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The production outshines the story - but worth it

Revisado: 12-08-20

Dirk Maggs really is a king of audio productions. Here, he takes on the Alien franchise for a second time, adapting the book by Christopher Golden.
The story slots into the Alien series in between the first two movies - it takes us to the colony from Aliens before the xenomorphs began to run riot.
The production is fantastic - with a great cast including the likes of Anna Friel, Colin Salmon and Alexander Siddig.
For purists, there are gripes - for example, Colin Salmon is the leader of the colony's marine unit, a unit which didn't exist in the movie. That throws some continuity wrenches - you would think the marines in Aliens would have taken the whole thing a bit more seriously if they knew a whole bunch of colonial marines had already lost contact. That being the case, Vazquez might need to know a little more about the aliens than just where they are.
There's also the curse of a prequel - you know what's going to happen if you've seen the movie (and if you haven't you probably aren't listening to this). So we get to meet a lot of people and then wait for the aliens to start dismembering them. The sequences retreading bits featuring Ripley don't really add much to this part of the story - but are nice Easter eggs for fans.
In the end, this feels like a story we didn't really need as part of the franchise - though it does leave a strand or two open to exploring in future. One for the completist Alien fan. But gosh, what a good production. Hats off to the actors and Dirk Maggs for really making the most of the story.

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A love letter to classic horror but weak narration

Revisado: 12-08-20 El oyente recibió este título gratis

This is a love letter to horror stories of old. Take a dash of Wicker Man, take a pinch of Hammer Horror, throw in a sprinkling of Lovecraft and what have you got? This tale of a young man, Grant Shipman, returning to the town he had left long behind finds him getting embroiled in a web of cultist intrigue.
Strange things start to happen, and suddenly Grant finds there might be no one he can trust.
Bloody, sexy, scary, it's a fast-moving horror that really hits the spot.
One note I would say, get the novel version rather than the audiobook - the audio recording really needed editing, with the narrator stopping and repeating phrases on a number of occasions rather than lopping out the mistakes. Don't let that put you off, though - just grab the book instead.

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Great narration for a slice of Firefly life

Revisado: 12-08-20

Writing a book that fits in and around a popular series must be such a challenge - and even more so I would think with the world of Firefly, which got such a brief run in the sun before its cancellation.
James Lovegrove does a good job, showing us one of the side adventures that the crew of the Firefly got up to, without treading too heavily on the established canon of the universe.
We see a story that has just enough nods to moments in the TV series - fans will note bits from one episode here, bits from another there, some familiar characters... and some new ones.
The new is where it gets really interesting as we discover a story that grows right out of the youth of Captain Mal Reynolds, a story that reveals his first love, and the path that led him to putting on that brown coat.
Of course, it remains a side adventure, but a good one nonetheless.
A special shout out to the narrator, James Anderson Foster, who is quite brilliant. With just tone and inflection, he catches the feel of well established characters without ever seeming like just a mimic. He adds a real flair, and really makes this a delight to listen to.

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An action movie in your headphones

Revisado: 04-10-20

Inserting itself in between Alien movies, this audio drama wakes up Ripley before she gets rescued at the start of Aliens. The crew of a mining vessel wakes her up, and unfortunately find themselves having to deal with the xenomorph threat she hoped to have left behind.

There's another survivor from the first movie too - Ash, the android, who has become a ghost in the machinery of her escape capsule's computer, surviving as only a voice and a an aggressive way of taking control of other machinery. Of course, when the voice is that of Rutger Hauer filling the role, you've got a lot going for you.

Indeed, the audio production quality on this is really absolutely superb. The background audio of wet alien bites or acid hissing or steam pipes venting while alarms sound and so on is excellent. You're pitched into a claustrophobic world as Ripley allies with the crew of the mining vessel Marion, led by the engineer Hooper, to first try to stop the aliens and then just to survive them. Sadly, they don't make the most of having Rutger Hauer on board, dumping him with a bit of a role giving recaps rather than involving him more, but heck, he's great whenever he appears. Laurel Lefkow, as Ripley, also does a great job, really inhabiting Sigourney Weaver's role.

The script doesn't live up to the performance, and you'll soon spot the way in which characters live long enough to fulfill their solitary function before being gobbled up by angry aliens. Still, as a show, it's great fun, creating the feel of a big action movie in your headphones.

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Good story, fantastic setting, dreary narration

Revisado: 04-10-20

The concept behind Every Heart A Doorway is quite brilliant.

When the fairy tale is done, where do the children from them go? The ones who disappear down rabbit holes, or through the back of a wardrobe, what happens to them next?

This is the story that explores that, in a school that is a kind of limbo for children as they wait to go through their next doorway, the one that takes them to the land that will be their perfect fit.

It's weird and delightful and enchanting. More than that, it looks at these children and what they are looking for themselves. What they want. What they need. What they desire. What they would call home.

Wrapped around a murder mystery, it counters the gossamer touch of fairy tales with the harsh reality of being a child out of place. It tackles LGBT issues and more.

For some, this will be a book that hits them right in the soul. It didn't quite get me the same way, but I found much to admire.

I will confess though, I listened to the audiobook version and I urge you if you want to tackle this book to read the words on the page instead. The narrator for the audiobook had such a monotone that it stole the magic from the words and rendered them dreary. It was a chore to listen to at times, and didn't serve the book well.

So turn the pages and hear the voice in your own head instead, it'll serve you better.

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Brutal, honest and brilliant

Revisado: 04-10-20

Joe Straczynski is the creator of Babylon 5. I mean, you may know him from many other things. You may know him as the pen behind Sense8 on Netflix. You might know him from The Changeling, the Angelina Jolie movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Or Jeremiah. Or Spider-Man comics. Or... well, you get the idea. He's been involved in writing for TV and movies for far longer than many writers manage to stay in the ring.

