Reviews – Page 106

Review of The Communion Of The Saint by Alan David Justice

SFFaudio Review

The Communion of the Saint
By Alan David Justice; Read by Alan David Justice
17 MP3 Files – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks
Published: 2008
Themes: / Fantasy / Magical Realism / Catholicism / Ghosts / Time Travel / Paranormal /

Justice has given us an excellent novel that tells the story of historian, Clio Griffin, who begins to fear that she has inherited her mother’s insanity when she arrives in England for a job interview and begins hearing voices and having visions. Clio is being spoken to by St. Alban who was martyred nearby. As the story unfolds, Clio begins to experience the past and present in dizzying succession. She experiences the past through the eyes of people who lived through history that is not as sanitized as one might think from the history books. In the present Clio comes across a wide variety of reactions from such diverse people as the local mystic who sees nothing out of the ordinary in hearing from a saint, the priest who is envious of her visions, the newspaperman who just wants a good story, and the sexton who has possibly made a literal deal with the devil. The sexton’s seeming obsession with Clio provides the mystery and threat and is the one real thing about which we do not have to wonder. He is out to get her.

Justice has an excellent grip on the portrayal of the modern mind when faith is brought up and he shows the gamut of reactions while also giving us a gripping story. We are pulled through the story by our own involvement and questions. Is Clio really time traveling or is she losing her reason? Where did the plague victim come from who appears suddenly in her home? Will the sexton take his revenge upon her or will he be thwarted? This is a fascinating story about a thoroughly modern person who must come to grips with an ancient saint who is telling her that faith is real and she has a role in both receiving that faith and passing it on to others.

Author Alan David Justice reads the book with just the right amount of detachment to reflect Clio’s disbelief in her experiences. Justice’s wry inflections acquaint us quickly with Clio’s cynicism almost before we hear the words and yet he also manages to keep the pace quick enough that we are left hanging on each episode of the book. Hopefully, this is not the last we will hear (or read) from this author.

Listen to the author read it on Podiobooks.

Posted by Julie D.

Review of Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnick

SFFaudio Review

Starship: Mutiny, Book 1
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 7 Hours 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military SF / War / Galactic Civilization / Space Opera / Aliens /

The date is 1966 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race – but not yet dominated by it – finds itself in an all-out war. They stand against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man’s growing military and economic power. The main battles are taking place in the Spiral Arm and toward the Core. But far out on the Rim, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of three ships charged with protecting the Phoenix Cluster – a group of 73 inhabited worlds. Old, battered, some of its weapon systems outmoded, the Teddy R. is a ship that would have been decommissioned years ago if weren’t for the war. Its crew is composed of retreads, discipline cases, and a few raw recruits. But a new officer has been transferred to the Teddy R. His name is Wilson Cole, and he comes with a reputation for heroics and disobedience. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

There’s a light serialized feel to Starship: Mutiny, and I just don’t mean it’s the first in a series. There are distinct but successive adventures in this novel, rather than one over-arching plot. I like that a lot. I can’t say that Resnick’s broken any new ground, but what he does is bring an immediacy and intelligence to the Military SF sub-genre. Resnick is a master of dialogue and banter, his plots are fleshed out almost entirely by character interaction. Even scenes where Wilson Cole (the lead) is alone play out in an inner-dialogue. It makes for a quick compelling listen. The emotional roller coaster, so often present in Resnick short stories, is absent; but all the gravitas of his intellectual legacy informs the action. It’s as if SF’s own Tolstoy were writing Horatio Hornblower by way of The Odyssey.

