellent time is not what I got. What I got for that first 30% felt like torture porn, and experiencing that neverending torment from inside the character’s own head was literally more than I could take. To the point where, if you’ve followed my comments about the book I flailed and bailed on that set nearly a whole week of reviews off-kilter, you’ve found it. This was it.

And damn was I surprised about that.

So I flailed, and bailed – also ranted and raved (not in a good way) – but in the end I finished in text. Because when I looked at the text to see where I stopped the audio, to figure out if the situation got redeemed at all, I learned that in the very next sentence – which of course I couldn’t see in the audio – the thing that nearly made me turn this book into a wallbanger in spite of a) the potential for having to replace my iphone and b) I was driving – didn’t actually happen.

Not that the character and I hadn’t already been tortured plenty at that point. But it was enough to bring me back if only to find out whether the situation got better – or worse.

The answer, as it turned out, was both.

Escape Rating D: If The Poppy War and Babel had an ugly, squalling bookbaby, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods would be it. I loved The Poppy War, but had deeply serious issues with Babel which pretty much sums up my feelings about To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods in a desicated, unsightly, possibly even poisonous nutshell.

And that requires some explanation. Possibly a whole lot of it.

This story sits uneasily on a whole lot of crossing points. It’s right on the border between YA and Adult AND it’s at the intersection of historical fantasy with science fiction as well as at least hinting at being a romantasy – which it absolutely is not in spite of those hints in the blurb – even as it turns out to be post-apocalyptic and utterly dystopian in ways that are not hinted at anywhere at all.

And it’s torture porn. By that I mean that the entire first third of the story focuses on a protagonist whose entire life seems to be made of various axes on which she is ground, tortured and punished.

She’s female in a society that makes her property of the male head of household – in a line where those men squandered the family fortune on gambling and drugs one after another. She has magic powers that make her a target for people who want to use her gifts until those gifts use her up – and people who want to destroy her where she stands for a gift that many deem anathema.

Her entire world is under the boot heel of an overwhelming empire – in this I believe the story is intended to reference the Opium Wars and their oppressors are intended to stand in for the British Empire even if they are called Romans.

That her sister is addicted to a substance named “Opian”, provided by the Romans and engineered by the Romans to bring their society down even faster adds to that resemblance as well as to the protagonist’s torture.

That she’s 19, her sister’s and her grandmother’s only real support, and that her cultural conditioning has her blaming herself for everything wrong in their lives – including the invasion by the Romans before she was even born – is just terrible icing on an already unsightly cake overflowing with oppression and self-flagellation.

Ruying, her family and her whole entire world are in deep, deep trouble with no way out that anyone can see. I got that. I got that LONG before the story didn’t so much come out of the mire as it did finally start sloshing through the muck to the even more epically fucked up political shenanigans that are at the heart of everything that’s gone wrong for Ruying’s people.

Once the story finally, FINALLY started to reveal what was really happening and why and how, the situation got more interesting even as Ruying wallowed even more deeply in her personal angst and kept right on torturing herself every literally bloody step of the way.

At the very, very end, after all the blood and gore and guts and not very much plot movement forward, the story finally shows a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel, reveals that the light is an oncoming train, and at least displays a glimmer of a hint of action in this book’s sequel, titled either Immortal the Blood or  To Kill a Monstrous Prince, which will be coming out this time net year.

This reader, at least, has no plans to be there for it. I’ve been tormented enough. Your reading mileage (and/or listening mileage) may vary.

A+ #AudioBookReview: When Among Crows by Veronica Roth

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A+ #AudioBookReview: When Among Crows by Veronica RothWhen Among Crows by Veronica Roth
Narrator: Helen Laser, James Fouhey, Tim Campbell
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 176
Length: 4 hours and 29 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on May 14, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When Among Crows is swift and striking, drawing from the deep well of Slavic folklore and asking if redemption and atonement can be found in embracing what we most fear.
We bear the sword, and we bear the pain of the sword.
Pain is Dymitr’s calling. His family is one in a long line of hunters who sacrifice their souls to slay monsters. Now he’s tasked with a deadly mission: find the legendary witch Baba Jaga. To reach her, Dymitr must ally with the ones he’s sworn to kill.
Pain is Ala’s inheritance. A fear-eating zmora with little left to lose, Ala awaits death from the curse she carries. When Dymitr offers her a cure in exchange for her help, she has no choice but to agree.
Together they must fight against time and the wrath of the Chicago underworld. But Dymitr’s secrets—and his true motives—may be the thing that actually destroys them.

