Theasophia

perfection

Revisado: 09-05-24

I've been eagerly anticipating this for a couple of weeks and started it last night. I was trying to avoid reviewing it until I finished it, but still couldn't help posting on social media a couple of times to encourage friends to buy it. Now that I've finished it, I feel I didn't praise it enough.

By one hour into the narration, it had already hit all the points I hoped it would and seemed to be going exactly the direction I expected. This wasn't a disappointment to me, since the joy was less in where we were going as it was in the details of how we got there.

It did manage to surprise me a little by the end, which was an unexpected bonus. It's a delight through and through.

A warning to those with Auditory Processing Disorder and other disabilities that cause difficulty understanding unfamiliar accents: the narrators are Japanese. This means that their accents in American and British English (one each) are unfamiliar if you haven't heard Japanese people speak English before and can require a little extra effort. The accents are not thick and are understandable, and I felt they enhanced the performances by ensuring the places' and people's names are pronounced properly and consistently. However, you might want the Kindle version to read along with if that causes difficulty for you.

That's not a criticism, but rather a disability accommodation note. What I lost in energy to concentrate, I gained in not wincing every time a Japanese name or word was spoken. I do think it was the right choice.

The story is a joy from start to finish and at every point along the way.

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Nick and his cardboard maguffin

Revisado: 05-19-24

In this story of angels, demons, humans, and abominations, there are exactly three female characters. One has no name and is only there to be sexually assaulted and impregnated. One actually manages to take a few actions before being sexually assaulted. The third exists primarily to be pregnant and to forgive the main character; the idea of her being sexually assaulted is the main character's motivation, but she's only there to inspire rather than to do anything. They're all humans. No angels, no demons, no abominations -- in this author's world, there's no reason for a character to be female unless she's going to be impregnated, sexually assaulted, or inspiring. Or weeping. The women do an awful lot of just standing there crying.

Despite a real attempt at examining how awful humans can be, the most horrifying thing about this book is the lack of one half the human race. It's a shame; the premise had promise, but the execution was distractingly self-serving -- ironically so, since the main character's growth involves an epiphany in which he realizes that's how he's treated the women in his life.

The girlfriend, Jess, has two modes: comforting and threatened. We never see the Black Farm from her point of view. The story occurs almost entirely in her absence as Nick tries to rescue her. She cries a lot, isn't very good at running, and so on -- tropes that were tired in the 80s. I find myself surprised she wasn't wearing heels so one could break, and that she never twisted an ankle. She has no character growth; how could she, when she has no personality and apparently no emotions other than being utterly devoted? In fact, the main character is the only one who undergoes any kind of development at all.

I wish I'd paid for this with a credit, because cash purchases aren't refundable.

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A pleasant (horrifying) surprise

Revisado: 10-24-21

According to Audible, I own around 1000 audiobooks here alone, not counting other retailers. That's not quite as self-indulgent as it looks in print, averaging about 2 books a week over the lifetime of my subscription here. I've listened to a LOT of audiobooks, and it takes something special to surprise me and strike me as new or refreshing.

This one did.

Listening to so many audiobooks every month, I'm pretty careful what I'll spend my precious credits on. I'll do just about anything else first, from seeking out story-based podcasts instead to weighing the price of the Kindle-plus-audiobook discounted price against the eleven or so dollars of a credit, and paying outright for lots of $2-3 short stories. So when I choose a new author I know nothing about to sacrifice a credit to, it's a carefully-considered decision. I'm rarely as pleased with the outcome of that gamble as I am right now.

Narration first: I've heard better narrators, but mostly I've heard worse ones. When I realized the audiobook was being narrated by the author, I winced; that sometimes turns out well, but not routinely. However, it was less than a chapter before I forgot that this wasn't being read by a professional narrator. Smitherd reads clearly and well. He's no George Guidall, but his voice is pleasant enough; he's no Jim Dale, but I rarely lost track of who was speaking. The narration is solid, and in places it genuinely benefits from being voiced by the person who imagined what certain characters should sound like in the first place. Overall, I think his reading adds value -- that is, I got more enjoyment from hearing him read it than I would have just from reading it myself.

The story itself, however, really shines. I particularly appreciated its self-reinforcing, self-referential nature. Some of the characters are also writers, and they state within the story rules about writing that the narrative itself follows in a delightful kind of meta-recursion. Even better, rules themselves are an important part of the story, so the narrative following the rules stated within adds another level of meta and another level of recursion. The structure is satisfyingly fractal that way. Best yet, this is done in a way that preserves the story's surprises rather than spoiling them. The craft on display here is startling from an author without a single "traditionally published" book (at least, as of the time the "Author's Afterword" to the Kindle version was written).

I haven't said much about the story itself, and that's partly because this one is very hard to describe or even tease without stealing surprises from the reader. For someone who has already read or heard the story, the blurb does describe it, but for most of the book I was baffled why the description included so little of what the book is actually about. Only in hindsight, knowing what to look for, does it seem accurate; the story itself is so very much better than the description led me to expect. I wanted entertaining and hoped for gripping, but what I got was utterly absorbing. Even the title winds up like this; through much of the story, Smitherd seems to be following the principle of referring to the monsters' effect on the characters, while leaving their actual appearance to the reader's/listener's imagination. But by the time the promise that "You See the Monster" is actually fulfilled without question, it hardly matters -- and you're not entirely sure which monster, or how many, or whether you've maybe been seeing them all along.

I'm so excited to discover an author I needn't hesitate about spending credits on, and I hope you won't hesitate, either.

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Best cure for insomnia; lovely, but not fast-paced

Revisado: 01-03-18

Would you listen to Swann's Way again? Why?

I have listened to it repeatedly, and will again. I dread ever losing my downloaded copies, or access to download it again.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

I am in awe of the duplication of the way the mind works and how well Proust has managed to capture the feeling of wandering thoughts.There isn't really much story, just a string of vignettes as remembrances (of, as it says on the tin, time lost) tied together by introspection and fleeting philosophical statements.

I can't say I find it interesting, precisely; too much interest would ruin the effect it has on me. I find it familiar. I recognize the patterns of thought and reminiscence as if they belonged to a me who lived a completely different life. It's soothing, pleasant, anxious in places but never alarming, always mild, always faintly dreamy. I can't really vouch much for the story, however; because of its effect on me and its place in my life, I've never read or heard it all the way through. I only know it as a series of descriptions and reflections, held together by thematically-smooth transitions but never progressing forward together as any type of plot.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It makes me sleep. My extreme reaction to this book is falling asleep, usually promptly, and falling back to sleep quickly and pleasantly every time I awake during the night. This is a literally unprecedented reaction for me.

I have used this particular book, and especially this particular recording -- with Guidall's calmly-inflected, soothing voice -- as a soporific for seven years and counting. It never fails to put me to sleep. I've had multiple types of insomnia since I was an infant, and I'm now in my 40s; no pill, habit, tea, clothing, or environmental arrangement recommended by anyone from parents to doctors to sleep specialists has ever managed to put me to sleep more peacefully and reliably than this recording does.

Any additional comments?

I don't want to give the impression that I don't like this book, or this recording, by emphasizing that it puts me to sleep. I don't even want to give the impression that I find it boring, although someone who wants a bit more action (or even dialogue) would probably find it so.

The writing is masterful at achieving its goal, however terrible it is at being anything it isn't trying to be. It's a stunning tapestry of musings and recollections, loosely strung together, the internal monologue of a man looking back on his life.

The narration is outstanding, even accounting for the narrator himself being one of my personal favorites, and the narrator is ideally-suited to the tone, pace, and themes of the content.It's superb.

