The Reluctant Demon

By: Mark Cain

Narrated by: Michael Gilboe

GoodReads Summary: In the wacky final volume of the Circles in Hell series, Steve Minion attends Beast Barracks, where he learns both the arcane and mundane arts of being a servant of the Devil. Strength, speed and endurance are all part of a demon’s physical makeup, but he must be taught to be sneaky, cruel and ruthless… and of course to ignore personal hygiene.

As Steve begins work as a full-fledged bad guy, he must confront the inevitable: demons exist to torment the damned, and Hell’s former handyman-in-chief doesn’t seem to have the stomach for the work.

Still, there’s no alternative for our hero. Once a demon, always a demon, as the saying goes. Steve’s stuck in his new role, but really, what good to anyone is a reluctant demon?

The Reluctant Demon is the fourth volume in the fantasy comedy series, Circles in Hell. It has been compared to other works of “Hell Fiction” including The Screwtape Letters and Good Omens and to the paranormal humor of Tom Holt, Christopher Moore and Douglas Adams.

 

(I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.)

Oh, my. Listening to the second installment of this series (A Cold Day in Hell), I predicted a drop in interest after a few more windows into this uber-developed world. You know, like the Xanth series by Piers Anthony. But even with Mr. Anthony, it took about ten books for my adolescent mind to get bored by the whole thing.

So I’ve listened to four of Mr. Cain’s visions of Hell. I truly thought this beautifully envisioned world would suffer after we spent some time rolling around in this muck of an afterlife. Even though I’ve enjoyed the hell out of all three previous tales (pun intended), I even looked for a drop in writing quality, descriptions, unique turns of phrase…even a lessening of tiny little bombs of surprise and appreciation for vividly imagined characters.

But, I do believe I was wrong. And I am so glad to admit this mistake. Even though Mr. Cain drops us into Chaos, we have to remember that this version of the afterlife does play by some hard and fast rules. Yet, when we live inside Minion’s head for a while, just like him, we tend to forget all of those laws when day-to-day survival focuses on the tiny rules, the ones that Mr. Cain’s version of Hell compels its residents to follow to avoid misery. (Even though, this is hell after all and misery is just a part of it.)

I really do not like spoilers in reviews and avoid them as the populace of Hell avoids saying any words of Grace, so…

All I’m going to say is that Mr. Cain does a fantastic job of distracting the reader with the interesting minutiae of what it is like to survive in this Hell to the point that what should be a predictable end comes as a surprise where I smack my forehead saying, “Damn it, I should have SEEN that! Hell, Minion should have SEEN that one.”

Sometimes I believe a book would be just as good in either written or audible format. Sometimes I’m actually neutral in preference.

This is not one of those times. I believe that audible is the best format for these trips into the underworld. Mr. Gilboe has the perfect voice to transmit the oddities of Hell, a friendly voice keeping you company through a normal day of mundaneness, a beautiful distraction that pulls images from the imagination with little effort. Truly, there should be no other way to trip down Hell’s escalator than with Mr. Gilboe’s voice as an accompaniment. However, if we’re truly envisioning this version of Hell, it would not welcome us with Mr. Gilboe. The welcome message would be read by Gilbert Godfrey. But I hear he has a different position down there.

 

The Experiment of Dreams

By: Brandon Zenner

Narrated by: Jim Tedder

GoodReads Summary: Benjamin Walker’s lifelong career of testing experimental drugs and medicines, as well as participating in fascinating sleep-related studies, has come to an end. A new and lucrative job opportunity is offered to Ben, working on a project named Lucy, a machine capable of reading and recording a person’s dreams in intimate detail. All is finally going well for Ben . . . until strange dreams of a town named Drapery Falls begin to plague him, and memories once hidden begin to reveal themselves. The doctors and staff onboard team Lucy are not who Ben thinks they are, and Mr. Kalispell will stop at nothing to keep Ben’s emerging memories buried for good. Ben is put on a collision course that will bring him to the brink of total insanity, and perhaps even death. At the heart of it all, Ben’s worst enemy is his own mind, and he must confront his past in order to save his future. The twist and turns in The Experiment of Dreams will keep you guessing, down to the very last line.

This book repeatedly appeared in my recommendations on every site: Audible, Amazon, GoodReads, ets. So after reading and re-reading the summary, I think I purchased it when it was free something like a year and  a half ago. I still didn’t find the urge to sit down and read the thing.

Then I found it on Kindle Unlimited with narration. So, ok, I borrowed it and dove in.

Just like all the other three star and below reviews, I was very interested in the very beginning. Even with Ben sort of shrugging his shoulders at the hinky stuff and pressing the accelerator without too much introspection and curiosity, I was kind of ok with that. I mean, you have to put aside your disbelief sometimes, right?