My Review:

There’s an old Polish saying – not the one you’re thinking of, at least not yet – that translates as “Not my circus, not my monkeys” Which pretty much sums up the attitude of the first zmora that Dymitr approaches in regards to the very dangerous trade he wants to make.

The second zmora comes to him, because what he’s offering IS her cursed circus and those are her damned monkeys. Or, to be a bit more on the nose about the whole thing, it is her murder – or at least it will be – and those are her crows, who are already flocking to the scene.

Dymitr has acquired a legendary magical artifact that holds the possibility of a cure for the curse that Ala suffers from. A curse that killed her mother, her aunt, and her cousin, and is now killing her. A curse that will pass down her bloodline to the next female relative in line – no matter how distant – until the whole line is wiped out.

In return, Dymitr wants an introduction to another legendary ‘artifact’, the powerful witch Baba Jaga [that’s how her name is spelled in the book]. As merely a human, Dymitr does not have access to the places and people that will get him to his goal. As a zmora, while Ala does not know Baba Jaga at all, she does have contacts who can at least get Dymitr a few steps further along on the quest that he refuses to either name or explain.

Their journey proves to be a very different “magical mystery tour” than the one that the Beatles sang about, observing the different magical populations that have migrated to Chicago from his native Poland, and how each group abides by the proverb, “When among crows, caw as the crows do.”

The zmora, who feed on fear, operate movie theaters that feature horror movies, the strzygi, who live on anger and aggression, run underground fight clubs, while the llorona, who collect sorrow, own a chain of hospice centers. It’s all perfectly legal, or at least most of it is. And the parts that aren’t, the strzygi fight clubs, fit right in with the rest of the organized crime and corruption that operates in Chicago.

The supernatural have learned to caw like the crows do, the better to hide from the powerful so-called ‘Holy Order’ that hunts down anyone and anything it deems to be ‘not human enough’. And isn’t that the most human impulse of all?

An impulse, and a life, that Dmitry is willing to cut himself off from – literally as well as figuratively – at any and all cost. Even the cost of the humanity that his family has held so dear over the centuries.

All he needs to do is find Baba Jaga – and pay whatever price she demands in order to cut the sword out of his back once and for all.

Escape Rating A+: I’ve frequently said that a story has to be just about perfect to make the leap from an A- to an A. This one absolutely did, and listening to the audio put it over the top into A+. With bells on. To the point where I have to restrain myself from just squeeing all over the place.

The tone of When Among Crows felt very much like ‘old school’ urban fantasy before it left its horror with mystery roots behind to fall down the paranormal romance rabbit hole. Not that I don’t love a good paranormal with a kickass heroine posed on the cover in an utterly impossible position, but those got to dominating the genre and that’s not all I wanted from it.

(The blurb implies a romantic relationship between Dymitr and Ala. Don’t be fooled, that is absolutely not what is going on here – and it shouldn’t be. The relationship they are scrabbling towards is family, that the pain they have both suffered, and from the same source, can lead to them finding the family ties that pain has cost them with each other.)

At the same time, the way this story drew in so many Slavic myths and legends that I itched for a mythopedia (I was driving, that would have had terrible consequences) reminded me, a lot and very fondly, of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, because that book gave me the same vibes – along with the same dilemma – and I listened to it well before the Annotated Edition was published. I won’t say that When Among Crows was better, because American Gods had a much larger scope, but for the smaller size of the package of Crows, it still managed to evoke that same sense of memory and wonder, that so much that is old and weird still walks among us hidden in plain sight – made all that much more poignant in that the place the weird is hiding is the darker corners of Chicago – a city that has always had plenty.

When Among Crows was utterly enchanting, and I was totally enchanted by it, staying up entirely too late to finish the audio because it was just that good. While the story was relatively short, it also went surprisingly deep, and then came around full circle in a way that surprised and delighted even as it led to a delicious sort of closure that I wasn’t expecting but utterly loved.

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Funny Story by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Funny Story by Emily HenryFunny Story by Emily Henry
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 400
Length: 11 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley, Random House Audio on April 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common.
Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?

My Review:

This is not a meet-cute, it’s more like a meet-really-really-ugly. But it starts with a meet-cute. It’s just that the meet-cute is NOT between our protagonists Daphne and Miles. It’s between Daphne and her very suddenly ex-fiancé Peter. There may, or may not, have been another meet-cute between Miles and his equally suddenly ex-girlfriend Petra – but that really doesn’t matter by the time we meet all of the above.

