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Fantastic Le Fanu

Revisado: 11-03-19

Beautiful adaptation of Le Fanu. David Tennsnt’s opening monologue is the best performance I’ve ever heard on audible—brings the book more fully to life than Le Fanu could have imagined. The whole cast was excellent, and the sound effects create the whole gothic world. Spooky and weirdly sexy (but that’s hardly a bad thing) one of the great audio collaborations.

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Almost spoiled

Revisado: 09-17-17

This is a charming story, like all Thirkell's Barsetshire frivolities, but the reader has a terrible habit of pausing at odd places, playing merry heck with the sense of Thirkell's lovely sentences. Irritating enough that I stopped, and only finished listening two years later when I'd run out of everything else to listen to on a long drive. It's not Thirkell's best, but it's perfectly decent, except for the reader's idiosyncracy.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

First but not foremost

Revisado: 06-06-16

Don't start the Hornblower books with this one, the first that Forester wrote. Hornblower here is sketched in, self-absorbed, and slightly annoying; the Lady Barbara romance is off-kilter. Start with the great Midshipman Hornblower, a much more enjoyable book, and let this one come in its chronological sequence. Not bad, just not representative of the best of this series.

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Dead or nearly dead

Revisado: 12-16-14

Good golly, this book is boring. Clancy and Blackwood churn up adventure and take f o r e v e r to tell it. Every t is crossed, every i is double-dotted, events telegraphed and texted and carbon copy sent by carrier pigeon to make sure you get it. Lou Diamond Phillips is a fine narrator, but even he can't do anything with this sloggy mush.

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hugely disappointing

Revisado: 04-27-14

This begins as an interesting inversion of the western formula, with a strong spinster rancher carting four madwomen home to the east. She co-opts a rascally claim-jumper, after saving his life, and the crew sets off. So far, excellent. But Swarthout betrays this promise by abandoning the strong woman (after first negating his own creation by making her turn weak and silly) and switching point of view to the claim-jumper. The four madwomen, whose backstories are painstakingly detailed, are slammed into a box and never speak or act with volition again; they're no longer characters but just Woman 1, 2, 3, 4. I won't do a spoiler, but Swarthout cripples his own book by killing off a vital character in a ridiculous denial of everything the character is about, and then lets the story dwindle off for ages in a diminishing, eternal, and very disappointing denouement. This is not a book for women listeners, especially any who might identify either with a strong self-sufficient woman or a woman who's gone insane after dealing with fate, winter, and idiots.

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Charming afternoon treat

Revisado: 01-09-14

A charming book from Eva Ibbotson, from her frothier side. "Journey to the River Sea" remains my favourite book of hers, but this is a tranquil, discursive, always interesting look at fashionable life in pre-war Vienna. Especially if you are interesting in fashion, Madensky Square is enjoyable and undemanding, and delightfully stylish.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Give it a pass

Revisado: 11-21-13

Give this one a pass. The story is marred by too torture-y a villain, made almost laughable because the narrator Jonathan McClain made the serious error of using a voice exactly like the Austin Powers' villain Dr Evil. The girl is more than usually bland, her character mainly delineated by her extreme thinness, and the romance is anemic. Child must have been tired when he got to this one, and in many passages he simply repeats sentences—at one big reveal, Reacher actually has someone repeat a piece of news (which we've seen coming for about an hour) four times. Four times. Skip to the next, this one was a dud.

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esto le resultó útil a 64 personas

No more Mitchells for me

Revisado: 11-07-13

Gladys Mitchell's books are always tempting—the synopsis sounds promising, Patience Tomlinson is a lovely narrator—but always a baffling disappointment. Mitchell's heroine, Mrs Bradley, is an unsatisfying detective whose methods are opaque and whose psychology is suspect, as well as extremely outdated. I've fallen for three of these books now and come out of every one irritated. The convoluted mystery plot unravels at a lame snail's pace, the cast is overlarge and undifferentiated, the main characters are dolts, and the entire proceedings are remarkably humorless. Never again, Mitchell, never again.

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Cool, amusing, intelligent: ideal Michael Gilbert

Revisado: 04-22-13

These connected stories are amusing, elegantly-written, and engrossing. Michael Gilbert is one of the very best of the Brits, not nearly well enough known. His books encompass every kind of mystery and thriller: these are legal conundrums, far more interesting puzzles than Rumpole ever constructed, and told with cool detachment but no lack of suspense. As story follows story, Jonas Pickett's new life unfolds and complicates and resolves. High recommended—and great re-listening, too.

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One of the best Brits, and one of his best books

Revisado: 04-22-13

Michael Gilbert is a brilliant mystery writer, perhaps less known than he ought to be because he did not have a series detective, just a fantastic series of one-off books. The Final Throw is one of his best, starring the rascally Welshman David Morgan and his highly-intelligent beloved in a twisting story of greed and corruption. The reader here, Andrew Timothy, is strangely well-chosen—his is not a dry professional read, but an exuberant impatient attack, complete with page-turning sounds and odd, forgetful pauses; he sometimes even seems half-drunk. But it's a great voice for David Morgan, and for the whole raffish, down-and-out, drink-addled tone of this thriller. Highly recommended, as are all Michael Gilbert's audiobooks.

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esto le resultó útil a 12 personas