City Of Thieves
// January 9th, 2010 // 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!
I agree. Two thumbs up. Another word of warning about content: there is fair amount of brutality, again not surprising given the subject matter.
Regarding Perlman. He has done three other books on tape/DVD. The best of these is ‘Caliban’s Hour’. Beautifully written, beautifully read. Two lesser books are ‘Superstitious’ and ‘The Forth Perimeter’. Any fault lies in the writing here, Mr. Perlman’s rendering of both is superb.
Sounds like you enjoyed this one so will be worth checking out – great site by the way – a really handy resource for audio book reviews!
Sounds like a good book to read/listen to. I I’ve had a look around your site and it looks like a great place to find reviews, I’ll be back to look some more!
City Of Thieves
I loved this review, it truly shows how much you listend and liked this story.
Interesting book. Generally I stick to business related non-fiction such as Management books, marketing books, etc, but I’ve been getting more into fiction lately, so I’ll have to check this book out.
Wow, this sounds great and Perlman has such a deep strong voice I would say that it gives the audio a lot of cred. I have a long trip planned next month and I look forward to hearing the book then.
A few years ago I saw one of David Benioffs work, a project called “25th Hour” or something like that. I remember it well because it was very gripping and entertaining. I would be keen to see more of this stuff without doubt.
I’m not much for reading and started listening to audio books. Though the last few have been disappointing. The City of Thieves sounds interesting. It’s definitely going on my short list.
I really like the title. I haven’t read the book and honestly I am not really big fan of reading books but since this looks like it has good plot, I am going to read it soon. I hope the stores have this book in my country.
Personally I’d rather read a book than listen to it. I think the two together gets a little confusing, but is still very interesting. And I really liked the title by the way!
This sounds like a great story.
I will have to give it a go. I think audio books are a good way of getting thorugh a lot of material quickly. I also have little patience which means I put a book down five minutes after I have picked it up so audio is by far my most preferred method of reading.