Reviews – Page 147

Review of Magic Time: Angelfire By Marc Scott Zicree and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Magic Time: Angelfire
By Marc Scott Zicree and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Read by Mark Bramhall, Ann Marie Lee, Ned Schmidtke, and Robertson Dean
12 CDs – 14.5 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0786183799
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic / Science / Post-apocolypse /

Magic Time: Angelfire is the second book in what could become a long series of novels. Marc Scott Zicree personally introduces the book, saying that it was originally pitched as a TV series, and very well might have been a good one.

In book one (called Magic Time), the world changed. Technology is erased and replaced with magic, with people all across America become infused with powers of different sorts, often dark. I have not read the first book, so I don’t know any of the specifics. (Blackstone Audio has the first volume, too.)

Here in this novel, Cal Griffin and a band of people travel the post-apocalyptic, non-technological, magic-filled America in search of the source of it all. The book seems written for TV; the characters are strong, distinct, and quirky. The dialog is full of current colloquialisms. The images are vividly visual. And the action comes fast and constant, with the characters fighting dark creatures while getting closer and closer to their goal.

The novel’s chapters are each told in first person from one of the character’s point of view. A different reader is used for each character, and the actors all do a very good job portraying their character. Ann Marie Lee has a fantastic voice, but had to maintain an intense angry attitude throughout that made me wish her character would calm down, maybe have a decaf latte or something.

The idea behind the novel was good, and, if it ever makes it to TV, would be a series I would check out. I wouldn’t stick with it, though, if the series didn’t go any deeper than a formulaic string of action sequences designed to increase tension. I was interested in the characters and what they were going through, but longed for something a bit more. Of course, leaving a reader wanting more is good thing for a storyteller to do.

The cover is graced with an excellent piece of artwork by Iain McCaig of what I believe is a “flare” – a type of creature that some folks were transformed into when the world went awry.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of A Coyote in the House By Elmore Leonard

A Coyote In The House
By Elmore Leonard; Read by Neil Patrick Harris
3 CDs – 3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Children’s Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0060728825
Themes: / Fantasy / Anthropomorphic Fiction / Movies / Crime /

This dog was cool for a homeboy, an older male who had peed all over this big yard, marking it to let everybody know this was his turf and nobody else’s. Keep it, homes. Live here and get food handed to you. Believe you’re somebody in your pitiful kept world, no better than a slave.”

Buddy’s the aging movie star, Antwan’s the streetwise hipster and Miss Betty is the showgirl. Buddy also happens to be a German Shepherd, Antwan is a wild and wily Coyote and Miss Betty is a bouffant Poodle. A Coyote In The House is a kid’s book in the tradition of Jack London’s The Call of The Wild. In essence this it is the same story, simply with a sub-urban as opposed to an arctic setting – that and Elmore Leonard’s patented prose. It’s not just Leonard’s dialogue that’s distinctive; it’s his story structure, characters, and cadence that all scream Elmore Leonard. And that’s very disconcerting. Leonard hasn’t written anything but adult crime novels and westerns so to hear this audiobook was truly odd. I think kids and adults who listen with together will both be pleased. It’s a fun story but it’s a strange experience for fans of Elmore Leonard’s other novels.

I couldn’t get over how Leonard completely ignores the impossibility of the situation he’s created. I know it’s a kid’s story, and kids won’t likely see it the way I do, but this story is utterly impossible. It basically ignores everything we do know about animal intelligence and replaces it with hipster lingo and human motivations and then marches on, oblivious to all the impossibilities those things entail. As an example, Buddy, the aging German Shepherd movie star, watches his old movies all day long – every animal in A Coyote In The House is intimately familiar with movies and movie stars – this despite the story logic that these canines, felines and avians can’t understand most of what humans say (and vice versa). Further, the animals can’t manipulate objects with their paws like in a Disney movie say, and yet somehow Buddy is able to – off screen – grab a VHS tape of one of his movies put it in the VCR and watch it, rewind it and put it back before his owners get home and see him. “Oh come on,” you say. “It’s a kids story, it doesn’t have to make sense.” Maybe. It didn’t ruin the experience for me but it didn’t let me fully enjoy it either. I just think that it’d have been a far better story to tackle, realistically, the animal’s perspective head on.

