Tango

20 books and this series is still great!

Revisado: 04-19-25

What do you say about the 20th book in a series? Well, for me, it's saying a lot that I bought and read 20 books in a series. The only way that would happen is if the writing stays consistently good for that long which is rare. However, this 20th book in the series was just outstanding. Harris has crafted some brilliant characters to essentially write enlightening 19th century British history while keeping the reader completely engaged with some very clever murder mysteries. Although I have liked the previous female narrators, the shift with this book to a male narrator, Tom Kiteley, makes sense since the POV for most of the story is a man and Kiteley did an excellent job. Highly recommend this series.

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Bring it home Scarlet and Brown!

Revisado: 03-27-25

This final book in the series did not disappoint. Jonathan Stroud is amazing at using young teens as protagonists, but writing the characters and plots with enough complexity that his books are fun for children and adults to read. As always, great world-building, much suspense, and a generous sprinkling of humor made this an engaging read start to finish. Fabulous narration by Sophie Aldred took this book up to a 5 star for me.

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Shockingly BAD

Revisado: 01-17-25

Nope. Nope. Nope. Unlike most of Diana Wynne Jones books, I would never recommend this book to its target audience (pre and mid teens) because the messages in it are a bit of horror and I positively despised the MC, Abdullah. I recognize that I am seeing this through the lens of adult sensibility and 2025 mores. However, this book published in 1990 had ZERO positive messages for young people. The women are all property, allowed only marriage as an aspiration, and only valued for beauty and thinness. Every male character is completely superficial focused on acquiring wealth and/or beautiful women. And, to cap it off, our MC advocates throwing stones/kicking cats and drowning "any kitten you can get your hands on". Disgusting! None of the normal charm of most of Jones' books and a terribly disappointing sequel to the much more clever and well written Howl's Moving Castle. I am going to read the third in this trilogy and hope for the best, but even for free Castle in the Air isn't worth anyone's time. Jenny Sterlin delivers her standard excellent narration.

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Love this series!

Revisado: 01-14-25

I got my wish - a new Isaac Steele audiobook was recently released and although it wasn't quite at the level of close to perfect as the first episode, this was still a thoroughly enjoyable book. In this continuing episode Isaac is working alone without his sidekicks Rue and Dr. Timothy Stevens much of the time. Without the other two to play off of Isaac isn't quite as sardonic and witty as he was the first time around and I found this novel had a more intense and serious feel to it. It was still really good and still free and still ended with the indication that there will be more fun to come for Isaac Steele. Daniel Rigby is just outstanding with his narration.

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Smart A$$ in Space

Revisado: 01-14-25

Shakedowners is a sci-fi with a fair amount of snarky comedy thrown in. The plot moves very fast and the characters, although drawn a bit sketchily, are relatively engaging. The MC slides from snarky smart-a$$ over into a$$hole a few times which started to get on my nerves, but he is mostly a funny relatable POV. I picked up this first book in the series just because it was free on Audible Plus, but I liked it enough to want to read more. Waiting for the remaining books to go on sale... Narrator, Grant Cartwright, is good.

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Get rid of the confusion and this would be great

Revisado: 01-14-25

This audio drama is a modern version of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and I found most of it pretty entertaining. What brought it down from 4 to 3 stars for me is that this is another audio drama that forgets that without visuals and any narrative, the listener gets lost sometimes. And, this was my experience in at least five instances during this short tale. Imagine reading a play with no stage direction and the dialog is not labeled for who is speaking. Much of the story is dialog and the performers had relatively distinctive voices (although I did confuse the two women Doctors a couple of times when they were just addressed as Doctor) so that helped, but the big action scenes were as confusing as they always are in these dramas. (One person's "ugh" or "oof" sounds pretty much like another person's - you just can't tell who is getting hit or who is losing the fight.) Why do I keep picking these audio dramas up? Because they are free and I keep hoping someday someone will get it and produce these in a way that is not confusing. At least this one did not have a bunch of loud background sounds or crazy music and the conversations could be understood. The four narrators were OK, but not exceptional.

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I want more

Revisado: 01-10-25

Funny tale about municipal government on an Earth with Aliens. Ashley Benson's narration is great.

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Not really for over 30's

Revisado: 01-10-25

This was free and it held my interest so not all bad. I could see where early 20's me might have identified a bit because of the extreme pressure at that age to find The One, but a few decades later I just found the MC rather immature, dependent, superficial, and downright cringe sometimes. When I read about young Micaela, I kept wondering why this young woman doesn't have more career aspirations, look for exciting volunteer opportunities, or get a dog. Instead she spends a lot of money for advice that has a woman focus on her genitals? Um, yeah, no. From the epilogue, it sounds like she did mature and gain some wisdom, but I didn't feel any sense of life enhancement from this story.

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Very Engaging

Revisado: 01-03-25

I give so few 5 stars, I really have to explain. I make no attempt to be completely analytical in my ratings especially for fiction. Ultimately, I feel like the first job of fiction is to engage and entertain so any book that drags or repeats or bores me, no matter how well written otherwise, cannot be a 5 star. And, with only rare exceptions, a book that I will never read again will not get more than 3 stars. My 5 star books will be a step above just engaging/entertaining - I want to see fleshed out characters with individual personalities, atmospheric settings that easily create pictures in my mind as I read or listen, plots that contain some mystery and cleverness, and a reasonable level of decent grammar and word usage. Although I read very few children's, middle school, or even YA fiction, I have read a few in each of those categories that are 5 stars for me even though I am not the target audience. Enchanted Glass is probably ideally targeted to middle school readers, but is not "written down" at all. I picked up the book because it looked interesting (magic/alt reality) and it was free on Audible Plus (nothing to lose). I was so caught up in the fun of the magic system, the mysteries woven into the plot, and the wonderful quirky characters that I ended up listening to it start to finish in one day and quickly went to find another Diana Wynne Jones on Audible Plus. Steven Crossley's narration was an extra touch of elegance to a fine novel. I suspect most children/teens will enjoy this book and any adult who enjoys speculative fiction will not be bored.

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Verbosity!

Revisado: 12-26-24

This is the first book of a trilogy and I have the sense if Chmilenko would have just focused on writing one complete book, this might have been much better. The premise is interesting - A wizard has been killed and his essence (soul?) has ended up in a hat. The wizard can think and function only if the hat is on the head of a being with a sentient brain and that first brain giving him access to the world is a dopey Kobold. The two must make it back to a place the wizard can access records and knowledge that might help him to free himself from the hat and that's it. They have some adventures with different beasts, characters, and challenges, but there is so little actual progress in the plot, the growth of the characters, or understanding of the world they operate in that it grows really tedious. And, that is not helped by the verbosity of the author in the form of the hat narrator. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, there are thousands of adjectives, adjuncts, and asides that feel like nothing but word count filler. I think I would have DNFed this book had it not been for the beauty of John Lee's narration. His lovely voice and skilled characterizations kept me going to the end. John Lee though is not enough to keep me going to Book 2. There is a cliffhanger ending on this first book, but I will discontinue the slog here.

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