Because of all of that VERY sudden ex-ing that happened. In the wee hours after Peter’s bachelor party, between Peter and his childhood bestie, the beautiful Petra. The woman he claimed had always been a platonic friend. Always.

At least until Petra confessed to Peter, when they were alone in the aftermath of that bachelor party, which of course Petra attended because she was, after all, his bestie, that she was in love with him and couldn’t watch him marry someone else without letting him know that.

The resulting mess – and was it ever a mess – left Daphne with one week to move out of the house that she and Peter were supposed to share, alone in the small town she’d moved to because that’s what HE wanted, with no support network because all of “their” friends were really his friends – and a job she loved and didn’t want to leave in a place she could no longer bear to stay.

Not too far away, in that same tiny little town, Petra’s ex Miles was left with an apartment he could only afford half the rent on, in a town that he felt like he’d made his own, with an utterly shattered heart.

Daphne, ever practical EXCEPT when it came to Peter, made Miles an offer he literally couldn’t afford to refuse. His need for a roommate dovetailed heartbreakingly and conveniently with her need for a place to live.

They may have agreed to be roommates out of their shared tragedy but they are definitely respectful of each other’s space and each other’s brokenness. At least until they both receive invitations to – you guessed it! – Peter and Petra’s upcoming nuptials. After a long and very drunken night of shared drinking, ranting and more than occasional sobbing, Daphne and Miles decide that living well – or at least the appearance of it – will be their revenge on their exes.

They RSVP to the wedding of the people they each once believed to be the love of their lives, together. And to back that up, they post a selfie that gives the unmistakable impression that they’ve found the new loves of their own lives – with each other.

Miles is certain that they can keep up the pretense of dating each other for the summer – just long enough to get past that dreadful wedding. Daphne isn’t nearly so sure – but she’s willing to try. She certainly expects it all to go terribly, terribly wrong long before they reach that Labor Day weekend disaster-ganza. And it very nearly does.

At least until it all starts going terribly, terribly right.

Escape Rating A: I started out listening to this one, and that’s probably what got me over the hump of the early chapters. This is one of those stories that, of necessity, has a very hard start. We meet Daphne just after very nearly the entire life she had planned crashed and burned. She’s wallowing in a whole lot of angst and regret and self-recrimination, nearly buried by the weight of her emotional baggage piling up all around her. Listening to the excellent narrator makes the listener feel like they are literally inside Daphne’s mostly despairing head and it’s a realistically well-portrayed terrible place to be.

Fortunately for the reader/listener and Daphne, it really does get better – mostly thanks to Miles – who very nearly crashes and burns it all around her again.

The thing that keeps the whole meet-ugly/meet-cute of the thing from going over the top is that Peter in particular may be the villain of this piece – which he definitely turns out to be – but he isn’t evil. He’s certainly awful, and he displays all of his awful bits over the course of the story – but he’s not actually, technically, evil. He’s just selfish and self-centered and more than a bit spoiled.

Daphne was willing to continue spoiling him because he represented something she’d never had – stability. Her dad was mostly absent and generally in the midst of his next big score that never materialized. Her mother was the very best in Daphne’s eyes, but they moved a LOT in pursuit of financial security and Daphne stopped bothering to make connections because she knew they’d never survive a move. Peter, his large, loving family and his wide circle of lifelong friends is a situation she wants to be adopted into wholesale so she lets herself be surrounded and subsumed into it.

Only to be confronted with the fact that it was never really hers – and neither was Peter. (Although that turns out to have been dodging a bullet she never would have seen coming.)

The fun part of this story – and it mostly is fun after that first long, deep and totally justified wallow – is watching the way that Miles courts Daphne by getting her to fall in love with tiny, slightly touristy, totally scenic, Waning Bay Michigan. He loves the town that he’s adopted and been adopted by, and does his damndest to share that love with Daphne. That he makes the town irresistible makes him irresistible and their hesitant steps toward a relationship turn this story into a marvelous kind of dance of a romance.

That, at the very same time, Daphne uses the foundation of having a job that she totally loves – even if it barely pays the bills – to put herself out there in the sense of opening herself up to the possibilities of deep and true friendship and fellowship – is what makes this story so much her journey to happiness and fulfillment. Whether or not, in the end, either of those things includes Miles, or Waning Bay, or both, or neither.

That Peter ultimately gets the shaft all the way around turned out to be merely the icing on a very tasty cake of a book – or perhaps that should be the slathering of cheese and jalapenos on a fresh, hot serving of Petoskey fries. The part that makes a good thing just that much better.

My favorite of Emily Henry’s books is still Book Lovers, but Funny Story definitely moved into the runner-up slot. I loved that Daphne was a librarian, and she definitely read like “one of us” while her Waning Bay Library read as both realistic and on the good side of places to work – except for the poor salary which was equally realistic – dammit.

I’ve read all of the author’s adult books except for People We Meet on Vacation, which I can feel climbing the virtually towering TBR pile as I type this. It looks like a perfect book to pick up later this summer – when we’re on vacation!

A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ RozanThe Murder of Mr. Ma (Dee & Lao, #1) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #1
Pages: 312
Length: 8 hours and 24 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, this stunning, swashbuckling series opener by a powerhouse duo of authors is at once comfortingly familiar and tantalizingly new.
Two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants.
London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death withg a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims?
John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan’s groundbreaking collaboration blends traditional gong'an crime fiction and the most iconic aspects of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Dee and Lao encounter the aristocracy and the street-child telegraph, churchmen and thieves in this clever, cinematic mystery that’s as thrilling and visual as an action film, as imaginative and transporting as a timeless classic.

My Review:

It can be considered both sad and ironic that Ma Ze Ren had left his native China in pursuit of fortune and adventure among the Chinese Labour Corps in the trenches of World War I, survived, immigrated to London and opened a successful shop dealing in Chinese antiquities – having seemingly attained all that he had originally sought – only to be killed in the midst of his shop by means of one of those self-same antiquities he intended to sell.

When they both served in the Labour Corps, Ma Ze Ren and several of his compatriots had come to an agreement with the man who served as the liaison between the Chinese Labour Corps members and the British officers who used them as cannon fodder, Judge Dee Ren Jie, that Dee would make arrangements to send their bodies back home if the chances of war required such service.

The war may be long over when this story opens in 1924, but that contract still holds Judge Dee, so he has come to London to take care of Ma’s final arrangements. But before he can even begin, Dee is taken up in the midst of a labor riot along with other Chinese men protesting for fair wages and treatment in a city that considers them something less than fully human.

Which is where the chronicler of this tale, scholar and author Lao She, comes into the tale. Dee needs to be out of jail before an enemy realizes that he has this nemesis in his clutches. Bertrand Russell wishes to help his friend Dee without getting his own name attached to this scandalous business.

And Lao She is bored out of his mind – even if he is unwilling to admit it to himself – spending his days teaching Chinese language and literature to students who have no love or care for the language or the people who speak it, merely a desire to get a leg up on their fellows in the commercial opportunities opening up in a modernized China.

Lao is supposed to be clandestinely exchanged for Dee – but Lao gives away the game with every move he makes and every word he’s not supposed to be uttering. So a prison break it is, with Lao, Dee and Russell scattering along with the rest of the prisoners.

But Dee still has a mission, Lao has acquitted himself well in the melee and has acquired a taste for danger and adventure he never realized blazed within him. Reluctant partners, resistant friends, together they will uncover not one but two murder plots in a fascinating tale that takes readers from the homes of the intelligentsia to the alleys of Limehouse – with a stop among the pioneers of the silver screen along the heights and depths of its way – only to arrive frantic and breathless at one of the first principles in any investigation:

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Escape Rating A-: The Murder of Mr. Ma was the highlighted review in the online mystery/crime review newsletter First Clue several months ago, and something about that review caught my attention and held it more than long enough for me to mark the title in Edelweiss as “Highly Anticipated” and immediately grab it when my anticipation was rewarded with the availability of an eARC and later an early audiobook.

(The above is a hint. If you love mysteries, subscribe to First Clue!)

The comparison in many reviews of this book are to Holmes and Watson, particularly the Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr. in the Guy Ritchie movies – because that particular version of Holmes is considerably more active than most.

As has been confessed before, I am a sucker for a Holmes pastiche, so I would have been interested in this book on that basis alone, but I think that quick comparison sells Dee and Lao and The Murder of Mr. Ma a bit short in this particular instance.

There is a surface resemblance in that Dee is the more active and experienced investigator – with or without resorting to the martial arts – while Lao, like Watson, is the newbie at this particular game and is tasked with creating a record of the adventure rather than necessarily figuring out the solution on his own. And if this combination appeals, Barker & Llewelyn are a bit closer analog than Holmes and Watson in more ways than the initially obvious.

What takes this story up another notch or ten is that both Dee and Lao were real historical figures – who never met due to having lived centuries apart. But Lao was a Chinese scholar in London during this period in real life, while Dee was a figure out of legend whose adventures were popularized by Robert van Gulik in the mid-20th century. (So if you think Dee’s name sounds familiar, that’s most likely the reason.)

