I love nice suprises. And this book was a very nice surprise. First of all, a bit about the author. He’s a screenwriter, and did the screenplays for movies like Troy, Stay, The Kite Runner and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He’s also married to actress Amanda Peet (The Whole Nine Yards, Syriana).

Now to the story. It’s the tale of two young Russian men (boys, really) and their adventure during the seige of Leningrad (1941-1944). Lev Beniov is a quiet, chess-playing Jewish boy (and the son of a poet) who stays behind in the city while his mother and sister escape to the relative safety of a country home owned by relatives. He meets Kolya, a handsome young deserter from the Red Army, in jail. Together, they are given the opportunity to escape severe punishment if they can go out and find a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake.

What follows is a haunting, delightful, fascinating journey which lasts the entire allotted time for their quest. There is the constant cold and hunger, plus adventure, love, lust, terror, violence…and above all, a developing friendship between the reckless young solider and his cautious younger accomplice. A word of warning: Because this story is written from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy, it’s filled with sexuality (albeit mostly in the forms of longings). So if you are put off by those things, you might want to avoid this one. But if you listen, you will be drawn to these two very different characters…and to the descriptions of the environment will have you feeling the weariness, hunger and bone-chilling cold.

The messenger for this tale is Ron Perlman (Beauty and The Beast, Hellboy). While he doesn’t do as many voice characterizations as some other readers do (ironic for an accomplished actor), he handled the Russian affect beautifully…and words just roll off his tongue. Not to mention he has a wonderful vocal timbre…so it’s a real pleasure to listen to, despite the 8.5 hour length. Perlman, who turns 60 this year (amazing that he can still pull off a physical character like Hellboy!), brings to the table a breadth of experience in voice work (I was unaware of this until I checked his Wikipedia page). I’d love to listen to him read again.

The quality of this Penguin Audio production is very good. It features a some classical music during a few breaks. I only caught one missed edit, fairly early in the book. So it didn’t detract much.

Two thumbs up for this one!

I’ve always enjoyed Dean Koontz. I haven’t read a whole lot of his books…but probably a good half-dozen of them over the years, and none have ever been disappointments. However, he’s managed to leave me disappointed this time. Not because this book didn’t have all the elements of a really great book. It did. But simply because it never fully realizes its potential.

Koontz gives a great setup. Lots of characters with rich histories…many of them rooted in deep pain. The gentle furniture maker who used to be a military assassin, the dedicated veterinarian who was the victim of mental and physical abuse for 10 years as a child, the serial killer who’s only once come close to being caught and is on the hunt again…as a work for hire, and the twin who is on a gruesome mission to “become” his brother. All strong stuff. And then we’ve got the overriding mystery…two nearly-indescribable creatures who appear out of thin air and display nobler-than-human behavior. Why are they here? Where did they come from? And will they become guinea pigs in the labs of big, bad Homeland Security?

This really is a compelling set of questions…and it takes about 7 hours and 45 minutes of the 8-hour audio book to get to this place. But then…Koontz seems to weary of the story, or run out of ideas, or something. Whatever the cause, he neatly wraps up many (but not all) of the questions he’s raised so quickly that it belies the (at times plodding) pace of the earlier parts of the book. Personally, I was left wanting. There’s a gentle-enough sensibility about the book…I’d even describe it as beautiful at points…that I can’t believe this was a cynical attempt on the author’s part to provide a setup and then not finish the job…but it comes up so short of his usual work that I still had to consider the possibility.

As to the narration, that was a disappointment as well…although I suppose if you’re going to have a book with little payoff, it’s probably best to deliver it via a narrator who provides the same. Jeffrey Cummings’s performance here is, at best, serviceable. His enunciation is overly-labored, some of his pronunications of words are odd, his characterizations are weak-to-mediocre, and the straight read simply lacks heft. Let’s face it: Not everyone can excel at this kind of work, and he simply doesn’t. I don’t know if he’s new and will get better…or if this is as good as he gets…but I found myself having to go back and listen to passages again and again and again…because he simply didn’t deliver them in an engaging manner, and my attention was constantly drifting.

So…I’m afraid I’m going to have this one about a 2-star rating out of 5. Intriguing, but a disappointment in the end.

I had previously listened (and enjoyed) another of Trevanian’s works: The Eiger Sanction (which I knew mainly because Clint Eastwood had made it into a movie, though I’d never seen it). And I like thrillers, so I thought I’d give this one a spin (since the word was that it was his best-received work). Having heard it now, I can understand why. This was a heck of a good read….interesting on many levels, despite the fact that it was published 30 years ago.

