In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son’s birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she’d like to call the child, Cora hesitates…
Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora’s and her young son’s lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.
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This boo was so interesting that I couldn’t put it down. We start the story with Cora. Her husband is terribly abusive and controlling. He instructs her to go into town and register the birth of their son, whom he wishes to have named after him. From there the story splits into three separate stories. In one story, Cora names her son after her husband as expected. In another, she names her son the name that she picked and wanted to name him. And in the third, she lets her daughter pick the baby’s name.
The entire rest of the story is about how this family changed over the years based on that singular choice that Cora makes. It was such a touching and moving story about autonomy and the power of a name. This story makes it clear that it’s not really about her son’s name, but about the choice of a name and the power and expectation that comes with each name.
This book was heartbreaking. It was fascinating. It was rich. It was beautiful. The only thing keeping it from 5 stars was that it was difficult to track which events happened to which name. I had to make some notes to keep it straight. But I think that was just part of the nature of the storyline. Also, be aware that this book contains a lot of spousal abuse and is quite graphic in some of those descriptions.
Synopsis: Every decision he makes from here on will hurt someone .
Is his happiness even in the equation any more?
Pride’s NETHERWORLD, Book 2 of the trilogy, continues the epic saga—one day later.
In Book 1, Pride’s PURGATORY , rising Irish megastar Andrew O’Connell embarked on a beautiful friendship with reclusive author Dr. Kary Ashe , and committed to his stunning costar Bianca Doyle ’s directorial debut film Dodgson , a Lewis Carroll biopic.
He never imagined either would shatter the impenetrable wall he built between his professional and personal lives.
His future as a leading man depends on being an bankable obsession in the lives of the women he seduces, on and off screen.
But a past regret makes his gorge rise when offspring are on the way and he’s suddenly responsible for their very existence.
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Review: ***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion. Thank you Alicia!***
This book was such a lovely complement to the first book in the series. We pick up right where we left off with Kary working on her latest book idea, a fantasy that is far outside of her comfort zone. Andrew is jet setting across the globe for role after role as he becomes the most sought after actor in the business. And Bianca is scheming, really stepping it up a notch from the last book.
I always quite enjoy the author’s writing style. The occasional insertions of the character’s inner thoughts is a nice touch. I’m not sure it would work in any other book but it works for this one. It provides a deeper insight into the character’s and why they’re doing what they are doing. The style might not be for everyone but it makes the story easy to digest.
My only complaint on this book is that the middle dragged a bit. It felt like we were waiting on something to happen. Based on the synopsis I knew what the “something” was. As a result it felt like it took forever to get there and since the plot has a bit of a lull at the same time it dragged the plot down a little.
But apart from that I was delighted by this book. Kary was frustratingly pragmatic, seemingly more so than in the first book. But it’s her defense mechanism and survival technique. But I desperately wanted her to just drop the walls for a moment. Andrew was so sweet and I find myself falling for him more with every book. Even though he was a bit of a knucklehead in this one, I’ll forgive him for it. While I felt like Bianca was a rather dull villain in the first one, she justified her villain title in this one. I really hope that karma visits her in the end.
Overall, this book was great. I think I enjoyed it even more than the first one. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss a flight, and over dinner, discover they’ve both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with the same beguiling woman no one has seen since.
Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.
Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.
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Review: **Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own. Thank you G.P Putnam’s Sons and NetGalley!**
I had some reservations about this book when I saw it being described a literary fiction and horror. I had a hard time seeing how those two genres meshed together and it made me nervous about the book. But, in the end I loved the book and I completely agree that it is a combination of horror and literary fiction.
This book wasn’t your typical scary horror book. It was haunting. Unsettling. Uneasy. It makes you read with a pit in your stomach that you can’t quite explain. And as the pieces get put together you find yourself reflecting on the book long after you’ve put it down. That was my experience. I was haunted by thoughts on this book long after I put it away and moved on to my next book.
But apart from the horror aspects of this mysterious woman this story is a character study. Each of the main characters are people that are explored in depth by the author. I found this part fascinating. I loved learning more about these people. It also made the horror aspects even more horrifying because I grew to care about them and knew what was likely going to happen to them.
When we got to the ending, I honestly felt like I wanted to scream helplessly into the void. It wasn’t the ending I expected. But, truthfully, it was the correct ending for this book. The ending makes the book even more unsettling than it was before. This was a great book, I highly recommend it.