Of course, what makes any mystery is the way the case itself is laid out and investigated, and that’s where this one draws the reader in its whirlwind every bit as much as Dee pulls Lao along in his wake. Because at first it seems as if the murder was a result of the prejudice and anti-Chinese sentiment that Dee, Lao and their countrymen face on every side in London in 1924, not helped at all by the popular “Yellow Peril” movies that play on and sensationalize the British fear of “the other”.

But the more Dee and Lao, with the able assistance and frequent succor of Dee’s friend Hoong, search for clues and motives, the less that simple but terrible conclusion feels like the entirety of the answer – not that it doesn’t underlay that answer but it’s just not the whole of the thing. Particularly as that answer is made even more elusive by Lao’s struggles with his pride and his naivete, and Dee’s ongoing attempts to extract himself from his opium addiction.

This is a mystery with layers surrounding layers, wheels within wheels, two investigators neither of whom are having their best day and criminals whose overweening pride finally gets in their way. And it’s marvelous.

The audiobook, narrated by Daniel York Loh,  was a delight, but as is so often the case, I switched to text near the end because I couldn’t figure it out either and I just HAD to know. I have two and only two quibbles with the whole thing. I REALLY wanted Lao to get over his mooning over his landlady’s daughter because it was obvious from the beginning that he was deluding himself about his prospects and almost willfully blind to the obvious. His vain hopes and how thoroughly they were going to be dashed took a lot of audio time. My other quibble – a much bigger one – is that the short story that introduced this fascinating pair “The Killing of Henry Davenport” in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine does not appear to be available online, and that there’s no second book firmly fixed on the horizon. Dee’s and Lao’s investigations NEED to be a series. So much. So very much.

Which means that I leave this review pleased that Lao finally let himself get hit with the clue-by-four regarding Miss Wendell, and that rumors of a second book leave me with hope on that front as well.

#AudioBookReview: No One Goes Alone by Erik Larson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: No One Goes Alone by Erik LarsonNo One Goes Alone by Erik Larson
Narrator: Julian Rhind-Tutt
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, suspense
Length: 7 hours and 35 minutes
Published by Random House Audio Publishing Group on September 28, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From New York Times best-selling author Erik Larson comes his first venture into fiction, an otherworldly tale of intrigue and the impossible that marshals his trademark approach to nonfiction to create something new: a ghost story thoroughly grounded in history.
Pioneering psychologist William James leads an expedition to a remote isle in search of answers after a family inexplicably vanishes. Was the cause rooted in the physical world...or were there forces more paranormal and sinister at work? Available only on audio, because as Larson says, ghost stories are best told aloud.
A group of researchers sets sail for the Isle of Dorn in the North Atlantic in 1905 to explore the cause of several mysterious disappearances, most notably a family of four who vanished without a trace after a week-long holiday on the island. Led by Professor James, a prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, they begin to explore the island’s sole cottage and surrounding landscape in search of a logical explanation.
The idyllic setting belies an undercurrent of danger and treachery, with raging storms and unnerving discoveries adding to the sense of menace. As increasingly unexplainable events unfold, the now-stranded investigators are unsure whether they can trust their own eyes, their instincts, one another - or even themselves.
Erik Larson has written a terrifying tale of suspense, underpinned with actual people and events. Created specifically to entertain audio listeners, this eerie blend of the ghostly and the real will keep listeners captivated till the blood-chilling end.
Featuring Erik Larson reading his Notes for a Narrator.

My Review:

This is a ghost story. Actually, it’s not, because there’s no ghost. No one has ever reported seeing an actual ghost on spooky, creepy, isolated Dorn Island. Oodles of disappearances and other strange phenomena have been recorded, but there has been a singular lack of actual ghosties in a place that even the Society for Psychical Research has flagged as being haunted.

Maybe it’s the humans who occasionally visit who bring the hauntings with them. After all, they certainly bring enough emotional baggage along to conceal any number of ghosts.

That learned society, however, isn’t interested in mere speculation – although they certainly have plenty of that documented in their archives. The Society is looking for proof, for scientific evidence obtained by scientific methods, that will either prove beyond most shadows of doubt that psychic phenomena – including ghosts – are real, or that they are unequivocally not.

