The Ghost Bride (Audiobook)

Title: The Ghost Bride

Author: Yangsze Choo

 

Read by: Yangsze Choo

Publisher: Harper Audio (2013)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Historical Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 8 minutes

Synopsis: "Would you like to be a ghost bride?"  Li Lan is shocked by her father's suggestion.  After all, though marrying off the dead is not entirely unheard of in colonial Malaya, it is rare for the bride to be a living woman who would be condemned to a life of widowhood.  Though Li Lan has no interest in becoming such a bride, she is curious about the circumstances that led to the suggestion.  Her intended, it would seem, was the heir to the Lim family, a young man she had never even met.  Now, however, all of his family is showing a keen interest in her, from the new heir Tian Bai to his dead cousin, who's begun appearing in Li Lan's dreams and is anything but charming.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  I did enjoy this audiobook performance, since it is somewhat rare to find a book read by its author.  Li Lan isn't exactly the most interesting protagonist, but through her explorations, we are treated to an extensive, lushly described, and sometimes fantastical view of her world, both in life and death.  The historical notes Choo includes at the conclusion of the story are nearly as interesting as the book itself.  There's a lot going on in this story, ranging from romance to a sort of supernatural version of Law & Order.  With the historical context in place, that combination makes a lot more sense, but during my first listening, I found it somewhat difficult to work out where the story was going, and why on earth that seemed like a logical option.  Though there were things about this book that puzzled me, I did enjoy the performance overall, and the concept behind it in particular.

Across the Universe

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis

Publisher: Penguin Group (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 417

Synopsis: Amy is about to leave everything behind.  Her parents have signed on to help develop a colony on a far distant planet, a colony so far away that they will have to spend 300 years cryogenically frozen aboard their starship in order to survive the journey.  While they and the other "essential" personnel travel in blocks of ice, the ship is crewed by generation after generation as they hurtle through space.  But somewhere along the line, something has gone wrong.  The power structure of the waking crew has changed; now they're led by Eldest, the most senior member of the population, and his teenage successor, Elder, is being groomed to take his place.  But Elder feels that something is not quite right within the ship; Eldest is keeping secrets, and when Elder stumbles across one of the biggest, a room full of frozen people, he'll do whatever it takes to get answers, even if it means asking the girl in the block of ice.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion:This, put most simply, is a good book.  The opening scene was enough to leave me a bit shell-shocked, in the best possible way.  From there, the story launches into a disconcertingly dystopian society that continues to reveal hidden depths of distortion as the book progresses.  It's a quick read with an engaging plot and moderately intriguing characters, though they did seem a bit flat at times.  The story is driven not by character development or growth, but by the swiftly unraveling though delightfully tangled plot.  I did find that I was occasionally confused about the age of the characters.  There was no change in vocabulary between Eldest and his teenage protege, leaving Eldest with turns of phrase that seemed out of character, particularly in a society that's been artificially stratified by age.  Given the chance to continue in this series, however, I certainly will!

The Rook (Audiobook)

Title: The Rook

Author: Daniel O'Malley

Read by: Susan Duerden

Publisher: Dreamscape Media (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime Thriller, Mystery

Length: 17 hours and 51 minutes

Synopsis: When Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a park, surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves, she has no idea who she is or how she came to be in such a situation.  Her only clues are several letters in her pocket, addressed to her by the woman who had previously inhabited her body, the personality she'd been born with and which was mysteriously erased.  This is only the beginning of Myfanwy's trip down the rabbit hole.  Soon she begins to realize that there is far, far more to her life-- or rather, the life she's inherited-- than she could ever have guessed.  Her prior self has left her a road-map in letters and documents, but when one awakens to find oneself an administrator in the government's secret supernatural department, there are bound to be some adjustments to make.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  This book started well, but lost momentum before long.  I've read other reviews comparing The Rook with the film The Bourne Identity, but I really think it's really much closer to Ghostbusters.  It may have been Duerden's performance, but instead of playing as an actual thriller, this audiobook came across as a parody of one.  In truth, I can't tell which was the actual intent.  Duerden has Myfanwy sounding like a little girl rather than the competent administrator she is (repeatedly) purported to be, and the voices she adopted for some of her other characters crossed the border into ridiculous.  O'Malley has an interesting concept here, and some really unique ideas, but I did not enjoy this audiobook as much as I had hoped.