My Writings. My Thoughts.
Deliver Us From Evil
// April 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // Reviews
written by David Baldacci
read by Ron McLarty
I picked up the new David Baldacci book last week. I enjoyed Divine Justice last year and thought this might be worth a listen. It’s an interesting book, centered around an organization that hunts down and kills Nazi leaders who had escaped justice. However, after they have killed all the Nazis, they move on to newer psychopaths. Their current target is Fedir Kuchin, the butcher of Kiev…and he is definitely one bad dude. Along the way, however, they encounter a representative of another secret agency, who appears to have similar goals to theirs.
There’s a fair amount of intrigue, a lot of action (some of it fairly grotesque), a little romance and sex and a solid story here. I wasn’t quite as entertained as I had been with his previous book. It wasn’t a waste of time, but I’m always hoping to stumble across something exceptional, and this one didn’t reach that level for me. Still, it was a decent read, and even somewhat thought-provoking.
Ron McLarty read this one. I had enjoyed him previously, and he does have a great quality to his voice. However, he was in just a bit over his head this time. One had the sense that he didn’t have time to do the small things that you would expect from a top-shelf audio production. His accents for the main characters (especially the Brits) slipped completely away at times…so it became confusing as to who was speaking. Also, he clearly was “tuned out” at a number of points in the reading…because he missed the point of the sentence…leaving the listener to go back and reconstruct the words in their own head to make sense of them. McLarty is a pretty good reader. So either he was distracted, or more likely, on a tight timeline. Whatever the cause, it became a B-grade production for me.
I can’t give this two thumbs up, because it didn’t have a “wow factor” for me. But I did enjoy the book, and I will return again to Baldacci, because I enjoy his blend of solid storytelling, plot twists and behind-the-scenes info on intelligence ops.
The Bride Collector
// April 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Reviews
written by Ted Dekker
read by John Glover
I’m a big Ted Dekker fan, and I’ve read nearly everything he’s written. Some have been downright amazing books and some have been good…but I’ve enjoyed every one so far. I would rate this one as “just good”. I still think its worth the listen, but for me it was missing that special magic that would elevate it to the status of his great reads.
The overall plot is rather standard fare for the serial killer genre. Someone is killing women and displaying the bodies in unique ways…leaving clues for investigators. In other words, he’s making a statement…and waiting for someone who can decode them. FBI special agent Brad Raines and his team are on the case. So far, it could be a rather typical TV drama. However, Dekker throws in some very interesting wrinkles…one of which is a narrative about the nature of beauty and value, and the other has to do with the nature of mental illness. All serial killers, by nature, suffer from some degree of mental illness…but in this case, some of those struggling with mental illness are also engaged in trying to unlock the riddle of the killings as well. Not twisted guys like Hannibal Lecter, but good folks…who happen to be both brilliant and affected.
Fortunately, Hachete Audio was able to get the gifted character actor John Glover to handle the narration. Glover (who often plays brilliantly crazed bad guys and is probably best known as Lionel Luthor in Smallville) deftly handles not only the relatively straight reading but also brings a great deal of life and even humor with his portrayal of some of the characters, keeps the book moving right along. I had never heard any of his audio book work before, but it seems that he has done about a dozen others, including some by Stephen King and James Patterson.
As I said, it’s a solid read, and I would still gladly listen again…but I found it a bit overly wordy in some of the sections of musings on the nature of beauty, where it seemed to drag on and lose focus…and the ending came off as a little too light and happy for me (the musical selection at the end didn’t help in this regard, either).
City Of Thieves
// January 9th, 2010 // 11 Comments » // Reviews
written by David Benioff
read by Ron Perlman
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!