One other curious thing of note. The use of the word “bitch.” In any other Leonard novel it wouldn’t be a novelty – here it refers doubly as a slang term (for adult listeners) and as a female canine for children. Some adults may have a problem letting their kids hear such words, when the usage is not clear cut but I think that’d be the wrong attitude to take – the word is legitimately used here and I’d be far more concerned about kids thinking that animals are just like people – when they aren’t – than learning a “bad” word. Performed by Neil Patrick Harris, A Coyote In The House has a goodly number characters with distinctive voices. Harris is quite impressive as a reader! His audiography seems to consist mostly of children’s novels, perhaps a legacy from his child stardom. In any case he’d be a good reader of adult novels too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Cally’s War by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane

Cally’s War
By John Ringo and Julie Cochrane
Read by Christine Marshall and William Dufris
1 MP3-CD – Approx 13 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Paperback Digital
Published: 2004
ISBN: 1584390034
Themes: / Science Fiction / Alien invasion / Secret agent / War /

She walked over to the body and tilted her head appraisingly a moment before carefully and deliberately spitting on it. “The name’s Cally O’Neal, and that’s for trying to kill me when I was eight.”

Cally is a member of the sisterhood of the Bane Sidhe, which is a group of underground warriors. It’s immediately apparent that she is a warrior who can withstand all manner of assault on her body in the name of completing her mission. I couldn’t help but to mentally insert Uma Thurman in the role of Cally, as the character’s complete indifference to violence and sex (both of which appear in this book in copious amounts) is reminiscent in ways to characters from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Cally operates in this novel in a complex post-invasion world. She meets all manner of interesting folk while solving a mystery of her own. The events in the first chapter provided a good running start into the novel, but the rest of the book never matched that potential. I was never interested again as the story took a decided turn for the expected.

The audiobook itself is done in a style that at first turned me off, but then won me over in a big way. Christine Marshall and William Dufris take turns narrating, depending on the point of view of the story. This is a technique that I generally enjoy. But during each other’s narrating duties, the other plays a role. Whenever Cally speaks, for example, it’s Christine Marshall doing the speaking whether she’s narrating at the moment or not. This is a technique that I generally abhor – I find it annoying and distracting nearly every time it’s tried. But… it works very well here for two reasons – first, they didn’t follow up every piece of dialogue with he saids and she saids – words which are as transparent with a single narrator as they are on the page, but with dual narration can become annoying. Second, the sheer skill of these two narrators makes the dialogue portions of the audiobook work wonderfully. Both narrators performed several believable characters each, and there was never any doubt who was speaking. The dialogue was snappy and well paced.

This is definitely science fiction of a sort that I don’t sample too often in print, since I feel like I get enough of this kind of story on the screen (big or small). The technical production, though, was absolutely first rate – among the best in the business – which makes me eager to hear titles from Paperback Digital that are more to my taste.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Fruitcake Theory By James Patrick Kelly

Fruitcake Theory by James Patrick Kelly Fruitcake Theory
By James Patrick Kelly; Read by James Patrick Kelly
FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD (link to jimkelly.net) – 30 Minutes (14.33 MB) [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: www.jimkelly.net
Published: March 2004
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / First Contact / Christmas / Immortality /

“This one hears much of the information of fruitcake.”

Maggie is a tour guide. Her job is to escort an alien that looks like a rooster, and acts as dumb as one, during the yuletide season. The rooster is just one of two kinds of aliens from a bifurcated species visiting Earth. This is a story that posits some very interesting aliens, something Kelly is good at, but the heart of the story is the Christmas theme. It’s a bit silly, but I liked it that way. Told in the first person, Kelly does a great muppetish voice for the alien rooster that creates some great mental images to go along with the description. The reading concludes with a very appropriate Christmas music. It was great!

First published in the December 1998 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, “Fruitcake Theory” and this great recording of it will certainly get you in the mood for Christmas. As with the all the other audio stories of Jim Patrick Kelly’s we’ve reviewed, “Fruitcake Theory” is available for download on Kelly’s website for FREE – you’d have to be as nutty as a fruitcake not to try a deal like that! Kelly only asks that if you enjoyed hearing the tale you consider making a donation to his PayPal account. Donate as little or as much as you like, but seeing as the Christmas spirit is fast approaching be generous.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Dead Until Dark By Charlaine Harris

SFFaudio Review

Dead Until Dark
By Charlaine Harris; Read by Christine Marshall & William Dufris
1 MP3-CD – 10 Hours 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Paperback Digital
Published: 2004
ISBN: 1584390018
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Romance / Vampires / Telepathy /

Roadhouse waitress Sookie Stackhouse has a problem: she can read minds. And who wants to go on a date with a guy when you can’t get near him without seeing the images of yourself flitting through his head. It was just easier to stay home and watch TV. Until the night she got a bottle of beer for a new customer and found one man whose mind was a blank wall to her. What difference did it make that he was a vampire?

Dead Until Dark is the first book in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mystery series.

Told in the first person through our viewpoint character Sookie Stackhouse, we get a slice of life story small town southern USA. The only difference is that’s part horror, part fantasy and part mystery. The horror element comes in with the vampires.