This is his autobiography - and while you might think it's a happy trip through the successes he's had over the years, it's far from that. Indeed, it's far more intimate and personal than that.

This is the story of the young boy Joseph, and his abusive father, who tormented his whole family. It is a story that tells of Nazi sympathising. Of murder. Of a boy trying to grow up sane with a family life that was far from stable, moving from town to town and skipping out whenever people showed up to collect money.

Sure, it tells how he went through the early cycle of writing stories that turned out to be not so great, then writing more, and more, and banging his head against the door of rejection. There's the glimmers of encouragement, such as when the stranger who read his work at a school event and said there was promise in there turned out to be Rod Serling. But this is a story of a boy who fought to be a man free of his father, of a man who fought to get his stories accepted, and a TV writer who fought against the restraints imposed by executives all too often - to the point of his agent's exasperation.

He describes one moment in his youth - in which he gets the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of kids only to stand up and taunt them so they came back and did it again as, in retrospect, being the perfect preparation for becoming a TV writer.

There's a great deal of insight in here to the projects he worked on - from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, to Murder She Wrote. As a Babylon 5 fan, I particularly hung on the material to do with the show - even the saddest notes with the death of some of the cast members over the year. I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Peter Jurasik from the show, and the poignancy of those moments came across in two voices mourning old friends, the writer and the narrator.

More than anything, though, this book tells the story of Mr Straczynski's relationship with his father. So determined was he not to be like his father, his life in some ways seem to have been defined by purposely choosing to be the thing his father was not, the shape of his life being dictated by non-conformity to the monster he grew up with.

It's a brutal story to tell. There are no end of truly shocking moments. And yet, despite what he had to endure, he ultimately defined himself, who he would be, and rose to the success his father said he wouldn't reach. Is it inspirational? I'm not sure that's the word. That's like those moments when you see what people have gone through and pat them on the head and call them an inspiration. That's not quite right. No, but it is admirable. With a stubborn streak a mile wide, he managed to achieve things that had never been done before. And he did it with a sharp wit and a ready pen.

This book has been nominated for a Hugo Award. It certainly deserves it.

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Hard to tell characters apart

Revisado: 03-10-20

This came highly recommended to me on Twitter - so I'm sad to say it was a bit of a disappointment for me.

First things first, what it's about - it's a fantasy tale of a company of mercenaries. Trouble is, they're on the side of the bad guys. Caught in the middle of conflicts while trying to make some coin, the mercenaries find themselves fighting alongside monsters while doing their best to bring down the heroes on the other side.

So far, so good - but there are so many shades of grey going on here that it's hard to tell much difference between the cast in the company, uniformly morose and miserable and almost entirely male. Female voices are few and far between except for the Lady who leads the evil army. Worse, so many of the characters speak alike - I feel for the narrator on the audiobook I listened to who had to work hard to give them a distinct voice.

Many of the characters are unlikeable too - they rape, they pillage. The lead character at one point wakes from a dream in which he's forcing himself on underage girls - so I tended to cheer against the lead characters.

In many ways, it reads a lot like a game of Warhammer - with the monstrous entities the company fights alongside almost like special units in a wargame.

The story - such as it is, more a collage of short stories travelling the same path - picks up in the latter half of the book, and a plot appears, but the first half of the book could very well be offputting for many.

In the end, it wasn't for me. I don't mind anti-heroes - but this company of soldiers are too covered in dirt and mud to be able to tell much difference between the worst of the worst and the best of the rest.

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Great narration, fun writing - only ok story

Revisado: 03-10-20

This is the third novel of Chuck Wendig's that I've read - and it's fair to say I've had the full range of reactions to his work. I say read, this one I listened to as an audiobook, but previously I loved his first Miriam Black novel, but couldn't warm to his take on Star Wars in Aftermath. This one? Well, it ticks all the boxes for something I ought to love.

It starts with a bang, an FBI consultant being asked to come and investigate a cabin where a weird death has taken place. The consultant, Hannah, is a futurist, who seems to have a habit of imagining all of the worst possible outcomes without ever really seeing the best. She uncovers clues that suggest that ants are being used as a weapon - and follows the trail of their little tiny feet as she hunts for the suspects.

After the start, though, things get bogged down with very little action - Wendig throws in a few dream sequences as jump scares to distract from the lack of much happening. He writes really well, his style absorbing and immediate, but it takes a while for the story to pick up the pace - with Hannah all the while making bad choices and failing to see the consequences in her own personal future.

Stick with it and about halfway through all hell breaks loose - in a good way. Suddenly I was pouring a glass of rum and enjoying the ride. Still, it took a while.

So did I love it? Hate it? In the end, somewhere in the middle. I liked it - but it took a bit of patience to hang in there. I really like Wendig's writing, but the plot here was a bit humdrum, and it was easy to predict whodunnit.

I must say, however, the narrator - XE Sands - was brilliant. Disarming in the face of scientific explanations and adding a real human uncertainty to the lead character, she really knocked it out of the park. Top notch narration.

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I probably shouldn't empathise with a Murderbot...

Revisado: 05-28-19

Meet the Murderbot!

This is the first book in the Murderbot Diaries from Martha Wells, and I've never met a nicer killing machine.

It's a novella - the hero of which is a self-aware SecUnit robot. It's also hacked itself, to get rid of the module constraining it. And it calls itself Murderbot. Just not out loud. That might scare the humans.

As plots swirl around it, the Murderbot sets about trying to be left alone and wanting to get back to the TV shows it streams. I can so very much empathise.

Laced with wit and sarcasm, this is a really fun sci-fi tale. The narration is good too. Some might grumble at the length for the price as an audiobook, but I promise, all 3 hours and 17 minutes are fun.

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