A party of researchers, led by pioneering psychologist William James, embarked for the tiny Island of Dorn off the coast of England in 1905. The reader, or in this case listener, follows along in their wake through the eyes of Julian Frost, an up-and-coming engineer in the British Post Office for his expertise with the new wireless telegraphy pioneered by Guglielmo Marconi. The party and the Society entertain some hopes that the sensitive apparatus that pulls telegraph signals from thin air might also manage to record psychic emanations the same way.

As we listen to Frost reading his diary long after the events chronicled within have come to their eerie, deadly, fever dream of a conclusion, we’re right there with this eccentric and increasingly fractious group of confirmed skeptics, reluctant believers, and as it turns out, unwitting experimental subjects and eventual signers of the Official Secrets Act regarding the tale that Frost is telling us much, much later – even though he knows he shouldn’t be revealing anything at all.

Whether this story tells a truth still behind lock and key, or is merely the fevered imaginings of a young man thwarted in love by not one but two beautiful women while the rest of the company looks on and laughs at his frequent humiliation is a question that will haunt the reader long after Frost’s furtive account has come to its surprising end.

Escape Rating B: I need to get this part out of the way because it’s the thing that drove me utterly BANANAS while I was listening to this story. No One Goes Alone was an audio original when it was published three years ago, because the author believes that ghost stories are best when told rather than read. YMMV may vary on that.

Howsomever, it’s been three years. I confess that I fully expected that at some point in those intervening years a text would have been published. My expectation was in error. There is no text. Still. Hence the bananas.

When I began the story, I was sucked right in and couldn’t wait to find out not just whodunnit but how and why it was done. The dramatic tension began on a very low simmer but kept building bit by bit as the water got hotter – so to speak – and an entire, literal rain of frogs started to overheat.

BUUUUT, there’s no text. So I couldn’t just read it quickly – it’s not that long even in audio – and I absolutely could not thumb to the end to get my curiosity assuaged. I got VERY frustrated with the whole thing but I HAD to know. (Now that I do know, I know that if I had flipped to the end it wouldn’t have made sense – but even that would have been informative in its way.)

Which doesn’t mean that I had to enjoy every scrap of that journey towards that knowing.

The story of No One Goes Alone is a very slow-building story, both because of the ponderousness of the early 20th century manners of polite speech and because it’s a story mostly told rather than shown, possibly because of the nature of the way it is told, through the reading of a diary rather than as it is happening before the diary writer’s eyes.

Also, while the narrator did a good job mimicking those slow speech patterns and differentiating between the members of this mixed party, American and British, male and female, young and middle-aged, the narration itself was a bit ponderous. To the point where, even though I normally listen to audiobooks specifically FOR the voice acting, this was a rare audiobook that worked better at 1.1x speed.

At first, the story had a bit of the flavor of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, even though the cast of characters didn’t have anything like the right mix of seething resentments and hatreds to make that plot work without an outside force.

When the penny finally dropped, I realized what this story reminded me of very much was the Ishmael Jones series by Simon R. Green – hence yesterday’s review. Obviously not in the tone of the characters, as Green’s snark would not have played well or fit AT ALL coming from Julian Frost’s pen, but rather in the way that the story worked and the way that the ending came out of a deep left field that subverts the haunted house genre, pulls in elements that are totally unexpected, and does its damndest to make the story part of something bigger, more horrific and considerably more complicated all the way around.

In the Ishmael Jones series, that sharp turn into the even weirder works because the premise of the entire series comes out of that weird – that Jones is an alien masquerading as human and therefore has some superhuman talents and outside of the box enemies.

In No One Goes Alone, this claustrophobic haunted house story is connected instead to a greater, but more amorphous and less defined evil in a way that I’m not sure worked – at least not for this reader – leaving the conclusion to the story plenty chilling but not nearly as cathartic or as much of a resolution as I expected.

Your reading mileage, of course, may vary.