The machine itself, Lucy? Well, scientists have been trying to build something like that for a while now, especially since those things have appeared in several movies over the past 50 years or so. I can wrap my mind around it easy.

So the first half of the book is beautiful, aside from the easy way Ben has of sliding into this strangeness in the first place. The descriptions are surreal, just like the cover. I liked it.

However, it starts flailing around the second half where suddenly we’re in the middle of so much exposition it felt like an historical text. I did like the twistiness of the end, but probably could have done without the character monologues telling me what happened.

So I’m hovering right about three stars despite the fact that I love the premise. Because who needs to make themselves finish a book when you’ve already figured out the ending and all the characters are doing is telling you in a very long winded fashion that you’re right?

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When She Cries

By: Alex Westhaven

Narrated by: Kevin Clay

GoodReads Summary: Nicole Strickly is excited to get out of the city and spend a weekend in the mountains, even if her date is a little sketchy. They aren’t far down the road before she realizes her mistake, but there’s no turning back, and what awaits her when they arrive at camp is far worse than she could ever have imagined.

Forced to run or die, Nicole finds herself embroiled in a gruesome game where the only reward for winning is three more rounds with the huntmaster himself, and an experience that will change the fiber of her very being…for as long as she can survive.

*** – technically 3.5 stars

(I received a free audible copy for an honest review.)

Serial hunters call it a game….

I don’t know where or when the idea of hunting people first slid into a human, but it is a subject that inspires a certain kind of panic. Stuck in the wilds, the higher brain functions of a human can help befuddle any predatory animal and allow for escape. But when the predator is just as high functioning as the human prey, the idea of escape becomes an illusory goal.

I like the narration of When She Cries. It was easy to lose track of time listening to the story. However, I don’t think that Mr. Clay fully utilized the emotions inherent in the writing. While his voice is pleasant and easy to listen to, it might have been better with a few speed differentials within the different scenes.

Of course, some of the dialogue between the characters did feel somewhat stilted and may have influenced Mr. Clay while he read. I rolled my eyes a few times during Nicole’s inner monologues. Not as often as I expected, but a few times where it just seemed a bit forced into the plot rather than fluidly deriving from the character herself.

Because of these thoughts while I read, I did not feel the fear and panic intended by Mrs. Westhaven. But the story and narration is good enough that I really wanted to know how it ended.

And the end is worth gliding along Mr. Clay’s voice and slipping into Mrs. Westhaven’s mind. The end is very satisfying.

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Have You Seen My Son?

By: Jack Olsen

Narrated by: Becket Royce

GoodReads Summary: Have You Seen My Son? is a powerful novel of child-snatching and a mother’s obsessed hunt for her five-year-old son — “a gripping, intensely moving novel,” writes Robert Daley, author of Prince of the City and Year of the Dragon. “The ending left me with tears in my eyes. There is no love like mother love, is there?”

And no greater test of it than what Lael Pritcher is about to endure.

One cool April day, Mike Pritcher visits the home of his estranged wife, Lael, and takes their son, Ace, for an overnight outing. “She pushed her son’s black-rimmed glasses up the slope of his thin nose. He jerked away like a puppy slipping its leash. A giggle, a crunch of gravel, a single wave of a grimy hand, and her only child was gone.”

Gone — child-snatched, though Lael won’t realize that right away, and won’t understand what it means even when the police tell her it’s a “domestic matter.” “You got the right to snatch him back,” her lawyer explains. “That’s about it.” So that’s what she sets out to do, in one of the most suspenseful, emotion-wrenching novels in recent years. Have You Seen My Son? is Lael Pritcher’s story, as she searches for her son throughout the Northwest, Canada and finally Mexico; an odyssey of near-misses and sudden reversals, searing loneliness and unshakable love, as Lael reaches deep inside herself for a resourcefulness and strength she never knew existed. Combining intimate drama with powerful suspense, this is a story with which every woman — and every man — will identify.

(I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.)

Considering this book was published in 1982, it should be seen as an example of the reasons we have new laws to protect children, even (especially) in the middle of custody battles.

Lael is very passive for a woman whose husband stole her asthmatic son in the middle of their divorce and custody proceedings. Of course, she does everything she can to get him back, which, at the time was very limited.

Because of that, the story seemed to lag a few times, her character making the story passive. However, you just can’t help pushing on as she does just to find out if she gets her son back.

Having said that, you must understand that even though I found this a very passive story (not the heart-stopping thriller I thought it would be) there were a few times I gasped aloud.

For an author to be able to do that makes it worth the listen.