It's just that I have a neurological disability that makes spoken words difficult for me to understand, and after too long listening for comprehension without something to occupy my eyes and hands, my brain gives up and switches off and I go to sleep. I usually buy ebooks and audiobooks in pairs, and the "Immersion Reading" feature of Kindles makes this even easier for me. It helps me practice things that can partially compensate for my disability, like understanding certain accents, or using small gestures to help myself keep track of long, intricate sentences. Listening to audiobooks with the Kindle screen turned off are a great way for me to get to sleep, although I will wake up later in the story when the plot picks up and the narrator's voice shows appropriate excitement.

That never happens in this book. There's never really a point where it's appropriate for the narrator to raise his voice enough or speak fast enough to wake me. I drop off somewhere around waiting for Mama's goodnight kiss, or on a very bad night, the magic lantern; I wake up again in time to hear about the madeleine dunked in tea, and drop back off again. There's no need for me to set a sleep timer; the audiobook shutting off would wake me, while the soporific reading keeps me asleep all night (however lightly at points) and gives me quiet, stately scenes for my dreams to recreate when I would otherwise be in danger of waking.

The prose is lovely, and the reminiscences are honest enough to be utterly credible and meticulously detailed enough to feel as if they are my own. The narrator and narration are ideal for the content. For someone who doesn't have a sleep disability to overcome, and a hearing disability to wield against it, it would be a lovely listen. For me, though, it's a very specific and useful tool, dreamy and pleasant, and I cannot bring myself to read the book while staying awake for fear of spoiling the effect while I sleep.

How fitting that it opens on a scene of an insomniac fitfully trying to sleep through the night:

"For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say 'I’m going to sleep.' And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V...

"I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of my great-uncle’s pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the day–the dawn of a new era to me–on which they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle’s fingers; still, as a measure of precaution, I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow before returning to the world of dreams.

"...When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to sleep months earlier and in some far distant country."

It's like this book, and thus this recording, is a love letter written from one person's sleep -- and insomnia -- to another's.

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Good story, terrible narration

Revisado: 10-02-13

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

No. Nobody I know would suffer through this narrator.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Frederick Davidson?

John Lee, who did a marvelous job with The Three Musketeers.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not in the slightest. I might have enjoyed the narrative that way, but at nearly 28 hours it would have been an absurdly long sitting. However, I couldn't stand the narrator's reading for more than a few minutes at a time, especially when there was dialogue -- he gave all the characters pretty unpleasant voices, and it seems the more central the character was, the less pleasant the voice he assigned.

Any additional comments?

D'Artagnan is portrayed as a shouting, unpleasantly brusque man with a half-strangled, nasal voice. While the narrator may have been trying to characterize him as a military type, instead he simply made sure that the most central character was the least pleasant to hear speak. The other central Musketeers are given similarly irritating voices. It's a good thing this book is Whispersync-ready, though, because you'll still have to follow along with the text sometimes to figure out who's speaking; sometimes one character's speech is given in the voice of another for a few sentences (or a few pages). At other points, I had to consult the text to see if strange emphasis were being used to make up a deficiency in translation, and eventually considered whether the narrator might not improperly understand what he was reading; the sense of some sentences was altered or even completely obscured by strange emphasis on small, structural words that should only be emphasized for specific purpose: "The robes OF the cardinal..." and the like. His phrasing was often unnatural and difficult to parse. Really, the narrator sucked most of the joy out of the audio for me. If I'd had the hands-and-eyes time to able to simply read it and leave John Lee's voices in my head for my mental performance, I would have. It was a chore to struggle through this version on my way to the next book in the series, despite the story being not nearly so much inferior, and now instead of looking forward to the next in the series, I'm wary of getting another awful narrator.

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Great story marred by subpar narration

Revisado: 07-11-13

Where does Midnight Blue-Light Special rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The text is engaging, well-paced, and written with a wry sense of humor I find amusing and endearing. Major plot points are predictable (yes, of course those two will end up together, since all literary convention says they must; likewise, they will end up embroiled in misunderstandings and cross-purposes, because that's the trope-in-play) but to an extent that destroys dramatic tension or surprise. The fact that I made it to the second in the series despite the marred narration speaks highly of it; there's sharp competition for my audiobook budget.
The narration, on the other hand, is the reason I'm bothering to write a review.