Nikolai Hel is one of the world’s foremost assassins…or, should I say, he was one of the world’s foremost assassins? He’s been retired now for two years, and has devoted all his energy to pursuit of a lifestyle of “shibumi” (a Japanese word meaning something akin to “a formidable contentedness”). However, the niece of an old friend shows up one day on his doorstep asking him to avenge the murder of some of her friends. Will he, or won’t he? I suppose this question is somewhat of a foregone conclusion…and, frankly, it’s one of the least interesting parts of the story. Instead, we’re treated to a detailed background of both Hel’s life since childhood and the murky world of espionage…and how much its driven by money, rather than ideology (in this case, oil money). And both parts of this background are really interesting….especially Hel’s history…of Russian lineage, raised in China, by an occupying Japanese general.

Because the book is 30 years old, and deals with a number of issues (such as computers) which have been transformed by technology in the interim, there is a certain datedness to it. And there is a somewhat cynical view of Americanism which was popular in the Seventies, in the wake of Watergate…which, while it still exists today, has found a somewhat different mode of expression. That being said, I didn’t really feel that either of those detracted much from the story. Trevanian, a history professor who died in the past few years, used this canvas to do a bit of showing off…of his vast knowledge of various cultures (Chinese, Japanese and Basque…among others)…but his sense of humor (especially as expressed in Hel’s Basque caving partner) is pretty delightful and irrepressible. And there’s a sense here of it being a sendup of spy mysteries…and yet, it’s hefty enough that it can’t be dismissed as some sort of joke.

As to the narration…it’s interesting that I pointed out Joe Barrett’s Eiger Sanction narration, in part, because of his excellent handling of German and French. This time, his limits were really tested. I found his straight read very solid, and his Japanese and French accents still quite admirable…but some of them were just really distractably bad (the word “laughably” sounds harsh…but it did make me laugh a few times). Still, it’s not like I could have done better…and I’m not sure who could have. This book was so involved and deep…and the palette so broad, that, even at only 16 hours…I felt like it went on forever (in the best sense of the word…I tend to enjoy long, involved stories)…and despite some of the flawed voice characterizations, I still really enjoyed it.

Shibumi. Two thumbs up!

This is my second Vince Flynn book…and I must say, I think I liked it even better than the first. It’s possible that part of that is because its a sequel to my previous listen and now I know some of the characters better. But somehow this one was much easier to follow allow in my imagination, and I found it really hard to turn it off for any extended period of time.

Mitch Rapp is a hard-bitten CIA operative. He tortures and kills people and breaks things. Think…a more articulate, more thoughtful version of Jack Bauer. There was an attack on Washington in the previous book that killed a couple hundred people, including some highly-visible politicians. And attitudes are now shifting in Washington about whether or not “the dirty work” of counterterrorism should be tolerated, or even endorse. Nothing like a battle hitting close to home to change the debate.

This story follows the pursuit of the three surviving members of the terrorist cell that pulled off the attack. It ranges halfway across the country, and involves a lot of espionage, international intrigue…even traitorous American citizens. Definitely one I didn’t want to put down.

Yes, my favorite audio book reader (George Guidall) read it. He’s the best I’ve ever heard…and one of the most experienced…I saw recently that he’s done 850 audio books now…and I’ve discovered that there are others like me who buy audio books just because Guidall is the narrator. I know there are plenty of others that are good. But from his straight read to his character voices…he’s the guy I’d rather have read me a story than anyone else I’ve heard to-date. If you’ve never heard him, you might want to invest a few bucks and try him out…or at least visit Audible.com and listen to some samples of books he’s read!

Never heard of Hosp before, but bought the book because I just can’t get enough of George Guidall’s narration. The book turns out to be a pleasant surprise.

Scott Finn is a Boston lawyer who left his big law-firm job a couple years ago and has hung out his own shingle…dealing with some of the seamier aspects of lawyering. One day, he’s approached by someone associated with his old firm. They need someone to take on an awkward pro bono case, and they think Finn is the man. Oh…and the reason he should be interested? There potentially a multi-million dollar payoff if the case is won.

He’s initially reluctant, and is, in fact, ready to back out of the case completely when the fellow who came to meet him is brutally murdered…leading Finn to believe that there’s significant merit to the case after all. But as is the case with stories of this kind…there are passages, leading to other passages, leading to other passages. Pretty soon, he’s facing down a gang who does their dirty work with machetes…and things aren’t looking so good for his side.

I found myself fully engaged in the story…and while I found the final plot twist to have been telegraphed earlier in the book, there were so many other things to keep up with as it unfolded that I really didn’t mind. It ended up being quite the satisfying read.

And, what more can I say about George Guidall? I think it’s getting pretty bad when I am shopping primarily for books that he reads. He’s THAT good. Great characterization…and simply the perfect voice for a storytelling narrative. George is the man!