Sookie, our southern belle viewpoint character, lives in a pretty normal world with her grandmother in an old house. She waitresses at the local bar. There are just a few things that make Sookie different from thousands of real life women like her. She’s “disabled” with telepathy and has been since childhood. Oh and vampires not only exist but are quite common. You see, vampires, in this otherwise normal world have ‘come out of the coffin’ as it were, and thanks to new federal legislation are to be treated as regular human people with rights and responsibilities under the law. It’s now illegal to kill vampires, either by staking them or draining them for their healing blood. And of course they’re not allowed to attack humans and this is all possible thanks to the new artificial blood products designed to keep them alive. But not everything is in equilibrium in this world, a few human “fangbangers” slavishly worship the vampires and some vampires want to keep their old status and be outlaws. So when “Bill,” a civil war veteran, returns to his home town and wanders in to Sookie’s bar the community isn’t exactly ecstatic – but they figure if he’s willing to “mainstream” they’ll let him be, for now. But soon old family feuds and carpetbagger Vampires stir up trouble for Bill and Sookie both. And when poor young women all over town end up murdered all eyes turn to the vampires and those who sleep with them.

I really enjoyed this novel; Charlaine Harris made a brilliant decision to tell this story first person through Sookie’s eyes. Sookie is a bright, fun character who loves the life she leads – even if she is a little lonely. Every other character in the book stands up too. The mystery elements start slowly and the plot creeps up on you. What I liked best is the originality, vampires and telepaths are nothing new, but the way Harris puts it all together is fresh and fun. I don’t know if I’d continue enjoying the characters in their further adventures, but I enjoyed the heck out of them in this one. I should also mention there is one historical celebrity, never mentioned by name, who turns up in a minor role, that performance alone made the novel worthwhile. It’s hilarious. One heck of a lot of the enjoyment came from the masterful performances by lead reader Christine Marshall. Her southern belle voice is so just much fun, she truly inhabits the role like no other reader I could imagine. But she didn’t do it all alone; she’s assisted by veteran reader, the always enjoyable William Dufris. Dufris shows an even broader range than I’ve ever heard from him before. You’d swear there were half a dozen male actors reading his lines. Sound quality is as good as anything I’ve heard on mp3, this is high bit-rate easy access fun listening in a slick package. Recording levels are high and Paperback Digital has their own introductory music. Track spacing is also good. Together they do an absolutely marvelous job in performing Harris’s sparkling prose. I’d venture to say this is the best novel yet from newly minted audiobook publisher Paperback Digital.

Paperback Digital hired artist Jason B. Parker to do the cover art for each of their novel releases. When I first saw them I wasn’t too impressed with Parker’s covers, but the more I see the more I like them. Either he’s getting better or my tastes are changing! I’ve here reviewed the mp3-cd version this is audiobook, it is also available via download from both Fictionwise.com and the Paperback Digital website. Hardcopies (mp3-cds) come in DVD style cases with insert paper covers, CD-Roms come with disc art. Downloads are slightly less expensive but nearly as easy to load onto an mp3 player. A must listen for any fantasy fan who’s happy to have a little romance thrown in.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Venus by Ben Bova

Venus
By Ben Bova; Read by Arte Johnson
4 Cassettes – Approx. 6 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Fantastic Audio
Published: 2002
ISBN: 1574534750
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Travel / Venus / Asteroids /

Venus is one of Ben Bova’s Grand Tour novels, written after both Mars and Return to Mars. The story begins on the Moon as a man named Van Humphries hustles to a meeting with his dad. There, he finds out that his rich estranged father has offered $10 billion to the first person who can journey to Venus and retrieve the remains of Van’s older brother, who was lost in a landing attempt on the inhospitable planet. Van himself takes up the challenge, building a ship and collecting a crew. They compete in a Great Race of sorts with another ship.

The book is filled with interesting details of space travel, or what space travel might someday be like if mankind starts devoting it’s energy to greater things. Bova portrays an active solar system with colonies on the Moon and miners swarming throughout the asteroid belt. There is also much of interest when the crews reach Venus and enter the planet’s atmosphere. The ships navigate the thick cloud layers with much difficulty, encountering much that they didn’t expect.

So far, the novel I’ve described sounds like it could have been written by Arthur C. Clarke, but the greatest difference between the two writers is that Bova tells a very personal human story against the backdrop of the hectic trip to Venus. Van Humphries discovers things about his brother, about his father and mother, and ultimately about himself. He confronts the fact that things are not what they seemed to be his whole life, and he finds this out while battling for survival in the planet’s extreme environment. The humanity and the science provide a stark contrast that worked for me, and increased my interest in the next volume of The Grand Tour.

Arte Johnson narrates and does a terrific job. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another title that he narrates. I enjoyed his pace and tone, and, of course, his timing is out of this world.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson