Jenny – Page 23

Review of Vision of the Future by Timothy Zahn

SFFaudio Review

Vision of the Future: Star Wars (The Hand of Thrawn Book II)
By Timothy Zahn; Narrated by Marc Thompson
Publisher: Random House Audio
Publication Date: December 2013
[UNABRIDGED] – 26 hours, 22 minutes

Listen to an excerpt: | MP3 |

Themes: / Star Wars / New Republic / Thrawn /

Publisher summary:

The Empire’s master plan is under way. The New Republic is on the verge of civil war and the rumor that the legendary Admiral Thrawn has returned from the dead is rallying the Imperial forces. Now Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and their allies face the challenge of their lives. They must infiltrate a hidden fortress filled with Imperial fanatics, rendezvous with a double-dealing Imperial commander, and journey into enemy territory to learn the identity of those responsible for an act of unthinkable genocide. But most important of all is the truth about Thrawn.

Vision of the Future is 2nd book of The Hand of Thrawn duology. Zahn always does a great job with Star Wars and does not disappoint here. Is the New Republic going to enter a civil war over the atrocities some Bothans helped commit? How is the New Republic going to react to these rumors that Grand Admiral Thrawn is back from the dead? Will Luke manage to save Mara and discover the secrets behind these strange craft being spotted? What or who is The Hand of Thrawn?

So many questions to answer and it’s no surprise that this book is kind of long for a Star Wars book. The book keeps up a steady pace and does manage to resolve all the different threads and plot points introduced in Specter of the Past. There are many different threads at work in this book but Zahn manages to juggle them well. At one point I got the feeling that more than half of the threads involved characters trying to recover a copy of the Caamas document in their own ways which felt like a lot. At least they were all good reasons to have some crazy adventures.

All in all I’d say that you can’t go wrong with a Zahn Star Wars book but I would definitely start with his Thrawn trilogy (starting with Heir to the Empire) or Allegiance.

Marc Thompson does a great job with impressions of all our favorite characters and the special effects are great too. There was some great use of music during more sensitive moments that helped bring them to a nice crescendo. The pirate’s voice sounded just like ones you’d find in the Caribbean – which was interesting, and the Caamas apparently have an island accent. There were a few times I found the sound effects a bit distracting but overall they are awesome.

Posted by Tom Schreck

Review of The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

SFFaudio Review

The Gods Themselves
By Isaac Asimov, read by Scott Brick
Publisher: Random House Audio
Publication Date: January 2014
[UNABRIDGED] – 11 hours, 26 minutes

Listen to an excerpt: | MP3 |

Themes: / aliens / electron pump / cosmic egg / multiple universe theory / sex in space /

Publisher summary:

Only a few know the terrifying truth – an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun… They know the truth – but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy – but who will believe?These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to the Earth’s survival.

– Disclaimer –
I’m no physicist. This book, in parts, kind of torqued my noggin.

Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves won the 1972 Nebula then the 1973 Hugo. The premise? Pretty straight forward. Will we destroy the universe?

I like this book. The first 2/3 kept me running. The last 1/3, I slowed to a stroll and enjoyed the pace change. The time spent with the aliens was intriguing, both in the differences and similarities to humanity. Asimov packs a punch, tackling the question of energy versus environmental cost. In some ways it’s comforting imagining that even in the future, we humans still salivate over a dangled free lunch. The characters in the other universe are stunning. I could have read twice the content volume on that environment alone. When I reached the lunar colony, it took some time to cultivate an interest in the people and their situation. By the time I was interested, it was ending. This left me feeling off-kilter and only slightly irritated. Don’t ask me to explain, but I found the chocolate bar with almonds scene very touching.

Scott Brick narrates this release. Early on, I didn’t know if I could handle listing to Brick’s performance. He has a nice voice, but he has a habit of injecting unneeded drama into almost anything he reads. Fortunately, within the first twenty minutes, I found Brick’s style quite suited to the content. After finishing and reflecting, I think Brick was the right choice for narrator.

Posted by Casey Hampton.