I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up another David Hosp book in the future…especially if George Guidall was the narrator!

If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you know how much I appreciate Ted Dekker’s writing. My daughter told me last week that Part 4 of his Trilogy (huh?) had been released a few weeks back. I didn’t read the press about it beforehand, so they’re probably calling it a prequel to the Trilogy, or whatever. Bottom line: It’s another long novel (15 hrs, I think) in the same worlds covered in Black, Red and White (the Trilogy). It’s the story of Thomas Hunter and his trips between two worlds, a superflu infection, technology, relationships, God, a devil-type character called Tileh and a bunch of other people and creatures.

It’s a huge, sprawling story of adventure, endurance, love, war, a search for meaning, racism, conquest and obedience. In other words, it has a lot in common with LIFE.

Dekker spins this wonderful yarn with amazing clarity of focus. Of course, there is a bit of repetition, as with all fiction…but the body-fat count on his writing is amazingly low. This guy writes faster than I can read!! I would definitely recommend these books to anyone who enjoys a thriller, a bit of a sci-fi edge (though not too much), and who is open to interesting ideas regarding spiritual matters. After all, what are spiritual beings but those who are traveling in some dimension parallel to our own…with different capabilities and boundaries than those we experience here? Dekker has a lot of these kinds of situations in his books. He comes from a Christian perspective, but hardly reminds the reader of the kind of hyper-legalistic spiritual instruction that’s typified the church in the past.

Tim Gregory does a fine job narrating the book. I had been a bit disappointed in his effort on a previous Dekker tome, but didn’t hear any of the same issues this time with mispronunciations, and I felt his voice characterizations for the very wide range of characters were quite strong. So he gets an A grade from me this time. Quite well done!

Two big thumbs up on just about anything Ted Dekker writes. I suppose he isn’t going to be everyone’s cup o’ tea…but I certainly give him (and this book, and the other parts of the series) my highest recommendation!

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that she was enjoying reading the new David Baldacci book, and because she hasn’t steered me wrong in the past, I decided to take the tip, and purchased the book from Audible later that day. And I’m glad I did.

Oliver Stone is a war hero, who went on to become an assasin for the U.S. Government. And as the book open, he’s just killed two highly-placed Americans to avenge the murders of some of his friends and family. Because the victims of his violence are high-profile, he’s well aware that the Feds will be hot on his trail, so he beats feet out of town. He never arrives at his intended destination, because circumstances land him in the small town of Divine. Joe Knox is a CIA agent, sent to track down Stone and bring him to justice. But as he begins his investigation, he finds that all is not as it seems. The book offers a number of solid twists and turns, and introduces some very bad people and some pretty good ones. There’s a nice little love story running through it as well. Also, we’re filled in on Stone’s history…which is long and very complicated.

Baldacci is a terrific writer. This is the first thing I’ve read from him, but I’m quite sure it won’t be the last. I got enough of a taste for Stone’s background that I’d like to hear more.

Ron McLarty was a real treat. This is my first exposure to him, but he’s instantly entered the ranks of my Top 5 favorite readers. He’s got a wonderful voice…deep and slightly raspy…with very solid characterizations. He has a slightly odd take on just a few words…maybe a dozen throughout the book…but I couldn’t hear anything else at all for which I could offer a criticism. He’s very, very easy to listen to…even for the nearly 12 hours of this book. And I note that he’s read almost all of Baldacci’s stuff…so I’ll definitely have the pleasure of listening to him again soon.

If you like thrillers, consider this one recommended!

I picked this up on special from Audible, and it turned out to be a real treat. I knew that it had been a Clint Eastwood movie back in 1975, but I’d never seen it…and I thought it was worth a spin. Even though the story is almost 40 years old, for some reason the audiobook was just recorded this year.

Jonathan Hemlock (an art professor and world-class mountain climber) makes a little money on the side by carrying out assasination assignments (sanctions) for the CII. He’s being pressured to take an assignment that he doesn’t want to take…but he’s eventually forced into it. This job involves scaling one of the world’s most difficult mountains (the Eiger in Germany)…and killing someone during the climb. The book is a nice blend of a love story, plenty of non-love-based sex, intrigue, interesting characters and of course…the mountain which bids him “come and climb”. There’s also some great historical background about this killer mountain and those who died trying to scale its north face.

The author, Trevanian, was a bit of an enigma himself when this book was written. He was a college professor at the University of Texas, Austin named Rodney William Whitaker. He died in 2005.