In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed.
Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them.
From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story.
Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.
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I have been on something of an audiobook spree the past month or two because it is such an easy way to listen to some great books when relax my brain. My life has been insanely busy and stressful so it’s a good way to get in more reading time while I am busy cleaning the bathrooms, making dinner or running a bath for a tiny human. I picked this one up based on the synopsis alone and it was worth the listen.
This book is the fictionalized story of the author’s grandmother. The family had always talked in hushed tones about her grandmother’s flight from the Communist Revolution in China but everyone refused to talk about it further. So the author went on a quest to further understand what her grandmother had gone through and started researching. Once she discovered as much as she could she wrote this book and filled in some of the missing details with fiction.
It was a beautifully written story. The prose carries you along like a gentle river before suddenly plunging you down a steep waterfall when something shockingly evil happens. The trauma of this entire family of women is laid out in horrifying but hopeful detail. In the story the mother never gives up hope. She never stops trying to better the lives of her children. She never stops sacrificing for her children’s benefit, even when they hated her for it. A true mother is displayed on these pages. The kind of mother that will endure anything without complaint if it saves her children an ounce of pain. This book brought me to tears quite a few times.
The only detractor from this book was that the plot lags for a little while in the middle. While the family may have been in a transition period, I didn’t want to feel like I was also in a transition period too. My attention started to wander and I hoped the pacing would eventually recover. It did recover and the ending was logical and…well, it wasn’t exactly satisfying but it was sweet on many levels. But given the entirety of the story I don’t think it was supposed to be a satisfying ending. There isn’t a happily ever after when you’ve lived through such horror. Sometimes the happily ever after is being safe with your children, and trying to make it a better life again tomorrow.
The author’s note at the end put a very touching end to this story. It tells another tale of love and devotion. One of hers to her family and to telling the story of their generational trauma so that no one forgets what it took for her family to thrive. It put an extra poignant touch to the story.
Nothing about Semiramis’s upbringing could have foretold her legacy or the power she would come to wield. A female ruler, once an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire – certainly no one in Ancient Assyria would bend to her command willingly. Semiramis was a woman who knew if she wanted power, she would have to claim it.
There are whispers of her fame in Mesopotamian myth- Semiramis was a queen, an ambitious warrior, a commander whose reputation reaches the majestic proportions of Alexander the Great. Historical record, on the other hand, falls eerily quiet.
In her second novel, Costanza Casati brilliantly weaves myth and ancient history together to give Semiramis a voice, charting her captivating ascent to a throne no one promised her. The world Casati expertly builds is rich with dazzling detail and will transport her readers to the heat of the Assyrian Empire and a world long gone.
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I picked this book up as an audiobook from the library on a whim. The cover was interesting and I like historical fiction in general. I have had good luck recently with retellings of ancient myths and legends, so jumped right into this Assyrian myth. Before I listened to it, I looked up the myth just so I had a good footing for the basis of the story. The source material is just as interesting as this book was.
This book was beautiful. The writing, the atmosphere, the settings, the characters, all of it. They are pieced together with such care and eloquence that it is really exquisite. I was instantly pulled into this story with the story of Semiramis’ birth and the death of her mother. It was such a tragic start to life for this little girl. And meanwhile you know that she is on a journey to becoming the Queen of Assyria, but how does she get there? From an adopted orphan to Queen and ruler of one of the biggest empires in world history.
I loved the love story of Semiramis and Onnes. He didn’t want to get married, but knew that he needed to get married. She wanted to be given a chance to escape the life she knew in her village and make a future for herself. It is mostly a marriage of convenience though they are attracted to one another and attracted to each other’s intelligence. Along the way they become desperately devoted to each other and love each other fiercely. They bond together after a war and the horrific things they both saw and experienced. Unfortunately this is also the moment that led to Onnes’ downfall. That made me very sad. I knew it was going to happen but I didn’t want it to. This was also one of the bigger pitfalls of the story. I think Costanza really wanted Ninus to be a good guy here, he can’t help it that he fell in love with his brother’s wife! But in reality, Ninus is the bad guy here. He starts an affair with his brother’s wife and then tries to convinve him to give her up in exchange for being allowed to marry Ninus’ daughter. Gross. I was actually quite pleased that the marriage of Ninus and Semiramis wasn’t sunshine and puppy dogs, they didn’t deserve it after what they did to Onnes.