#AudioBookReview: A Midnight Puzzle by Gigi Pandian

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: A Midnight Puzzle by Gigi PandianA Midnight Puzzle (Secret Staircase Mystery, #3) by Gigi Pandian
Narrator: Soneela Nankani
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery, thriller
Series: Secret Staircase Mystery #3
Pages: 342
Length: 10 hours and 38 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Minotaur Books on March 19, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In heroine Tempest Raj, modern-day queen of the locked room mystery Gigi Pandian has created a brilliant homage to the greats of classic detective fiction. Secret Staircase Construction is under attack, and Tempest Raj feels helpless. After former client Julian Rhodes tried to kill his wife, he blamed her "accident" on the home renovation company’s craftsmanship. Now the family business—known for bringing magic into homes through hidden doors, floating staircases, and architectural puzzle walls—is at a breaking point. No amount of Scottish and Indian meals from her grandfather can distract Tempest from the truth: they’re being framed.
When Tempest receives an urgent midnight phone call from Julian, she decides to meet him at the historic Whispering Creek Theater—only to find his dead body, a sword through his chest. After a blade appears from thin air to claim another victim, Tempest is certain they’re dealing with a booby trap… something Secret Staircase Construction could easily build. Tempest refuses to wait for the investigation to turn to her or her loved ones. She knows the pieces of the puzzle are right in front of her, she just has to put them together correctly before more disaster strikes.
Multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian and her heroine Tempest Raj return in A Midnight Puzzle, where an old theater reveals a deadly booby trap, secrets, and one puzzle of a mystery.

My Review:

A Midnight Puzzle is all about the Raj Family Curse – and the sin of hubris that allows it to last so long and makes it so damn difficult to put to rest.

After her adventures – and misadventures – in the first two books in the Secret Staircase Mystery series, Under Lock and Skeleton Key and The Raven Thief, stage illusionist turned construction illusionist Tempest Raj believes that she is on the verge of solving the mystery that has cast a shadow over her family and her life for the past decade – if not considerably longer.

Long, long ago, the Raj family were illusionists and court magicians in their native India. Way back then, it was believed that a curse had been laid on the family – or the family business. It was said that the Raj family’s firstborn child in each generation would “die by magic”. Of course, over the centuries, it did happen sometimes. Just enough to keep the curse – or the belief in it – going for another century or so.

Tempest’s beloved grandfather Ash is the second child of his generation, because his older brother died “by magic”. Ash left India for Scotland and its renowned medical colleges, married a local artist and never looked back. Or at least tried very hard not to.

But the magic skipped a generation as well as a continent. Ash’s daughters, Elspeth and Emma, became stage illusionists as “The Selkie Sisters” until an accident and an argument broke their trust in each other. Working alone, Elspeth, the older of the two, did indeed “die by magic”, keeping the talk of the curse alive for another generation.

However, Emma died by magic as well – or at least disappeared in the middle of her own magic show, on the boards – or at least in the wings – of their hometown’s Whispering Creek Theater ten years ago.

Tempest has rented the haunted and haunting little theater in order to stage one final performance, a one night “Farewell” to her own ill-starred career as a stage illusionist. Of course, being in temporary possession of the place her mother vanished, Tempest is also determined to comb the theater for clues.

At least until disaster strikes – from without and from within. But in solving the current mystery, Tempest may have the opportunity she needs to lay that old mystery to rest. If her family’s construction company, Secret Staircase Construction, can survive just one more public disaster.

And if Tempest and her ‘Scooby gang’ can manage to unmask a killer before their curse sweeps Tempest AND her friends into yet another example of the Raj Family curse.

Escape Rating B: I have to admit that I went into this third entry in the series with a bit of trepidation after the muddle of The Raven Thief. Particularly as A Midnight Puzzle opened with Tempest, her family and the construction company being in the midst of what seemed like rather pointedly aimed chaos on all fronts – only because it was.

(I started this one in audio, as I figured it would get me over the hump of those trepidations. And it did. I switched to text once it got going because there were so many potential clues and delicious red herrings that I needed to find out who actually ‘dunnit’ FASTER.)

But at the beginning I was still a bit stuck in thinking this series was inflicted with Cabot Cove Syndrome, or perhaps Midsommer-itis. By which I mean that all of the mysteries so far have been a bit too intimate and her family and their business have been much too personally involved – not as the investigators, or even as the direct victims – but as the suspects.

No one’s luck is THAT bad. Unless, of course, they really are cursed.

Which means that I was very pleased to see the mystery of the Raj Family Curse – at least in its modern iteration – laid to rest at the end of A Midnight Puzzle, along with a promise of more mysteries but somewhat less personal ones in future entries in the series.

But first, there’s the mystery in THIS outing. Or rather, the two mysteries that are both squarely aimed at the Raj Family.

What makes this story work better than The Raven Thief is that the story keeps its eyes – and Tempest’s – on the prize of solving the mystery of her mother’s disappearance – no matter how many distractions and misdirections get thrown in Tempest’s way.

And no matter how much the police seem to be bungling their investigation into the deadliest of those distractions.