Audible Frontiers, when possible, gets authors to introduce their work. Here it means we get insight into the motivation to write Starship: Mutiny from Mike Resnick himself. This is Resnick’s first Military SF book, and about that sub-genre he says: “I found a lot of it very same, filled with endless descriptions of military tactics and blood ‘n gut heroics. And that didn’t interest me at all. I’m much more interested in leadership than tactics. I’ve always prized intelligence more than physical force.” And that’s what is delivered. The narrator, Jonathan Davis, best known for his many Star Wars audibooks, is a familiar voice in this genre. Spaceship battles, alien accents and technojargon flow easily into the microphone. The whole novel took me less than 36 hours to consume, its highly addictive listening and I confess I was downloading the follow-up book before I’d even finished this one. For a novel so light in ideas, the heart of SF, it’s hard to call it “unmissable,” but on the other hand it masterfully achieves precisely what it intends to; it’s intelligent and entertaining Military SF – and that is still no small feat. Starship: Mutiny: Highly recommended!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer

SFFaudio Review

Calculating God
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 12 hours – [Unabridged]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008
ISBN: None
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / Paleontology / Religion / Philosophy / Space Travel /

One of the things I enjoy most about reviewing audiobooks is that I get to revisit novels that I’ve read and loved in the past. When these beloved novels are given great readers (not always the case), I can’t wait to get at them. Calculating God is one of those novels, and Jonathan Davis is an excellent narrator, so this audiobook leapt to the top of my TBR list the moment I realized it existed.

Jonathan Davis burst onto the science fiction scene with his stellar narration of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (SFFaudio review here). Since then, in the science fiction genre, he’s been almost exclusively reading Random House’s Star Wars abridgments. He reads them well, but I was thrilled to see him step away from that and narrate another of science fiction’s great novels. He is one of our very best narrators and this is a fine performance. I was rapt the entire time, and even near tears at one moment in the book.

When I read this novel for the first time, I was a bit taken aback. I am a Catholic and I’ve been reading science fiction all of my life. I have never had a problem reconciling science and religion and have been both perplexed and dismayed that Christianity is portrayed so often as being incompatible with science. It’s certainly true that for many Christian churches this conflict is real, but those churches are not Catholic churches, despite the most famous illustration of the conflict being the Catholic treatment of Galileo. I tell everyone who cares that Galileo was an aberration in the history of the Church (not the norm), but still, it was a colossal (though admitted) mistake. But for myself, science and religion are NOT in conflict. I’ve included a link at the bottom of this review to an interview of Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer that aired on CBC Radio as an illustration of a Catholic’s relationship with science. Robert J. Sawyer is mentioned in the interview as well.

Back to the novel at hand: The reason I was taken aback when I first read this book was that it’s the first novel I’ve ever read in which the aliens believe in God. That in itself makes this book interesting enough to pick up. Imagine – an alien lands on your front doorstep and starts to question your doubts about the existence of God. Most science fiction portrays religion as something that is grown through or evolved past. By the time an alien species is mature enough for stellar travel, surely they have jettisoned religion? There’s no place for such a thing in a rational, scientific universe. Right?

Well, not according to this novel. Sawyer presents, in a very entertaining and interesting way, arguments for and against God’s existence. The main character (Tom Jericho) is a paleontologist who is dying of cancer. An alien (named Hollus) lands near the Royal Ontario Museum and strolls right in, asking to see the fossils. And off the novel goes. Jericho and Hollus spend much of the novel together looking at fossils and discussing various topics that range from the wide, including mass extinctions and evolution, to the intimately personal, like the approaching death of Jericho. I can think of no better way to present these topics than this lively novel, and I’ll recommend it to anyone interested in thinking about these things, no matter which side of the fence they are on.

Sawyer uses science fiction to create circumstances that make us readers think about important ideas in different ways and from different perspectives. That’s exactly the kind of science fiction I love to read, and why I’ll keep coming back to Robert J. Sawyer for more. I’m very happy to have had a chance to revisit this novel, and even happier to be able to award it our SFFaudio Essential designation.

Audible.com has published a few more of Robert J. Sawyer’s novels: The Neanderthal Trilogy is there (Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids). They also have his Nebula winning novel The Terminal Experiment, published by Recorded Books. We reviewed it back in 2003.

Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God page: LINK

A link to a CBC interview of Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican Astronomer: LINK

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

SFFaudio Review

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
By Jack Finney; Read by Kristoffer Tabori
6 CD – 6.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9780786157815
Themes: / Science Fiction / Invasion / Aliens /

“I warn you that what you’re starting to read is full of loose ends and unanswered questions….Now if you don’t like that kind of story, I’m sorry, and you’d better not read it. All I can do is tell what I know.”—from the book

On a quiet fall evening in the small, peaceful town of Mill Valley, California, Dr. Miles Bennell discovered an insidious, horrifying plot. Silently, subtly, almost imperceptibly, alien life-forms were taking over the bodies and minds of his neighbors, his friends, his family, the woman he loved—the world as he knew it.

First published in 1955, this classic thriller of the ultimate alien invasion and the triumph of the human spirit over an invisible enemy inspired the acclaimed 1956 film, directed by Don Siegel and starring Kevin McCarthy, one of Time magazine’s 100 Best Films.

The image of Donald Sutherland at the end of the 1978 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers—mouth yawning open, eyes rolled back, finger stabbing at the screen—haunted me throughout my childhood. I stumbled onto the now iconic scene while watching television one day and it absolutely traumatized me. I found that alien shriek terrifying, and I still do.

It was with that chilling image gnawing at my mind that I began listening to the audiobook of 1955’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, upon which the Sutherland and as well as earlier (1956) film are based. I found out early on that, while lacking the visceral fear of the 1978 film, the novel evokes a deeper sense of dread, and also packs some literary and historic heft, including a deft examination of the political landscape of 1950’s America.

While I went into Body Snatchers listening for pure story alone, its subtext was undeniable. Body Snatchers was written during the height of McCarthyism, and you don’t have to try to look for parallels—Body Snatchers is as much a reaction to the existential threat of Communist Russia as it is a book about battling alien invaders.

But Body Snatchers is no simple allegory of the Red Scare, either. Finney also provides a nostalgic snapshot of a simpler time, infusing the story with elements that are largely fond relics these days—soda jerks, doctors’ home visits, and shoe-shine men, for example. Finney sets the book in 1976, but perhaps he sensed that, even in the mid-50’s, those elements of small town America were already starting to fade away. You can’t help but feel a sense of sadness and loss amid the growing horror.

For those who are unfamiliar with the plot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it’s a tale about an alien race of seed pods who drift through space, seeking out planets whose life they imitate with perfect simulacrums while the host body is absorbed.

The book opens with the narrator, Miles Bennel, living a quiet, uneventful life as a doctor in the small California town of Santa Mira. But soon a creeping, icy fear begins that builds deliciously over the course of the book, rising to near-panic when we learn the magnitude of the invasion. Remember that this is 1950’s style horror, so there’s no overt bloodshed or gore. But who needs splatterpunk when you’re confronted with an alien, parasitic race intent on consuming all life on the planet? Try to imagine the suffocating paranoia and slowly awakening terror of discovering that people all around you that you thought you new—teachers and sales clerks, husbands and wives—are being replaced by emotionless clones. And no one believes you.

Kristoffer Tabori reads the audio version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and does a wonderful job. He also shares in an interview on the final disc that his father, Don Siegel, directed the original 1957 film by the same name.

This is not a book without some flaws, however. One weakness is the spread of the aliens. At the risk of divulging a minor spoiler, the seed pods absorb their hosts’ bodies by growing in close proximity to their victims, typically in the basement of their homes. The process can take hours or days (how long is never revealed), but it begs the question: If Bennel and his friends managed to stumble upon a clone before it came fully to life, how come more Santa Mira residents didn’t do the same? Are we supposed to believe that every home has a convenient hiding hole in its basement capable of concealing three-foot long green vegetable pods? Also, the ending of the book was a bit of a let-down. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say it felt a bit tacked-on and unsatisfying.