The only other pitfall of this book is that it started to drag after Ninus and Semiramis got married. She’s the queen now, we know that she will become the ruler at some point. But it dragged a bit to get there. Overall though this book was incredibly enjoyable. I have heard that her first book is even better so I will have to check it out.
A warrior struggles through an apocalyptic landscape and the world after death
Kree Toronto has been raised as a warrior in a ravaged postapocalyptic, posthuman world, the population decimated by wars and civilization long since collapsed. After her attempt to avenge the death of her dog, Loka, goes horribly wrong, Kree finds herself lost in a world after death and wanders into the city of the terrible mendicants.
Under the Brothers’ totalitarian rule, Kree can lead a quiet life and forget her violent past, even if needles grow in her skull and hallucinatory blood rains pour down now and then to remind her. She can make friends: a shamanic healer with a shaking tent, a mysterious stranger hatched from an egg, and a gruff Tibetan electrician in a world without electricity. And she can have her Loka, as long as she toes the Party line and does as she’s told. When she can’t—when her friends start to disappear and the Brothers turn against her—Kree sets out on a quest, searching for a new way forward.
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**Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. All thoughts and opinions are mine. Thank you Edelweiss and University of Minnesota Press!**
This book has to be one of the most confusing books I’ve ever read. So let’s start with the fact that the author’s name is a pseudonym. Manuela Draeger is a character in this author’s larger “post-exotic” world. So a character of this world is telling us a story within that world. I really loved that idea. And based on the synopsis I expected a story of a woman looking for revenge for what happened to her dog. Sort of like a combination of John Wick and Omega Man. I got what I expected but also an awful lot of stuff I didn’t expect. Also, the story uses the word “what” in a strange way. It is used interchangeably or “that”, “what”, “when” and several other words. I am not sure if this is an artifact of the language translation or is just part of the writing style. Regardless it was easy to overlook once you realize the pattern.
This book introduces us to Kree. She lives in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity exists only in little groupings of survivors. Someone steals her dog to eat and Kree goes to kill them for it. The revenge goes badly and so we follow Kree on a journey between being alive and unalive. We follow her as she is reincarnated into various locations and existences that may be a layer of the underworld or another reality altogether, and every time she dies she is reborn into another scenario in this eternal quest to find her dog.
This book was beautifully written. It is atmospheric and gritty. The writing style was quite unique and carried me along for the ride wonderfully. Even though the timeline can be very jarring the writing style made it easier to follow along. After awhile I got used to turning the page and all of a sudden we were in a completely different place and time with completely different characters. Turning the page and all of sudden we have people hatching out of eggs in the middle of a mass grave. Honestly, this book made me feel like it was a hallucination. Ultimately maybe that was the point. Kree’s afterlife is spent desperately searching for something she will never find, but she can’t stop searching. And so we, as the reader, search with her.
I was so torn with how to review this book. On one hand I wanted to give this book 2 stars and a mediocre review and never read anything from this world again. Because it was confusing. And I felt like a moron while reading. But on the other hand, it intrigued me so much that I want to give the book 5 stars and read everything else this world has to offer. So, I settled with 4 stars. Because this book is weird and confusing, but it’s also pretty amazing.
Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.
Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.
Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.
Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost, Da’s death was hard enough, but now that her little brother is gone too, Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself may crumble and fall.
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The synopsis for this book drew me in immediately. I loved the idea of it. Where a person’s life isn’t recorded in memories or pictures but in a flesh and blood embodiment of their life. And they can wake up and become dangerous and disturbed. It was giving me haunting vibes and zombie vibes all at once. And really it was a perfect combination of both of those things. It was an utterly unique idea that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
I got a little worried when I started this book because I noticed it was the first in a series. The second book was published shortly after the first, in 2014. Then an adjacent short story that acts as a 2.5 in the series was published in 2015. But nothing since then. The third book in the series is just noted as “having been outlined and plotted but with no timeline for completion”. Uh oh. Did I really want to get invested in a series that will likely never be finished? I decided to finish this one because I had already started it, and my answer is yet. I am totally willing to be invested in this series. Even if it will never be finished.
