Gereg Jones Muller

Dangerous currents

Revisado: 01-05-25

These tales could so easily have been clichés that their artistic success is doubly impressive. Fine, honestly realised characters in intriguing - sometimes challenging - plots with a solid set of traditional mythic values.

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Half a great tale...

Revisado: 12-26-24

Characters, narrative voice, reader's voices, pacing, are all charming. But I've never read a book more desperately in need of a sequel. (Please note that I'm not a fan of sequels.) This isn't so much a matter of wanting to know more as one of wanting some key plot points resolved, particularly what at least seems to be one major contrsdoction in worldbuilding. Still worth a listen - even if only for Our Heroine's interactions with various critters (and, of course, shadows).

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Best in the whole franchise!

Revisado: 12-26-24

The producers seriously screwed up by not filming this. Aside from a great ride, Gibson finally gives us some canny insights into just how - and why - the alien xenomorphs developed into the horrific apex predators they are. This tale finally puts some science into the science-fictional setting of the series. Kudos!

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Really terrific book. (Go read it.)

Revisado: 12-18-24

I've read and love this book. Well-researched novels of Elizabethan fantasy are extremely rare. But here the reader gives us "back" and "black" pronounced with an exaggerated "British accent" that is wincingly painful, making them rhyme with "dark;" Marie's regions and social classes are wildly blended. And that's just in the narration. Marie makes Goldstein's characters sound like figures in a bodice-ripper historical romance... and yes, it turns out that such is Marie's staple narrating fare.

I love this book. I love it too much, in fact, to finish listening to this coy, self-satisfied, fairy-tale-to-the-children rendition of one of the best historical fantasy novels out there. Go find the book and read it. If you're the kind of reader who'll really get this book, you'll thank me for sending you off to read it for yourself.

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Light-hearted build-up to cosmic horror

Revisado: 10-04-24

It starts out whimsical: a crazy-quilt apartment building, cheap rent, weird and mostly pleasant neighbors, Scooby-Doo jokes as they begin to investigate the building's oddities. Loads of fun, good solid dialogue, well-drawn characters - this is where Ray Porter really shines - and the tantalizing hints that lead the tenants on. Oh, and mutant green cockroaches that don't eat anything and glow under black light.

When the tenants start getting their answers, the fun stops cold. That's the one off note in this book - the abrupt shift in tone: and at that, listening for the second time now, I don't see a way Clines could have gotten around it without weakening the really excellent tale he gives us here. I also don't see any way to say more about the remaindet without colossal spoilers, so just get the book and get ready to have your head twisted a bit.

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Thundering great prose

Revisado: 10-01-24

This classic is an old favourite of mine, and let's be honest, it's not easy to read well aloud. The dialect is archaic - reminiscent not so much of Shakespeare as of Marlowe or Spenser - and a solid command of Early Modern English is pretty much a prerequisite for getting through the printed pages.

But here our reader offers us the ringing glory of Eddison's unique literary voice as I've always thought it should be experienced: audially. This gentleman may just have read this masterpiece more often than I have.

I just finished my third listen.

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Reader lacks understanding of the material

Revisado: 09-18-24

This is one of Zelazny's most delightful books. I've read it often enough that I just rolled my eyes at the lousy French accent; but the mechanical voice of the sophisticated AI was one of many poor choices in vocal characterization that made this whole listen kind of a wince.

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Great tale, merely adequate reading

Revisado: 09-17-24

In getting a reader to give us the science in the first-person tale of Fred Cassidy, polymath and doctorate-dodging perennial undergrad, it might have been wiser to find someone with the background to pronounce terms of science - 'riant' and 'tapetum' are a couple that come to mind - and even the occasional wincer like 'fassimilly' for 'facsimile', which is a fairly standard word. Fred's wit is sly and subtle; the reader is neither. He's probably good at most mainstream American popular literature that doesn't require much in the way of higher education, but this was a bad match.

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A favourite book at its best

Revisado: 09-12-24

I grew up on this book, the first of Durrell's I ever read. Fascinating, funny, informative, and well-crafted, the author takes us through the disorganised process of an animal collector creating a zoo of his own. This reading by Degas outdoes my father's voice, reading the book to the family in the '60s. Don't miss it.

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Dark whimsy and pre-psychedelic farce

Revisado: 09-08-24

I read this book decades ago, when I and the world alike were younger. Many tales don't age well; I can only hope I've aged half as well as this story. In retrospect, I'm reminded of the writing of Gaiman and some of Scalzi's lighter work, written over a Bradbury landscape: and that's no small praise.

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