The Unleashing

The Unleashing (Call of the Crows #1)
by Shelly Laurenston

Genre:  Paranormal Fantasy; Mythlogy
Publisher: Kensington on 31 March 2015
Thank you NetGalley

Kera Watson never expected to face death behind a Los Angeles coffee shop. Not after surviving two tours lugging an M16 around the Middle East. If it wasn’t for her hot Viking customer showing up too late to help, nobody would even see her die.
In uncountable years of service to the Allfather Odin, Ludvig “Vig” Rundstrom has never seen anyone kick ass with quite as much style as Kera. He knows one way to save her life—but she might not like it. Signing up with the Crows will get Kera a new set of battle buddies: cackling, gossiping, squabbling, party-hearty women. With wings. So not the Marines.
But Vig can’t give up on someone as special as Kera. With a storm of oh-crap magic speeding straight for L.A., survival will depend on combining their strengths: Kera’s discipline, Vig’s loyalty… and the Crows’ sheer love of battle. Boy, are they in trouble.

My thoughts:
I have to admit that I was afraid to start this one.  Shelly Laurenston is my favourite (auto-buy) author but I was nervous that somehow her new series would not live up to THE PRIDE series which I love.   I should not have hesitated.  This new series features the same feisty, kickass women and the same humor all wrapped up in a new package.  

This is Kera and Vig's story but I can tell some of the other women's stories are going to be awesome.  There are lots of friction between the girls as the story starts but by the end of the book, they are a tight unit that would do anything for each other.

Even thought the sub-plot of the story are Kera and Vig's relationship (which I loved), the romance is light and does not take over the book - which is what I enjoy in my books.

The Unleashing is almost a guilty pleasure as the all male characters were automatically the supporting cast.  This book was all about the women - The Crows.  I am sure we will learn all about all of them and I can't wait.  

Station Eleven

Station Eleven
by  Emily St. John Mandel

Genre:  Science fiction; Suspense; Dystopia
Publisher: Random House Audio on 
09 September 2014
Reading with my ears:  Unabridged 
10 hours 49 minutes
Narrator:  Kirsten Potter

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

My thoughts:
I loved this one.

"Survival is insufficient".

Star Trek: Voyager

The story revolves around characters that were connected to Arthur Leander, an actor who's fame was starting to faze out.  Arthurs dies on stage in the opening scenes of the book but he is the centre of this story.  Almost everyone in the story can be traced back to him in one way or another.

On the night Arthur dies, a terrible flu starts to erase life as we know it.   And civilisation dies.

Through flash backs we get to know Arthur, his friends and his ex-wives.  His first wife, Miranda, created a comic book called Station Eleven.  This comic becomes a favourite escape for Kirsten, twenty years after it was given to her by Arthur when she was a little girl in the King Lear production he dies in.  

We do not get a lot of the epidemic and it's effects (the parts that I always love), this is more about the people and their relationships with each other almost twenty years after.  It is all about how the past and actions taken then can impact today.

Another great narrator that added to my enjoyment of the book.

The Ruins

The Ruins
by  Scott Smith

Genre:  Horror; Science fiction; Suspense
Publisher: Simon & Schuster  on 
18 July 2006
Reading with my ears:  Unabridged 
14 hours 39 minutes
Narrator:  Patrick Wilson

Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine. Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation–sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site . . . and the terrifying presence that lurks there.

My thoughts:
I saw the movie a few years ago, not great but very entertaining.  I forgot all about it until I saw someone talk about the book on a Halloween video on BookTube.  I was intrigued, I remembered bits and pieces of the horror and wanted to experience some of that suspense again.  

Just let me start by admitting, the characters are all dumb assesses.  Yeah, I said it!  Don't get me wrong, they are not unlikeable, in fact you will be hoping they find a way out of this mess they got themselves into.  But they had clues all through the beginning chapters, even Mayans trying to warn them away but no . . .  they had to keep going.  Just over the next hill . . . 

I loved this book.  The atmosphere and the desperation were described so well that I was reaching for my bottled water a few times.  I could actually feel the heat and the thirst. There are some gore and the descriptions get very detailed but it is all part of the story and nothing is there just for shock value. 