Mac was a great character. She is a young woman in the midst of dealing with immense grief. She has been given the knowledge of the Archive from her grandfather, knowing that when he was ready to pass away that the job would pass to her. So she’s grieving her grandfather and then her younger brother dies. And her family, in their grief, is determined to get a new start in a new city. They purge the home of all of her brother’s belongings and refuse to speak about him. Which is devastating for Mac because she KNOWS what happens when someone dies. She KNOWS that her brother’s History is sitting on a shelf somewhere. She knows that if she tried to wake him that it wouldn’t really be him. But at the same time, she is mourning his loss and has nothing else to remind her of him. I identified with her grief in so many profound ways.
I loved the story and the mystery of this book too. At first it seemed like Mac was trying to invent a mystery so that she didn’t have to think about her grief. But soon it became apparent that all of this was intentional, all of this is part of a larger plan, and that she is one of few who can figure out what that plan is.
My only complaint about this book is that I didn’t understand why Mac being a Keeper was such a big secret. So much of a secret that she couldn’t even tell her parents. As far as I understood, the ability to “read” things is what makes a good Keeper, and it’s genetic. Her grandfather says that her father had the ability too, he just didn’t think that his son has the temperament to be a Keeper. So, it seems like this should be able to be known to other people in the family. All those generations of it being passed down in the family and nobody ever knew except the person who was chosen? Keeping it a secret from the rest of the world made sense, but it didn’t make sense that it had to be a secret from her parents. That confused me and I couldn’t see a purpose behind it.
The ending of this book was an adventure filled ride. I read the last 125 pages in a single sitting because I couldn’t put it down. I never saw it coming. It was fantastic! It sold me on reading the next story, but I would also be content with the ending even if I never read the second book. I am hoping that the second book ends in a similar way, just in case this series never sees a third book.
The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the God King Joon.
He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold.
And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hitman seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.
They can agree on murder.
They can agree on treachery.
But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.
Let the best liar win.
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As a whole this book was utterly enjoyable. The world created was interesting and rich. The narrative was intriguing and I was excited to see where it went next. As a summary, this was a great book.
The premise of this story is simple. King Joon is a bad man. He does terrible things and there is a plot to assassinate him. The only problem is that he proclaims to be a God. There have been previous assassination attempts and he was miraculously not harmed. But, there is a plan and they need a very specific cast of liars and thieves to pull it off.
First we meet Royo. He’s the town heavy. He is muscle for hire. If you need someone killed, beaten, taught a lesson then Royo is the guy to call. He gets pulled into this scheme by Aeri. She’s a thief, who has been invited into this plot and she hires Royo to protect her and be her bodyguard. Then we have Sora. Sora is an indentured woman and so is her sister. The Count who holds her indenture turned her into a poison maiden. He intentionally poisoned her over and over again until she became immune to all poisons, and he uses her to seduce and poison men that he wishes to kill. Tiyung is the Count’s son and has been instructed to go with Sora on this mission and then if she is successful, he will grant her freedom. Euyn is next and he is the King’s exiled brother. He was exiled for hunting prisoners like animals and left buried in the desert to die. Except that he didn’t die. He escaped and has been trying to keep a low profile ever since. And finally Mikhail. He is the mastermind behind the whole plot. He is also the King’s spymaster.
All of this main cast of characters gets their turn to narrate portions of the story. They all had a distinct voice so I had very little trouble keeping track of which story was being narrated. My biggest complaint about the story is that the different narratives were so short. The longest section was 5 or 6 pages, most of them were 2 or 3 pages. It didn’t give me a lot of time to get invested in this new piece to the story and then it was over. And almost every single section ended on a cliffhanger of sorts. That got tiring really fast. So I wish that we got longer sections in one narrative and that we didn’t have a cliffhanger every few pages. But those were my only complaints.
The ending of this book was masterful. I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I will keep this high level. Obviously, because this is the first book in a series, you can reasonably expect that the assassination plot doesn’t go to plan. It would be a much shorter book and no sequel potential if everything went according to plan. I don’t think that’s a spoiler, I think most readers would figure out from the beginning how that’s going to play out. Even so, there were some twists in there that I never saw coming. And they were brilliant. The ending completely sold me on the next book. I’m all in and will definitely be reading it.
Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That’s because he’s being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he’s really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.
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I have always loved the Harry Potter books. I was first introduced to them about six months after Prisoner of Azkaban was released. And I devoured them. I was the crazy person who signed up for all of the midnight releases of the new books. Got locked into the Barnes & Noble to await the book being delivered, got my book at midnight and went home to start reading. Once I was an adult I would take the following day off work to read the book in one sitting. I couldn’t get enough. I saw every film on release day. I bought every audiobook on release day. For a long time when I worked a data entry job I would listen to the audiobooks on repeat. I would get to the end and start again, over and over and over. So this was a comfort listen for me.