Review of The Wizard of OZ: A Steampunk Adventure

SFFaudio Review

The Wizard of OZ: A Steampunk Adventure (Steampunk OZ #1)
By S.D. Stuart; Narrated by Amanda C. Miller
Publisher: Ramblin’ Prose Publishing
Publication Date: November 2013
[UNABRIDGED] – 7 hours, 17 minutes

Themes: / steampunk / prison / betrayal /

Publisher summary:

There is no yellow brick road here. No emerald city. No lollipop guild. This is the Australis Penal Colony, a continent sized prison referred to the world over as the Outcast Zone.

Built to contain the world’s most dangerous criminals, OZ ended up the dumping ground for everything polite society deemed undesirable.

From inside this place, a garbled message proves Dorothy’s father is still alive, trapped in a prison with only one way in and no way out. Into this place, 17-year-old Dorothy must go if she wants to find her father and keep the promise she made to her dying mother.

She thought she had spent the past seven years preparing to overcome anything that got in the way of fulfilling her promise, but the situation she finds herself is harder and more intense than anything she has experienced before as she drops right into the middle of a power struggle for control over all of OZ. If she has any hope of surviving long enough to find her father, she will need her mother’s guts, her father’s brains and the unexpected help from those discarded and forgotten.

Everyone she meets tells her the same thing. The only person who can help her is the one prisoner who deserves to be in a place like this and refers to himself by the name, Wizard.

The Wizard always asks for something in exchange for his help. Can Dorothy afford the terrible price he will demand?

The Wizard of OZ: A Steampunk Adventure is a well-rounded story that is interesting the whole way through. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a steampunk take on The Wizard of Oz but Stuart manages to make clever nods toward different aspects of the classic when turning OZ into a massive steampunk prison. The steampunk aspects of the story are incorporated well and not over the top.

A lot of steampunk seems to go so over the top that it’s hard to follow what’s going on but that isn’t the case here. This is clearly a steampunk adventure that is not trying to be some kind of big budget movie. There are guns, swords, airships, combat, automatons, and borderline magical science all at work in this story. There is also a healthy amount of dueling, betraying, and double crossing in here too. One minor thing that I didn’t like as much (and is fairly common to steampunk) is the amount of betrayal- it was a little difficult to follow some characters’ motivations and betrayals at times because of all the double crossing going on.

Turning OZ into a prison worked out great. Since I know the story of OZ already, I kept linking pieces from this story to the classic and found that it actually works out well, even the lessons learned by the characters in the end. The story was interesting without dragging too much. The only parts that dragged for me were when some of the characters kept getting locked up in prison (it’s like a prison of prisons at times) and they sit around and talk or figure stuff out.

Amanda C. Miller does a great job as narrator for this novel. She does all the different voices and adds some good snark and attitude to Dorothy when she needs it. I never had trouble understanding her and could usually tell which character was speaking based on the voices she gave them.

Posted by Tom Schreck

Review of Rivers by Michael Farris Smith

SFFaudio Review

Rivers
By Michael Farris Smith; Read by Michael Farris Smith
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: September 2013
[UNABRIDGED] – 11 hours, 28 minutes

Themes: / global warming / post-apocalypse / apocalypse / survival / floods / eco-disaster /

Publisher summary:

It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land.

Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast—stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border—has been brought to its knees. The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules.

Cohen is one who stayed. Unable to overcome the crushing loss of his wife and unborn child who were killed during an evacuation, he returned home to Mississippi to bury them on family land. Until now he hasn’t had the strength to leave them behind, even to save himself.

But after his home is ransacked and all of his carefully accumulated supplies stolen, Cohen is finally forced from his shelter. On the road north, he encounters a colony of survivors led by a fanatical, snake-handling preacher named Aggie who has dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region.

Realizing what’s in store for the women Aggie is holding against their will, Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s captives across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that may pose the greatest threat of all.

In a near-future apocalyptic Mississippi, hurricanes and flooding are so frequent (nearly constant) that the government has redrawn the southern border of the country above the disaster zone. Anyone living south of The Line has no government assistance, no security, and must fend for him or herself. This setting is one of the most realistic apocalyptic worlds I have read. I’m intentionally not using the word “post” because throughout the novel, destruction continues. People are trying to survive below The Line, but hail and winds and rains are still a bigger enemy than the sprinkling of humans trying to create lives for themselves.