Did Emily Bauer do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

The narrator's "voices" for each character are generally distinct and recognizable; however, many of the accents used are awkward and artificial-sounding, which ultimately detracts from the story.
Internal and external commentary by the main character are not distinguishable from each other, leaving me too often to wonder if Verity actually said that snarky/cruel/too-revealing thing out loud, or merely thought it. In a plot in which so much pivots on how much each side of a war knows about the other, waiting for other characters' replies to resolve my uncertainty doesn't work; did they not respond to that comment divulging secret information because it was merely something Verity thought, or did the other character simply conceal their reaction to avoid alerting her that she's given away something valuable?
Naturally, this confusion is amplified in a story in which some conversations take place telepathically and thus hidden from other characters in the same room. Did Verity say that out loud where Dominic could hear it, too, so that it goes on my list of "things Dominic could use against Verity if he turns against her", or did she say it mentally so only her cousin the telepath could hear and reply?
It only gets worse when the telepathic cousin sends Verity telepathic messages that Verity responds to verbally. These things are very distinct in the text, where italics are used as a clear visual cue to distinguish things said mentally. The use of a stage whisper (for example) in the narration would have the same effect.
While overall I didn't have to expend much mental energy trying to figure out who was talking, I did end up spending a considerable amount trying to sort out who could actually hear the speaker, something that bears more than usual significance in the plot.

Any additional comments?

The narrator needs to spend more time practicing certain words. As someone commented in a review of the first InCryptid book, her pronunciation of "Antimony" and "gorgon" are distracting. However, in this second book in the series, her inability to pronounce certain words would have left me utterly baffled if I hadn't had the Kindle text to refer to.
* "apothecary" became "apocethary" -- distracting but decipherable
* "psionic" became "pie-scenic" -- incomprehensible
* "grimoire" became "grimmery" -- confusing and mildly misleading, since "grammarie" is a word in its own right with a different meaning; however, "gramarye" does eventually lead back to the meaning "grimoire" if one is sufficiently familiar with archaic/genre terms.
These are uncommon enough words that their mispronunciation in a general-literature work might not be too awful, but in a genre and a story in which they refer to central concepts, it seems inexcusable not to have taken the time to learn to pronounce them properly. "He thinks he's pie-scenic" encountered in a Chuck Palahniuk novel would still convey "he's delusional" adequately, but listing "pie-scenic powers" as a thing one might have wards against in a fantasy novel does not help the listener understand how such wards might crucially affect the plot.
The narrator should realize that her own unfamiliarity with these words does not make them made-up words with no need for the reader to identify them; these words have real definitions and are used in certain genres -- including this one -- according to conventions and connotations that make them an informative part of the text. By treating them as made-up words that don't require accurate identification, the narrator is robbing the listener of the real information these words carry.
("Antimony" is still consistently "AAN-tee-MOW-nee" -- a correct US pronunciation -- instead of the British "AN-tih-muh-nee", which seems like a minor difference but really makes the name sound awkward. This one might be understandable as an attempted contrast with "antinomy" (antimony is a chemical element; antinomy is a paradox pronounced "an-TIN-oh-MEE") but the narrator's other bungled words lead me to doubt she put that much thought into choosing this less-melodic pronunciation. It's technically correct, but with all the words she pronounces badly or incorrectly, I wish she'd just extended the mangling another inch to using a proper but British pronunciation here.)
Additionally, words and entire lines of text are left out in the narration every couple of chapters, not as abridgments but as clear mistakes that sometimes gut a sentence of meaning. I suspected this was happening in the first book, but didn't have the text to check against. If I'm going to have to buy the text as well as the narration in order to find out what the author actually wrote, I might as well just buy the Kindle book and skip the audio version altogether.

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