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Girl of the Cloud Forest

By: Dennis J. Butler

Narrated by: Matthew Whitfield

GoodReads Summary: Carlo Diamante wonders if the beautiful and mysterious woman he keeps seeing is stalking him. If she is stalking him, why does she keep disappearing in the crowd when he approaches her? He wonders if she is just an illusion. Perhaps she is a dream woman created by his vivid imagination. Carlo finally confides in his very ill sister who tells him there is something very special about this woman and that Carlo needs to find her.

Meanwhile, another mystery is unfolding in the jungles of the Amazon. Carlo doesn’t know it yet but there is a connection between the mystery girl on the subway and the mystery unfolding in the jungle?

Carlo has never believed in miracles, but his life is about to change forever. Maybe miracles are real.

This book contains sexual situations and is recommended for young adults.

3.5 stars

(I received a free audible copy in exchange for an honest review.)

I’m not confident in the label of adventure for this. Sure, there’s travel. And there’s travel in faraway places. But it’s less adventure and more of a quest that leads Carlo outside his comfort zone and into another culture.

It has some paranormal elements that make bits of it a mystery. But it comes across as more of a paranormal romance than anything else. Yet, it is a sweet and a very different type of romance than I’ve ever read.

Everything about this story is soft: the love (even though powerful), the adventure, the bit of mystery, the tiniest bit of danger, and the narration.

For a peaceful afternoon, this is a nice read.

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Wilde’s Fire

By: Krystal Wade

Narrated by: Eileen Stevens

GoodReads Summary: “There is no pain in this death, only peace, knowing I am going to die with the one I love the most.” – Katriona Wilde. Katriona Wilde has never wondered what it would feel like to have everything she’s ever known and loved ripped away, but she is about to find out. When she inadvertently leads her sister and best friend through a portal into a world she’s dreamed of for six years, she finds herself faced with more than just the frightening creatures in front of her. Kate’s forced to accept a new truth: her entire life has been a lie, and those closest to her have betrayed her. What’s worse, she has no control over her new future, and it’s full of magic and horrors from which nightmares are made. Will Kate discover and learn to control who she really is in time to save the ones she loves, or will all be lost?

So glad I borrowed this with Amazon Kindle.

This isn’t the softest book I’ve read with so little grit it’s like wet plastic. But it’s right up there.

The idea of the story is very interesting. It’s something like Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, a comic that I read when I was very little. I love the idea of the MC being from another world and finding the way home after years of living in “ours.” In fact, I tried to write a short story with the same idea a while back. Even my story, for which I had such high hopes, fell flat and is rotting somewhere in a journal, unfinished and truly unmourned.

Krystal Wade, I think, did a pretty good job of presenting the precepts of a girl being the savior of another world. However, the world itself loses focus about halfway through and we’re subject to the inner workings of a teenager fluctuating between feeling sorry for herself and desiring the literal man of her dreams.

If you like romance to the exception of all else but a basic storyline, this is the book for you. It really just isn’t my cup of tea.

Everything is subjective, nothing more so than art. So there will be plenty of people who looooove this story. Unfortunately, I’m just not one of them, not matter how much I wish to be.

This is the first time I’ve listened to narrator, Eileen Stevens, while I’m not blown away by her talents, she is a splendid match to the softness of Wilde’s Fire. Her voice is smooth and sweet, just like the conflicted Katriona Wilde.

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Bloody Bank Heist

By: Tim Miller

Narrated by: Joe Hempel

GoodReads Summary: Darren and Jenny are a hard working couple at the end of their rope. Out of money and out of options, they decide drastic measures are needed. They rob a bank when things go horribly wrong. Gunshots are fired and in order to escape, they must kidnap the hapless bank manager. Unfortunately for them, the manager is not what he seems. The kidnapping unleashes a chain of events they could have never imagined in their worst nightmares.

*** definitely twisted

(I received a free audible copy in exchange for an honest review.)

In this economy, I’m positive most of us have thought about robbing a bank, right? I mean, the money is insured; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to plan…easy, peasy. But then, someone gets stupid. The getaway car gets away before the partners in the bank. Someone tries to be a hero and gets blasted in the face. And then, the thieves take a freakin’ hostage. Can’t go anymore wrong than this, right?

Wrong. This story will definitely make you think twice about committing a crime. The choices that are made in seconds are not always the best ones and the consequences can get even more deadly than anyone anticipates.

I quite enjoyed Mr. Miller’s twisted mind. It really feels as if this is the part you don’t see or read about when watching or reading about the people who do not have their heads on straight.