As far as the narration goes, what more do I need to say other than Jim Dale. Disclaimer, I also love the audiobooks by Stephen Fry because he is a legend and I adore his version. But there’s just something special about the Jim Dale audiobooks. He puts on such a performance! All of the voices and the inflection and the emotion. He is a legend. I could listen to these audiobooks every single day and never get bored of hearing his voice.
Enough of my fawning over Jim Dale, on to the book. It was just as book as I remembered it. One of the most memorable opening sentences in all of fiction, ““Mr.and Mrs.Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” This single line puts you into this world immediately. You know exactly what kind of people the Dursley’s are. And then you have the wonder of all the “strange” and “unusual” thing that Vernon Dursley keeps noticing, but doesn’t say anything to Petunia because he wouldn’t want to worry her. The moment Harry Potter learns he is a wizard is a moment filled with so much emotion that it still makes me tear up.
Naturally the book isn’t perfect, but it’s close. You have to suspend reality a lot for this plot to be plausible. Why a group of 11 year old children, who had been learning magic for about 5 minutes, thought that they were more capable of protecting the stone than a group of wizards and witches that had more magical experience in their pinky finger? Realizing that if Harry had just left well enough alone that Voldemort wouldn’t have stood a chance at getting the stone in the first place, so he put his friends in danger entirely unnecessarily. And, of course, the royal screw job that Dumbledore gives Slytherin for the House Cup at the end of the book.
But, if you just suspend your imagination a little then these are merely things to giggle about in an otherwise legendary book. The only place where this book loses a star for me is that is it full of tropes. The nerdy, unattractive girl. The fat boy who resembles a pig. The shabby kid who comes from a large family and doesn’t dress well. A lot of tropes that make me crinkle my nose a bit as an adult. But it is just as magical reading it for the thousandth time as it was the first.
A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel.
It’s 2116, and Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson are token rebels in an irretrievably corrupted society where promiscuity is the norm, eugenics a respectable science, and morality turned upside down. There is no poverty, crime or sickness – but no creativity, art or culture either. Human beings are merely docile citizens: divided into castes, brainwashed and controlled by the state and dependent on the drug soma for superficial gratification.
Into this sterile society comes an outsider, John – a man born into squalor and suffering, but raised on The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a book which has shaped his entire life. When he discovers that treasured ideals such as love mean nothing in this ‘brave new world’, where romance is ridiculous, marriage shocking and parenthood shameful, John’s world is shattered – and his reaction will show Bernard and Helmholtz what rebellion really means….
Based on Aldous Huxley’s 1932 masterpiece, widely considered one of the greatest novels of all time, this chilling dramatisation set in a futuristic totalitarian society stars Jonathan Coy, Justin Salinger, Milton Lopes and Anton Lesser.
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I am a huge fan of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I have read the novel at least 10 times. I find it incredibly relevant to society today. I quote it more often than I should, I compare news stories to it far more often than I ever thought I would. It is truly a masterpiece of fiction. So, when I was contemplating having another listen to Brave New World, I stumbled across this audiobook. This was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 back in 2016. It features a full voice cast and is a dramatization of the novel.
Overall it was marvelous. They took all of the compelling and interesting pieces of the novel and displayed them in a new way. It was reminiscent of the days of Mystery Theater (although I know that radio dramas long preceded that particular program). I love listening to radio dramas. I find them interesting and compelling in ways that reading a book wouldn’t be, and you are forced to focus on the words much more than an in-person dramatic performance. It’s perfect for someone like me.
The voice actors did a masterful job. The story was told with passion and fire and it was everything I hoped it would be. Don’t listen to this if you aren’t familiar with the novel however. It is a dramatization, so it doesn’t tell you the full story. If I wasn’t so well acquainted with the story then I would have been confused on what was going on. I did have some mild confusion because several of the voice actors perform several different roles. Because the voices were similar, I sometimes would be confused on which character was speaking. At least for a minute until I recognized the line and recalled who said it.
If you love Brave New World then I highly recommend this piece. It’s only two hours in length, can be done in an afternoon. It is truly wonderful.
Written Among The Stars 