Clay Sanger

A roaring start to monster hunting madness

Revisado: 04-22-18

Matching RC Bray up with Skorkowsky's Valducan Series is just solid gold. Love this stuff.

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Globetrotting monster hunting at its finest

Revisado: 02-14-18

Would you consider the audio edition of Redemptor to be better than the print version?

No print edition is available yet, but this book made for an OUTSTANDING audio edition.

What other book might you compare Redemptor to and why?

Larry Correia's "Monster Hunter International" series --- but with more flair for international adventure in exotic locations. It's Mission: Impossible Goes Demon Hunting.

Which character – as performed by R. C. Bray – was your favorite?

The Valducan Knight Mei and the Vatican Paladin Felisa are my favorites. This book has a large multi-national cast and R.C. Bray does an outstanding job presenting them.

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

It's machine-gun paced and 9 hours long. I listened to it in 2 or 3 sittings.

Any additional comments?

REDEMPTOR rides a wave of mayhem and bloodshed at a machine-gun pace through the arcs of vivid characters and lavishly realized exotic locales — all set against the backdrop of the darkest corner of the Valducan Mythology and the testimony of the madman who created it. It's my favorite book of the series, hands-down.

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Glorious, nasty reminder of why you fear the dark

Revisado: 08-03-16

Any additional comments?

Let me preface this by saying, as a general rule, I don’t “do” contemporary vampire novels. To be honest, pop-culture has all-but ripped the fangs out of vampires. Few and far between are tales of these monstrous masters of the undead that are actually visceral and scary. I want my vampires to be frightening. I don’t want to fall in love with them. I want to be afraid of them, in those little cowering monkey-places that keep me scared of the dark. I picked this book up on a recommendation and I’m glad I did. Simply put, it is my favorite book of 2016 so far, and in the vein of “scary vampires” it’s a triumph that does not disappoint. Now, the rest of the story…

I picked up a copy of “The Lesser Dead” on Audible Audiobook and not only was it my favorite novel of 2016 to-date, it’s also one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to in years. The book is narrated by the author Christopher Buehlman, and in my experience, authors generally give mediocre performances at best as narrators. Not so with Buehlman’s performance of The Lesser Dead. His characterization and dramatic performance is absolutely first rate. I’ll be comparing other audiobook performances to this one for a very long time to come.

The story itself hit two personal home-runs for me right out of the gate.

First, the vampires were scary. Dark, hungry, scary things that lived and hunted in the shadows of New York. And much to my joy, the only got scarier as the book went along. Which, frankly, was a hell of an accomplishment on the part of Buehlman. More than that though, the characters themselves, the people they’d been in life and the creatures they became in undeath, they were refreshingly, and even at times, upsettingly real. These weren’t all pampered little whitebread vampiric offspring of thoughtful doctors and upper middle class souls. Most of them had raw, dirty, and utterly believable origins. Buehlman did a phenomenal job of bringing the lives they had lived (while living) into their existence as vampires in the underworld ruins of New York City.

Second, it was a period piece, and a masterfully done one at that, set in one of my favorite, iconic settings – 1970s New York. Buehlman’s narrative of New York was alive with the sights, sounds, and smells of the city’s late Sodom and Gamora period. The dirty New York from the ’70s people prefer to talk about in the past-tense.
Remember when I said that Buehlman’s vampires only get scarier as the book goes along? I mean it. Follow the blood flowing in the cracks and gutters to the very end, and I promise you, your skin will crawl while the Rolling Stones “Sympathy For The Devil” echoes in your head. Don’t trust the children…

A solid-gold 5 out of 5 star read. A glorious, nasty reminder of why you fear the dark…

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Incredible narrator, terrible effort by the author

Revisado: 09-16-15

First rate performance by the narrator. Absolutely ghastly and sloppy effort by the author. I'm done wit the Dresden Files for a while.

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