The narrator builds the creepy atmosphere of people trapped in an awful situation with no way out.  His voice was perfect for this story.  He definitely added to the enjoyment for me.

I can recommend this audiobook highly - it was an enjoyable ride.

Open and Shut

Open and Shut
by  David Rosenfelt

Series:  Andy Carpenter #1
Genre:  Mystery, Crime, Humor
Publisher: Listen & Live on
03 April 2008
Reading with my ears:  Unabridged
06 hours 50 minutes
Narrator:   Grover Gardner

Whether duelling with new forensics or the local old boys' network, irreverent defence attorney Andy Carpenter always leaves them awed with his biting wit and winning fourth-quarter game plan. But Andy prefers the company of his best friend, Tara, to the people he encounters in the courtroom. Tara, a golden retriever, is clearly smarter than half the lawyers who clog the courts of Passaic County. However, just as it seems Andy has everything figured out, his dad, New Jersey's legendary ex-D.A., drops dead in front of him at a game in Yankee Stadium. The shocks pile on as he discovers his dad left him with two unexpected legacies: a fortune of $22 million that Andy never knew existed . . . and a murder case with enough racial tinder to burn down City Hall. Struggling to serve justice and bring honor to his father, Andy must dig up some explosive political skeletons-and an astonishing family secret that can close his case (and his mouth) for good.

My thoughts:
What a fun read!  Someone in my Facebook bookclub read one of the books later in this series and was telling us about this lawyer and his lovely golden retriever, Tara.  (I love dogs so how could I resist taking a look!)  I have a problem with not starting a series at the beginning, so I went in search of where it all started, way back in 2003 - with the audiobook published in 2008 - a lifetime ago.  But it has not aged at all, I felt as if it could have been written yesterday.  

Andy is not your usual buttoned-down lawyer.  In the beginning of the book, he seemed too fond of dishonest (in my opinion) theatrics in the court room.  I was doubting my choice but after a few chapters this disappeared and he got more serious about defending his client which I appreciated much more.  

All in all, Andy has a good heart, even taking payment in watermelons when defending a client :)

After the fiasco of my previous read, I needed something light and fluffy and that is exactly what I got. It left me with a huge smile on my face.  

The narrator was great with a soothing voice not interfering with the story at all.  I enjoyed this one and would recommend if for a fluffy read.

Red Rising

Red Rising
by  Pierce Brown

Series:  Red Rising Trilogy #1
Genre:  Science Fiction, Young Adult
Publisher: Recorded Books on
28 January 2014
Reading with my ears:  Unabridged
16 hours 12 minutes
Narrator:   Tim Gerard Reynolds

The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope. Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought. Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

My thoughts:
I first saw this book on BookTube (a new addiction which my bandwidth hates) where most reviews raved about it.  I could not wait to pick it up and the first few hours were wonderful.  I enjoyed the world building of the Reds living underground on Mars.  The characters were interesting and flawed. Unfortunately this was not what the story was really about and I was soon bored.

When Darrow infiltrates the Gold's world, the story changes.  In some parts I found my mind wandering and I had to consciously remind myself to get my head back into the story.  The story becomes one of the "dime-a-dozen" young adult books where the main character is prettier and smarter than most.  He (or she) is thrown into a "school type setting" where he has to fight his classmates (to the death for the most part) for the top winner position.  As in most dystopian young adult fiction there are lots of fighting, cruelty and death.  Not my favourite characteristics of young adult books although I love dystopian/technology advanced worlds.

And then there is Darrow. . . I disliked Darrow.  I mean I really disliked him which is a problem as he is our main protagonist.  He claimed an undying love for his wife, Eo in the first few chapters of the book but this was very easily forgotten when he was immersed in the Gold's world.  I also felt that he was a bit too comfortable in this new life and conveniently seems to forget what the true purpose of his presence is.

I loved the narration by Tim Gerard Reynolds.  I really enjoyed his calm voice which starts with a vague Irish accent for the Reds and turns British-ish for the Golds.

I am in the minority with my thoughts above as the reviews on Goodreads almost all screams praise of this book. So you might have to read it for yourself to see . . .