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Recent reading
Mar. 4th, 2024 09:02 pmListened to an audiobook of The Last Smile in Sunder City, written and read by Luke Arnold, better known for playing John Silver on Black Sails— which is 100% why I gave this book a shot and was, I will confess, pleasantly surprised to discover that it was actually... good? It's an urban fantasy detective novel set in a once-magical world whose source of magic has disappeared: still populated by elves, ogres, wizards, werewolves, vampires, etc., but now elves/vampires are no longer immortal, wizards can't do magic, werewolves are caught in half-transformation, and some forms of life died out entirely. The world-building was clever, the main character's tragic backstory unfolded in interesting ways, and overall, it ended up being a lot darker than I'd expected, but interestingly so.
I think this worked better for me as an audiobook than if I'd actually read-read it. It turns out that Luke Arnold is great at Doing Voices, and I particularly liked the use of different accents for different species— off the top of my head, American accents for non-magical humans (including first-person POV character Fetch Phillips, a hard-drinking private investigator with a broken heart and a guilty conscience), plummy English accents for wizards, Cockney(?) ogres, a cyclops bartender with a thick Scottish brogue, and a dragonborn/lizardfolk-type detective with a subtly hissing lisp.
Read Slow Horses by Mick Herron, in which an office of disgraced MI5 agents sentenced to desk jobs for various screw-ups finds itself at the center of a conspiracy with geopolitical implications— and at least one life more immediately at stake. Fast-paced and funny! My biggest takeaway is that Herron likes playing with audience expectations, and like, phrasing things to suggest he means one thing and then it turns out to mean something else; I thought this was done cleverly the first time - ( spoilers ) - but grew slightly wearing once he was pulling a bait-and-switch every other paragraph.
I think this worked better for me as an audiobook than if I'd actually read-read it. It turns out that Luke Arnold is great at Doing Voices, and I particularly liked the use of different accents for different species— off the top of my head, American accents for non-magical humans (including first-person POV character Fetch Phillips, a hard-drinking private investigator with a broken heart and a guilty conscience), plummy English accents for wizards, Cockney(?) ogres, a cyclops bartender with a thick Scottish brogue, and a dragonborn/lizardfolk-type detective with a subtly hissing lisp.
Read Slow Horses by Mick Herron, in which an office of disgraced MI5 agents sentenced to desk jobs for various screw-ups finds itself at the center of a conspiracy with geopolitical implications— and at least one life more immediately at stake. Fast-paced and funny! My biggest takeaway is that Herron likes playing with audience expectations, and like, phrasing things to suggest he means one thing and then it turns out to mean something else; I thought this was done cleverly the first time - ( spoilers ) - but grew slightly wearing once he was pulling a bait-and-switch every other paragraph.