I gave it three stars because I liked it. Yet it definitely could have had more depth to balance out the insanity: more emotion, less stoic explanations for the reasons behind everything.

Here’s your warning: If you’re one of those who doesn’t like a little gore in their horror/mystery, please stay away. Bloody is in the title, for Pete’s sake.

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Unhappenings

 

By: Edward Aubry

Narrated by: Josh Hurley

GoodReads Summary: When Nigel Walden is fourteen, the UNHAPPENINGS begin. His first girlfriend disappears the day after their first kiss with no indication she ever existed. This retroactive change is the first of many only he seems to notice.

Several years later, when Nigel is visited by two people from his future, he hopes they can explain why the past keeps rewriting itself around him. But the enigmatic young guide shares very little, and the haggard, incoherent, elderly version of himself is even less reliable. His search for answers takes him fifty-two years forward in time, where he finds himself stranded and alone.

And then he meets Helen.

Brilliant, hilarious and beautiful, she captivates him. But Nigel’s relationships always unhappen, and if they get close it could be fatal for her. Worse, according to the young guide, just by entering Helen’s life, Nigel has already set into motion events that will have catastrophic consequences. In his efforts to reverse this, and to find a way to remain with Helen, he discovers the disturbing truth about the unhappenings, and the role he and his future self have played all along.

Equal parts time-travel adventure and tragic love story, Unhappenings is a tale of gravely bad choices, and Nigel’s struggle not to become what he sees in the preview of his worst self.

So I used my Kindle Unlimited to listen to this one. However, it wasn’t until I started thinking about my own review that I glanced through some of what people were saying about this book.

I think this is going to be one of those love it or hate it books once more people get a chance to read this. The story is one that makes you think in a way that may be uncomfortable for some and very confusing for others.

Time travel always finds a way to throw me off. I mean, we’re all linear thinkers and I do pride myself for being able to grasp things easily some people find difficult. But I can see where parts of this crazy book will completely befuddle the huddled masses.

So in the beginning I’m curious about the story behind the story. It opens up in the young life of Nigel and his experiences with unhappenings. Granted, at first he has no clue what’s going on. But upon meeting Penelope, one would think he would ask more pertinent questions regardless of if she will answer them. And you’d think that little miss, I know everything you don’t would slip up a time or two to give a few more clues. But then, maybe that’s the point, the reason to keep reading.

I did enjoy this. I couldn’t stop listening. Towards the beginning of the end, though, the villain’s motives were still very unclear. The “why” behind the story just seems to peter out. So I kept listening, wondering…

Twists and turns almost overwhelm the end of the book. Yet I followed every convoluted turn of events until finally I gained a certain understanding of character motivation.

I believe, if you’re a true time traveling fan, you will complete enjoy this book and sink into the twists and turns with a fond, “yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.”

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Delicate Thorns

By: Ainsley Shay and Miranda Hardy

Narrated by: Angie Hickman

GoodReads Summary: Waking up on a deserted island with no memory of who you are is scary, but when your throat burns for the thirst of blood, it’s terrifying.

For months, Jasmine has managed to feed her new hunger in solitude while teetering on the brink of insanity. As her delirium increases to a new level, an unthinkable opportunity offers an escape into a world of cruelty, vengeance, love and lust. Now the need to remember her past becomes vital if Jasmine plans to survive.

Delicate Thorns is a 26,000 word New Adult novella that brings an interesting twist to the vampire paranormal genre.

(I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.)

Delicate Thorns is such an appropriate title for this work. From the short form to Angie Hickman’s voice, everything seems like a gentle bubble that if you touched it, it would break into a thousand glimmering drops.

The movement of the rising action drifts daintily into the subtle drama of the climax, leaving me feeling that this is simply a few diary entries read aloud by the one who’d forgotten she’d written anything down.

I’m glad to see that other people like this story. I must be one of the few for whom this story does not resonate.

The imagery is interesting, lacking certain clichés most writers of intimate scenes fall into. In that, it was a bit different.

However, it just feels so soft that I can’t quite grip it in my mind. Even just after finishing it for the second time, I’m losing details that probably should have been able to stick with me.

Others have said that it is refreshingly different. Maybe I’ve read way too many vampire stories, but other than the amnesia, figuring out who you are once you’ve become one of the monsters is a constant in this idea of a story.

I really wish I’d been blown away. But I simply was not. Jasmine’s story simply lacks the grit that I enjoy.

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Last to Die — LAURA’S BOOK BLOG

Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller I’ve been in a slight reading rut. I haven’t had a book for two weeks that grabbed me and didn’t let go. The kind you stay up late to finish, the kind you don’t skip through waiting for something to finally happen. Well thanks to Arlene Hunt I […]

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