Tag Archives: audiobook

the circle gathers

Book Review of The Circle Gathers (Veil Knights, #1), by Rowan Casey

I’ll start this post off with a quick note that I have taken on the HUGE project of thinning the 6,000+ books on my Goodreads shelves, Amazon Cloud, Smashwords lists, etc. For almost two weeks now, I’ve been reading synopsis and reviews, judging book covers, and making executive decisions on which books to keep and which to delete. I’ve gotten rid of about 1,500 so far (I’m up to the Ms). While it pains me to delete books, my TBR was out of control. I had no idea what I owned and a lot of it was stuff I’ve lost interest in.

I mention this because the side effect of putting all my time into this project is that I haven’t read anything (anything at all). The only reason The Circle Gathers got listened to is that I had a pile of laundry that needed folding. Expect that reviews will continue to be slow in coming for the next few weeks, slower even than the fact that I am still planning to read the series I mentioned in an earlier post and review them as a whole.

Ok, on to our normally scheduled programming. I received a free audible copy of The Circle Gathers, by Rowan Casey. It’s narrated by Lawrence Locke.

Description from Goodreads:

Not all legends are make-believe…

Three years ago, Jessie “the Berserker” Noble was at the top of the MMA fight game, a world-title contender with a brilliant future ahead of her. Then the visions started and her world came crashing down. Hard. Now Jessie’s a shadow of her former self, taking no-holds barred fights in the underground circuit to earn just enough to buy the drugs she needs to keep the horrible things she sees at bay.

When a man named Dante Grimm tells her she’s the modern incarnation of a champion of old and that she and her soon-to-be companions are desperately needed to hold back the darkness to come, Jessie thinks he’s as insane as she is.

But Grimm’s far from crazy. There is a battle coming the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in centuries, a battle against a foe straight out of their worst nightmares.

And for them to succeed, Jessie going to have to dive deep into the heart of the very thing she’s been running from all this time – her visions.

Review:

Geez, what a complete snooze fest! I got soooo bored with the nonstop MMA fight scenes, with nothing but flashbacks (of fights) to break things up. (I finally started skimming them.) Then, just about the time the story FINALLY starts to pick up, other characters are introduced and the plot looks like it might actually move along the book ends precipitously. I am not interested in continuing the series, no matter how many of the authors involved I otherwise like and that the mechanical writing is fine.

timberwolf

Book Review of Timberwolf, by Tom Julian

I received an Audible code for a free copy of Tom Julian‘s Timberwolf, narrated by C.J. McAllister.

Description from Goodreads:

Some want peace, some want war… he just wants the damned spider out of his head!

Humanity destroyed every alien species we encountered, until we met the Arnock – arachnids that drove us insane on contact. Timberwolf was captured by the Arnock and can now “hear” the Arnock in his head. Near madness, he’s gone on multiple suicide missions and come back unscathed – the alien forcing him to survive.

Emanuel Gray was Timberwolf’s commander and mentor. A former General, now religious fanatic – Gray sees our peace with the Arnock as a sin. He’s a wanted man and hell-bent on wiping the Arnock out.

Timberwolf chases Gray to the weapons factory world of Highland. When the Arnock arrive it becomes a battle for the deadliest weapons in the galaxy. Timberwolf will have to choose between getting the alien spider out his head or taking out Gray – all while millions of lives hang in the balance.

Review:

Not bad, but not a real winner for me either. Part of the reason is that it’s plot-driven instead of character-driven. So, I never connected with any of the characters. But part of it is also simply that I felt like the plot was just leading from one fight scene to the next. I swear a good 80% of the book is descriptions of battles. I got bored with them. I liked Timberwolf well enough, as well as the side characters. But I felt the duo Villians diluted the focus of the story. The narrator did a fabulous job, however.

vamp city

Book Review of Vamp City, by C.D. Brown

I received an Audible code for a copy of Vamp City by C. D. Brown.

Description from Goodreads:

All Sophia Fontanelle wanted was to be left alone. On the run from New Orleans and its vampire council, she heads to Los Angeles to start a new life. But when The Caballero, the ancient peacekeeper rumored to be the great Zorro himself, is murdered, Sophia finds herself caught up in a fight to clear her name. Threatened by a 1950s-era gangster turned vamp by the Caballero himself, can she survive in Vamp City?

Review:

I have really conflicting feelings about this book. In one sense it was pretty good. Certainly, it’s mechanically well written and perfectly readable. Similarly, I’m thrilled to have an ex-prostitute as the main character, an adorkable cinnamon roll love interest, and plenty of varied representation. Ther are white characters, black characters, Latinas, Omni-sexuals, rich, poor, etc. And both black and brown characters get to be good guys.

However, I have two pretty big complaints, both of which hinge on this same varied cast. First, in a very real sense, a lot of the book balances on the author creating opportunities to present the reader with one more quirky vampire subset. We have the vegan, the lispy Catalonian, the punks, the classic Hollywood era vamps, the 1950s gangster vamps, the sassy Latina vamps, the 1990s style gangland vamps, the sharp-tongued lawyer vamp, the “Omni-sexual” glam vamps, the start-up millennial vamps, etc, etc. etc. I very quickly got tired of meeting the newest type of vamp. I understand that being a noir style some of this was expected, but it was a schtick Brown leaned far too heavily on.

Secondly, while I appreciated all the representation in the novel, it was seriously compromised by being INCREDIBLY (and problematically) stereotypical. The Latina was a sassy sexpot. The black characters were gang bangers that didn’t respect women and were questionably trustable. The gay (or omni-sexual) characters were campy. None of them were developed beyond the cliche. And the downside of many of them being on the heroine’s side and therefor having more page-time was that they were given more opportunity to show off their stereotypicalness. Plus, they tended to be louder and more unruly than the white vampire groups. (There was an unmissable in-crowd and out-crowd.) I don’t necessarily think the (white male) author meant it to be this way. But it was. The way the characters spoke, alone, was majorly problematic. So, taken all together it’s cringy to the extreme.

I do think the narrator (Veronica Giguere) did as good a job with it as she could. But with so many characters using dated terms like, “babe” and “doll,” it got hard to tell them apart.