But, overall, Invasion the Body Snatchers is well-written and thought-provoking sci-fi/suspense, and a fine way to pass the time while commuting amidst the rest of the soulless conformists “packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes” on their way to the office.

Posted by Brian Murphy

Review of The Hemingway Hoax by Joe Haldeman

SFFaudio Review

The Hemingway Hoax
By Joe Haldeman; Read by Eric Michael Summerer
Audible Download – 4 Hours 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Earnest Hemingway / Time Travel / Alternate Universe / Parallel Worlds /
The hoax proposed to John Baird by a two-bit con man in a seedy Key West bar was shady but potentially profitable. With little left to lose, the struggling, middle-aged Hemingway scholar agreed to forge a manuscript and pass it off as Papa’s lost masterpiece. But Baird never realized his actions would shatter the history of his own Earth – and others. And now the unsuspecting academic is trapped out of time – propelled through a series of grim parallel worlds and pursued by an interdimensional hitman with a literary license to kill.

This here is our first review of an Audible Frontiers title, Audible Frontiers is a new imprint of Audible.com, bringing hard to find and never before recorded SF audiobooks to their website and iTunes exclusively. The Hemingway Hoax is a strong beginning too, this is a Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella/short novel that interweaves historical fact and SF elements into an exotic elixir not unlike absinthe. In very real literary history, 1921 Paris to be precise, Earnest Hemingway’s wife lost a bag containing all the manuscripts and carbon copies for Hemingway’s first novel and several short stories. Seventy-five years later, in a 1996 Key West storyland, a Hemingway scholar named John Baird meets a conman named Castle who wants Baird to forge copies of Hemingway’s “lost” manuscripts. With his younger wife all for it, and with some major interest in the logistics of the project himself, Baird sets out to commit the fraud only to find himself face to face with an ethereal version of Hemingway himself! This being, who turns out to be from outside of time – or wherever, tells Baird that he ‘must not perpetrate the hoax, upon pain of death.’ But even the threat of death, and death itself won’t stop Baird, as the Hemingway Hoax is on!

I can see why this tale won a Hugo, this has all the Haldeman touches, intelligent and literate fiction, easy humor and good storytelling. Time travel and parallel worlds are about the oldest tropes of SF, but Haldeman staked out some ground in both domains, and they pay-off. I’ve read a few Hemingway stories, and the pastiche that appears here and there in the novella sound just like Hemingway to me. This, coupled with the candid BONUS AUDIO of Joe Haldeman talking about the inspiration for the novel that precedes the audiobook proper makes The Hemingway Hoax definitely worth checking out. Baird is a stand-in for Haldeman, both are professors of literature at New England universities, both served in Vietnam, both are intrigued by Hemingway and his lost papers. This makes for the most Philip K. Dickian Haldeman tale I’ve ever read. In terms of the production itself, this is a straight reading, with some light music added over the opening sentences and the final paragraphs. Other than a couple of very minor pronunciation errors Eric Michael Summerer (a new voice in audiobooks) narrated beautifully. He voiced five major characters, three male and two female, and they all sounded naturalistic and different. Audible Frontiers should use Eric Michael Summerer again.

Update (here are the illustrations from the publication is Asimov’s):
Asimov's 1990-04 - Cover illustration by Wayne Barlowe
Asimov's 1990-04 - interior illustration by Terry Lee

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Infected by Scott Sigler

SFFaudio Review

Infected
By Scott Sigler; Read by Scott Sigler
9 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780739328859
Themes: / Horror / Science Fiction / Mystery / Bio Chemical / Self Mutilation / Scott Sigler / Podcast

Maybe you’ve been away on vacation. Maybe you’re new here. Maybe you fell asleep 100 years ago and you’re just waking up. Maybe you’ve been locked inside your house with a pair of chicken scissors. Who knows? But, if you are a fan of audiobooks and audio fiction and DON’T know about Scott Sigler, you’ve been missing out.