Cohen is a man who holed up in grief until he goes against his instincts and gives a ride to a man and woman on the road. Various events force him to make the next moves in his life in order to survive. I was quite interested in the story in the first half and in the end, but the middle almost lost me as Cohen seems to wander more in his memories than in solving his problems.

I listened to the audiobook read by the author. I didn’t realize he was the reader until the end, and thought he must just be a voice actor I hadn’t heard before. His accent is subtle but places the listener within the region, and he sounds slightly worn, slightly tired, which fits the character completely.

Posted by Jenny Colvin

Review of The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer

SFFaudio Review

The Lord of Opium (Matteo Alacran #2)
By Nancy Farmer; Read by Raúl Esparza
Publisher: Simon and Schuster YA
Publication Date: September 2013
[UNABRIDGED] – 11 hrs, 31 minutes

Themes: / YA / clones / genetic engineering / science fiction / gadgets /

Publisher summary:

Matt has always been nothing but a clone—grown from a strip of old El Patron’s skin. Now, at age fourteen, he finds himself suddenly thrust into the position of ruling over his own country. The Land of Opium is the largest territory of the Dope Confederacy, which ranges on the map like an intestine from the ruins of San Diego to the ruins of Matamoros. But while Opium thrives, the rest of the world has been devastated by ecological disaster—and hidden in Opium is the cure. And that isn’t all that awaits within the depths of Opium. Matt is haunted by the ubiquitous army of eejits, zombielike workers harnessed to the old El Patron’s sinister system of drug growing—people stripped of the very qualities that once made them human. Matt wants to use his newfound power to help, to stop the suffering, but he can’t even find a way to smuggle his childhood love, Maria, across the border and into Opium. Instead, his every move hits a roadblock, some from the enemies that surround him…and some from a voice within himself. For who is Matt really, but the clone of an evil, murderous dictator?

I wish that I could have read The Lord of Opium as a teenager. If I had, I would have probably loved this book, which is packed with sinister characters, difficult moral choices, scifi gadgets, and enough action to rival any movie. Before we go any further in this review, I will say that if you buy books for a teenager, or enjoy teen novels, then you absolutely should read both The Lord of Opium and its predecessor The House of the Scorpion. That said, I had the misfortune of reading this book not only as an adult, but as an English major, writer, and as a teacher who has guided multiple years of students through reading The House of the Scorpion. Therefore, I am intimately aware of every flaw in the story.

Matteo Alacrán is the clone of a drug lord known as El Patrón, created as a source of spare parts for his aging progenitor. Fortunately for him, El Patrón is now dead, along with his entire family and all of the other drug lords, leaving Matt as the sole ruler of Opium at the age of fourteen. This is not just an inherited position. Matt, as the clone of El Patrón, is the only person with the correct genetic code and fingerprints to unlock the lethal border security system that surrounds the entire country.

Yes, I said fingerprints. In case you are unaware, clones do not share fingerprints with their progenitors, just as identical twins do not share fingerprints, yet Matt having similar fingerprints to El Patrón is a key element of both books in this series.

If it sounds like I am fixating on a single issue, I promise that I am merely mentioning the fingerprints as a spoiler-free example of the sort of problem that runs throughout The Lord of Opium. Matt adopts an eejit (a sort of mind-controlled slave) as a pet and happens to discover a way to make her remember a small part of who she is. Matt’s friends come to visit and find long lost family members. Matt gets sick, is brought to a new hospital, and learns that he is not the only remaining clone of El Patrón. Matt’s bodyguard suggests a dangerous and completely unnecessary adventure, and Matt finds a clue that will be essential to the climax of the story. And the list goes on, and on.

I don’t want to give away the entire plot of the novel, so I won’t explain how any of these events are related, but I think they are worth mentioning to demonstrate the problem that I have with The Lord of Opium. Namely, that it is a novel of big ideas trying to masquerade as a teen fiction book. Had this story been told for an adult audience, or broken into several parts and told as a series of adventures for teens, I think that the author would have been more successful in crafting a compelling story. All of the pieces are there, from the vicious politics of the Dope Confederacy, to the isolated community of the Biosphere, to the ecological wasteland of God’s Ashtray. Each of these elements is glossed over in the text of this novel, serving as little more than a source of or solution to one conflict or another, but each could easily be the core element of an entire novel.