As much and as often as Tempest is tempted (and so is the reader!) to hare off after the many distractions and misdirections, in the end A Midnight Puzzle is a very satisfying wrap up to what looks to be the opening setup trilogy for this series. And the way that the whole thing was strung out over three books feels like it was the right length after all, because this mystery has been decades in the making, so it’s only fitting that it take a year or more to wrap up in a way that leads back around to a beginning that Tempest barely knew about, as well as a reminder that “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

But Tempest is not the one who falls, even though the resulting thud breaks her heart, and it clears the way for new, and hopefully less personal mysteries and adventures. I’m looking forward to see what Tempest stirs up next.

Review: Under the Smokestrewn Sky by A. Deborah Baker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Under the Smokestrewn Sky by A. Deborah BakerUnder the Smokestrewn Sky (The Up-and-Under, #4) by A. Deborah Baker
Narrator: Heath Miller
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, portal fantasy, young adult
Series: Up-and-Under #4
Pages: 195
Length: 4 hours and 48 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on October 17, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The end of the improbable road.
Since stumbling from their world into the Up-and-Under, Avery and Zib have walked the improbable road across forests, seas, and skies, finding friends in the unlikeliest of places and enemies great in number, as they make their way toward the Impossible City in the hope of finding their way home.
But the final part of their journey is filled with danger and demise. Not everyone will make it through unscathed. Not everyone will make it through alive.
The final part of the enchanting Up and Under quartet reminds us of the value of friendship and the price one sometimes pays for straying from the path. No one’s safety can be guaranteed under the smokestrewn sky.

My Review:

We have come, at last, to the final chapter of Zib and Avery’s journey into and hopefully through the Up-and-Under. It’s a journey that has taken them from their ordinary and mundane homes – even if Zib’s and Avery’s definitions of ordinary and mundane are entirely opposite to one another – and sent them along the Improbable Road on an equally improbable journey through every single one of the elemental kingdoms in the Up-and-Under.

They’ve picked up friends along the way. And, even if they haven’t changed physically along their way, they’ve certainly changed quite a bit on the inside – just as they’ve changed the lands they pass through on the outside.

Even though, as their quest winds closer to its end, this particular part of their journey sees Avery backsliding rather a lot into the boy he was at the beginning. A boy who couldn’t quite wrap his logical and orderly mind around the immutable fact that the Up-and-Under was entirely mutable from beginning to end, that things absolutely did not work there the way they did back home in America. And that the way things did work in the Up-and-Under might not be what HE was used to, but just because things were done differently did not mean things were wrong or ridiculous.

It’s Avery’s bit of stubborn backsliding that pushes the story off the Improbable Road and into their very last set of adventures in the Up-and-Under. Adventures that will have a much bigger impact than any of them imagined when they began.

Because for every great change there are great consequences, and the time has come for someone to pay them. Whether or not anyone wins this last throw of the dice, someone is going to have to lose.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve enjoyed Zib and Avery’s journey through the Up-and-Under, so as a treat for this final entry in the series I decided to try it in audio. I still loved their story, but the audio wasn’t quite as much of a treat as I was hoping it would be.

The voice actor was terrific at differentiating the characters’ voices, but one of those characters is the voice of the narrator who is telling the story to us as the audience. Because of the nature of the series, that its protagonists are predominantly young adults or not quite that old the storyteller character took on an arch tone that arched so very high that it arced all the way over into condescension – which led me to switch to text at the halfway point. I liked the storyteller’s voice a LOT better inside my own head.

However, whether in text or in audio, Under the Smokestrewn Sky is the story that brings the journey through the Up-and-Under to its ending, and it’s a story full of surprises and costs and consequences – as it should be.

No matter the age of the protagonists, this has been the story of an epic fantasy quest that combines bits of Narnia with elements of Wonderland. Zib and Avery have been brought to the Up-and-Under to fix what’s gone wrong there, while for Zib and Avery the quest is to find their way home. It’s not going to end in a big battle between good and evil, because those concepts aren’t exactly the same in the Up-an-Under as they are back home. Instead, it’s a quest to put the out-of-balance back into balance – even if some of what they see looks like evil to Zib and Avery’s – especially Avery’s – eyes.

And, even though Zib and Avery are still children, this has been an adult journey which has to carry adult consequences for someone. A someone who might be either Avery or Zib – even if that doesn’t feel fair. Because part of the lesson Avery has to learn is that fairness doesn’t enter into the big answers to the big questions nearly as often as his life so far has led him to believe that it should.

Readers who started at the beginning of this journey in Over the Woodward Wall will probably not be surprised at how all the big questions that were asked at the beginning of the story get answered at its end. But following Zib’s and Avery’s journey to get there has been fantastic!