So, for those of you who don’t know who Scott Sigler is, he started out as a rogue novelist that decided to record his own novels and distribute them for free, over the internet, as podcasts, to build an audience for his writing. And my, oh my how it has worked! Who would have ever thought that you could make money, or at least get yourself a big time publishing deal with a major company just by giving your stuff away for free? For those of you who, like me, have been following his rise, you’ll be happy to hear that our little Scott Sigler is all grown up now. He’s out of diapers and he’s using his “big boy” voice.

The basic premise of Infected is this: Some strange virus, disease, or biological weapon is turning normal people in to stark raving lunatics. This mysterious disease, whatever it is, causes its victim to become paranoid, psychotic, and just a little more than grumpy. There’s suspense, gore, disturbing self mutilation and of course, lots and lots of violence. But, as you may well know, adult themes and disturbing images only work if they are used to serve as a backdrop to great writing. Infected is most certainly well written and that’s why it is a good listening experience from beginning to end.

CIA operative Dew Phillips is burdened with the task of figuring out what this thing is and why it causes such behavior from its victims. Even with the help of CDC Epidemiologist Margaret Montoya, he does not know much about the disease. Because of its nature, all infected victims have been found dead. The investigation takes them from city to city, hoping to catch a live host.

Then there’s our “host” Perry Dawsey. He’s a gigantic former college football player, with a slight twinge towards problems of an anger management nature. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to take you on a wonderful ride of beautifully written “gross”. Perry is a man who has struggled for years to control his anger and you begin to feel for him as you witness his downward spiral in to violence. You may find yourself fighting for Perry the perfectly crafted underdog. Normally you wouldn’t consider such a hugely athletic man as an “underdog”. But, in Infected, his strength is literally his weakness.

I first heard Infected in its original form as a free audio podcast. When I sat down to listen to this professionally produced and released unabridged recording, I thought I was about to take a trip in to a wonderfully relaxing nostalgia. But, I was wrong. From the first page, the book has been completely re-worked, tightened, tweaked, improved upon, and added to. Infected is as fit as a boxer getting ready to fight for the title belt and every page, chapter, and verse has a polished feel that resonates with the listener. There is also new material, previously unreleased, including twenty-two pages that you won’t even find in hardcover book.

For fans of Sigler’s podcast, you will be happy to hear that he narrated the entire book himself. It comes complete with elements that you don’t normally find in a big budget release, such as voices and a mild amount of sound effects that help the recording spring to life. Yet the entire thing feels like his podcast. I kept expecting him to come in and say, “That’s all the story I’ve got for you this week…” but he never did. Not until the end, almost twelve gruesome hours later.

The sound quality is very good. There are no flubs, exterior sounds, or flaws. It not only sounds good, but Scott Sigler has actually never sounded better. That’s a lot to be said for someone who jokingly claims to have been doing this perfectly for over eighteen years now.

I realized when I first pressed “play” on this audiobook that I had never actually listened to anything written by Scott Sigler in one extended sitting. I had been consuming his fiction, just like every other person out there, one week at a time, for just a few minutes at a time. I am happy to report that he is not like one of those annoying friends that you enjoy only in small doses. I started listening to Infected, and even though I already had a good idea of what the story and characters were going to be, I just kept listening all the way through to the end. The writing is solid and the plot twists and character arcs are all perfectly juxtaposed. You can never relax or let your guard down because there is something even worse coming to get you from just around the corner.

So, if you’re in to a little romantic comedy where all is well at the end and everyone loves each other, Infected is not for you. But, if you are looking for something that is page burningly well written with great characters, violence gore, a dash of self mutilation and some chicken scissors thrown in for good measure, definitely give Infected a shot. I’m sure Scott Sigler would thank you personally, but he’s locked in his closet right now recording his next great hit, which he is still giving away for free, every week. Well, almost every week. It isn’t exactly clockwork.

Posted by Michael Bekemeyer of the Scatterpod podcast.