I found this book a really solid read (listen). The narrator, Joe Barrett, did a great job not only keeping the flow of the story going…but also with the characterizations (extra challenging considering that the other members of the climbing team were German and French). Apart from a couple small things (like a reel-to-reel tape recorder for delivering messages), it didn’t feel dated at all. The author had an easy storytelling style, and developed some great characters. Hemlock, a somewhat world-weary cynic…Jemima Brown, the girl who loves him…Miles Mellough, the dashing gay agent who had Hemlock’s friend killed…and Urassus Dragon, the feeble mastermind behind the CII’s Search and Sanction division.

I enjoy thrillers like this, and at a solid 11 hours, this was definitely worth the price I paid!

I watched the TV miniseries some 20 years ago, but it’s been so long that I had completely forgotten the story. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Westerns…so I thought I’d wade into this Pulitzer Prize winner once again.

Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae (Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall owned these roles in the miniseries) are former Texas rangers who’ve been living a quiet life in the small Texas border town of Lonesome Dove. Both are getting up there in age…in their 70s…and are about as different as two people can be. Yet, they’ve had a 30-year friendship and have tremendous respect for each other. Gus is also somewhat infatuated with the town whore (Diane Lane in the miniseries) named Lorena. But she’s very young (early 20s, maybe) and very jaded from being badly treated by men.

An old friend shows up one day and tell Gus and Captain Call that that they should grab some cattle and move up to Montana, where there are plentiful pastures and people are still just arriving during the westward expansion. The story covers this journey and the events and interpersonal relationshipsalong the way. It’s filled with adventure, passion, jealousy, violence and courage. Lots of great cowboy and Indian stuff…although the Indians, by this time, are diminishing as a presence….except one named Blue Duck.

I’m SO glad that I made this purchase. At over 36 hours, it was absolutely a full ride.

While I was a fan of Matt Houston in the Eighties, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the actor who portrayed him (Lee Horsley) as an audiobook reader. I needn’t have worried. He was “spot on”. His voice always was as smooth as silk…and it still is…plus, his reading is near-perfect and his rich characterizations held up really well over this long trek. I would love to hear him read some other stuff. I checked his personal web site, and it looks like he’s done some other books as well.

On a technical level, there were some minor annoyances. Poorly executed editing involving one of the characters’ names which was obviously decided on after the initial recording sessions (hah-vee-AIR became eggs-A-vee-uhr). Not all the instances were caught during the re-record, though. And one mistake was missed completely. But these detracted little from the overall impact.

If you’re a fan of Westerns, you’ll want to HEAR Lonesome Dove!

I’ve heard “WOWs” about this book for years whenever lists of great books are brought up. But I didn’t know the first thing about it. It got high marks from listeners on Audible, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

WOW. Yeah, it’s really good. I don’t quite understand Audible…which has promoted this as another Audible Kids product. When I think of “kids”, I think of really young, small people. I rarely call teens “kids”. Yet, this book is not appropriate for pre-teen audiences, and certainly not for young children. But…having said that, it’s absolutely wonderful.

“Ender” Wiggin is a young boy…about 6 when the story begins, I believe. But he, his sister Valentine, and his brother Peter are not really normal kids at all. They are part kid (especially in their feelings)…but quite grownup in their thinking, aspirations and gifting. Nonetheless, the age and “kid-ness” of these kids is also central to the story. Ender is recruited to command the armies of Earth against “The Buggers”, an invading alien race. He doesn’t want to go…but his life at home (with a tyrannical, psychologically-twisted brother) is no picnic, either. And he doesn’t really have a choice.

He is trained at Battle School in preparation for the role of commander. He’s a lonely and tortured soul (and resented by many because he’s so much more able than they), but in addition to his empathetic gifts, he also shows some of the resilience of youth. He’s able to lay down most of his troubles when playing “the game” (battle prep). He’s small and young and threatened at the school as well…and really just wants to go home. But that’s never really an option. Instead, just when he is about to snap, he’s called upon for the adventure of a lifetime.

Orson Scott Card started writing this story over 40 years ago, at the age of 16. It was first published (in short story form) in the mid-70s, and then novelized (this current form) in the mid-80s. It’s a wild, glorious ride…and should be considered even by those who aren’t particularly sci-fi fans (I am a fan, but not a devotee…I don’t go out of my way to seek it out).

The audiobook really deserves a mention here. First, for the presence of Stefan Rudnicki. His name sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I don’t believe I’ve heard his work before. His voice is rich and magnificent (not terms I use lightly, I assure you), and his reading is simply…perfect. I can’t say that I’ve heard better anywhere. There are other readers who come in playing particular parts or representing certain perspectives. The lines didn’t seem clear to me in this regard. But everyone contributed. I’m not usually a fan of full cast productions (and because of their expense, they’re fairly rare anyway), but this was very, very good.

I don’t have enough thumbs to give this the numbers of thumbs I’d like to point upward at the moment. Let’s say…at least 4.