It is worth noting that I am now over five hundred words into this review and I have hardly mentioned any character other than Matt. This is intentional. The single best thing about this novel is the development of a new character named Cienfuegos, and I don’t want to take away any of your pleasure in reading about him, and the single worst part of this novel is probably Matt’s interactions with his girlfriend Maria, which I will leave for you to suffer.

As it is, The Lord of Opium is a competent novel that strains at the seams with obvious foreshadowing, unexplored plot lines, and a climax that hangs almost entirely on mistakes and coincidence. The character development is incredibly uneven, but so good in parts that I find myself wishing for an entire novel about one minor character or another. It is not a bad novel by an means, but it could have been so much more.

The audiobook of The Lord of Opium is one of the best productions that I have heard this year. Raúl Esparaza gives a pitch-perfect performance, complete with distinct and appropriate voices for nearly every character. Matt sounds young, but is never whiney. The voices for female characters are distinct, but not overly high-pitched. Particularly good are the voices for El Patrón (as he appears in Matt’s memory) and the Farm Patrol chief Cienfuegos, both of which are perfectly sinister without slipping into the realm of costume villainy.

Posted by Andrew Linke

Review of Deadly Sting by Jennifer Estep

SFFaudio Review
Deadly Sting (Elemental Assassin #8)
By Jennifer Estep, Read by Lauren Fortgang
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
[UNABRIDGED] – 11 hours

Themes: / urban fantasy / assassin / museums / magic /

Publisher summary:

Red is definitely my color. Good thing, because in my line of work, I end up wearing it a lot. Most people shy away from blood, but for an assassin like me — Gin Blanco, aka the Spider — it’s just part of the job. Still, it would be nice to get a night off, especially when I’m attending the biggest gala event of the summer at Briartop, Ashland’s fanciest art museum. But it’s just not meant to be. For this exhibition of my late nemesis’s priceless possessions is not only the place to be seen, but the place to be robbed and taken hostage at gunpoint as well. No sooner did I get my champagne than a bunch of the unluckiest thieves ever burst into the museum and started looting the place. Unlucky why? Because I brought along a couple of knives in addition to my killer dress. Add these to my Ice and Stone magic, and nothing makes me happier than showing the bad guys why red really is my color.

Our story starts out with Gin moping …she misses Owen and while she is trying to hide it. Her friends and family can feel her despair. Finn tries to shake things out a bit by manipulating her into attending an event where all of Mab Monroe’s treasures are being showcased…which is awesome because Gin has to get a dress! Finn and Eva also have an ulterior motive of getting Gin and Owen to talk. Which does not go so well since Owen has a date and then there is a heist by a group of giants. The giants are banding together because they are sick of being body guards and being taken for granted so they are taking their place in the criminal empire…or so it would seem.

As I read this book I kept thinking of the movie Die Hard and in the end it works out, actually I think it more than worked out the book is a lot more fun than some of the others. I listened to it on audio and as always the narrator Lauren Fortgang does a great job bringing the story to life. It is funny I am not sure if they switched narrators that I would continue with the story. Anyway back to the book the story is very succinct and the plot has a good solid pace. This book could have easily been a novella but the plot was strong enough to keep me entertained throughout the entire book. This time around Gin actually felt more like an assassin, even though she was still bumbling around it made much more sense. It was also nice to see Gin getting mixed up in something where it was not about someone trying to kill her for revenge or an elemental trying to collect power. While she does not get any new powers in this book she seemed to use her stone and ice magic with a lot more finesse. It was also wonderful to see how she choose to deal with Jonah he has been a burr on her butt for a long time.

While I enjoyed the plot of this story I did not care for the lack of growth in the characters. At the end of Widow’s Web one could understand how and why Owen was mixed up and confused. After certain events in this book he should have been crystal clear and even at the end there was a lack of resolution. Add to that Gin still has a need to shoulder everything emotional on her own shoulders almost to the point where it does not make sense. Speaking of things that don’t make sense is Gin can freeze and object and make it animate to a degree so why can’t she just freeze people? The water villain in the last story did it was water so why not ice??

While the lack of character growth was disappointing I did enjoy the overall story. It looks like we have a new nemesis on the scene bringing about a new story arch which could be interesting.

Posted by Dawn V.