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Feels Like a Hallmark Christmas Special

Overall
2 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
2 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2025-01-05

A mystery spans two episodes. I only listened to the first mystery. The murder victim was not a great voice actor, sure he is only in the story a short time, but since his is the first voice you hear it sticks with you. Other narrators were better.

I generally enjoy mysteries. However, I didn’t jive with the main character. She thinks about cuddling cats and makes comments like, “who is calling at wine O’clock?” I remember thinking this could be a Hallmark Christmas Special, and it turns out that the movie adaptation was just released on the Hallmark Channel.

If you like Christmas, cozy mysteries, cats and women who drink with their cats at night than this may be for you!

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Excellent Audio Production

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-12-21

The voice actors were amazing, and the sound editing was great. There were a few times when the sound quality dipped a little, like the voices for Order, Chaos and Azazel, but these dips in quality or few and far between.

Some of the stories are fantastic, others are just good, and a few are even easily forgettable. For example, in the ‘A Game of You’ series some of the characters were to have known each other for years but their interactions are unnatural. The villain, the Cuckoo, was laughable. Conversely, the series has some excellent writing and finished on an incredibly touching moment. In other stories, I was always disturbed when Cain killed Able, I was never drawn into stories with those two characters. Hence the 3 star rating for “Story.”

If you enjoyed Act I you’ll likely equally enjoy Act II.

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A Fun Return to the Scythedom

Overall
4 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-11-30

If the trilogy left you wanting more, you’ll definitely want to check out Gleanings. Unfortunately, you’ll have to get past the first story, which is truly terrible, before getting to anything good. There are the predictable stories, like “Formidable” which is about how Scythe Curie gained the moniker The Grande Dame of Death. There is also a story about a main character who lived on Mars before moving to Earth: “A Martian Minute.” Other stories focus on characters who had minor roles in the trilogy. In one of the weaker of these, “Unsavory Row,” Kila Whitlock, whose brother was gleaned in the first book at Rowan’s school, navigates the unsavory world and learns a secret about what it means to be unsavory. In, “The Persistence of Memory,” we learn more about Ben Terranova. There are also stories that are not connected to previous characters. There are two stories that expand the narrative beyond the end of the third book. In my opinion, the three best stories, “Never Work with Animals,” “The Mortal Canvas,” and “Perchance to Glean” were fun to get lost in.

“Never Work with Animals,” was actually a bit of a comedy, while “The Mortal Canvas,” took place just after humanity gained immortality. The younger characters were born immortal while the adults were born mortal, the juxtaposition made for a great story. “Perchance to Glean” takes place in the communal dreaming of the RossShelf charter region. A scythe hunting in a communal dream makes for a great story!

Greg Tremblay returned to narrate a few stories, and he was a great 4 star narrator, as always. Unfortunately, the only other strong narrator was Fiona Hardingham, she narrated the other comedic story, “Meet Cute and Die.” The others are alright, and one was awful. That narrator makes some of the stories so hard on the ears that you might prefer to physically read those chapters.

Overall, it’s a fun listen that I recommend.

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Fun to Rediscover these Story from Childhood

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-11-27

It was fun to rehear these stories and share them with my daughter, but they weren’t as great as I remember. Many of the stories have a similar format. For example, in “The Guests” a couple spend a night at a house with elderly hosts. They leave money for the hosts in the morning and head out early. They hear that the house burned down years ago. They return to the house, but it’s a burnt-out shell, but the money they left that morning is there! In another story, “The Wreck” two teens meet at a dance. The boy puts tinsel in the girl’s hair. But turns out she died before the dance and when they find her body there is tinsel in her hair. The stories that follow this format pile up faster than bodies in a slasher film.

Of course, there are memorable stories that I could easily recall from my childhood that made the listen more enjoyable. Unfortunately, these gems are too few. Furthermore, I missed the creepy artwork by Stephen Gammell in the original books. What bothered me the most was the stories that ended in instructions for how to scare your friends while reading the story to them, “Now jump at your closest friends and scream, ‘I’ve got you!’”

I was surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed the sections on the source material for each book. They provide fun insight into some of the stories.

The narrators were alright. As a fan of The Walking Dead, I expected more from Melissa McBride, sadly not even she wowed me. She had more emotional range than a Walker, but nothing like what I’m used to seeing from her on screen.

I’d say this a decent purchase to share stories from your youth with your kids, but it wasn’t as exciting as I hoped it would be.

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A Fun Book for Kids of all Beliefs

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-10-29

This was a delightful story. It was fun and adventurous. The main character decides to trick the goblins who have taken over the Synagogue so that people can celebrate Hanukkah again. He does so by using his wits.

We are not a Jewish family but after enjoying the story it gave my daughter a chance to ask questions about other holidays besides the ones we celebrate.

The story is only half as long as advertised. The story is read twice, the second time with page turning chimes.

Eric Kimmel was a great choice for narrator. His voice suited the role perfectly.

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What a Fantastic Series – Don’t Read the PDF

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-10-29

I love the Arc of a Scythe Trilogy and The Toll is no exception. This book feels different from the other two novels. It is more a slow burn. Some of my favourite characters had less time on the page, but that is forgivable given how well Shusterman layered events and plot developments throughout the novel.

The ending wasn’t what I expected, but it was fantastic!

But don’t read the PDF – it is a spoiler that comes from Chapter 47!

As I have written before, Greg Tremblay does a fantastic job of narrating all the male characters and the Thunderhead. But I still don’t love how he voices female characters. Furthermore, Chapter 17 is told through dueling perspectives, Tremblay didn’t differentiate his voice enough between these perspectives and I started to confuse the details between the two characters. Otherwise, he was great.

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I'm a Bit Disappointed

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-10-01

I kept hoping for more from this novel than what I got. The characters are great, the setting is awesome, but the plot left something to be desired. There were parallels to the Book of the Ancestor trilogy. For example, in both trilogies the characters have the same final destination in mind. Speaking of the Book of the Ancestor, if you haven’t read it prior to reading this novel be prepared to be lost and have parts of the final book of that trilogy spoiled for you.

The connections between this book and Holy Sister (the final novel of the Book of the Ancestor trilogy) were generally good. Sometimes they were exciting, but sometimes they caused the story to drag. However, there was too much dues ex machina for me to fully enjoy the novel. There were too many times that the heroes just tried really hard and suddenly their magic worked better than ever before. In the novel there were characters affected by time and they moved slowly or quickly through it. I thought this could be really exciting, but ultimately it felt very uninspired and bored me a little.

As with the previous novel, if you’re familiar with Greek mythology, you’ll notice lots of references to it here.

This novel made me miss Heather O'Neill, who narrated the Book of the Ancestor trilogy. In this novel family names, locations and other familiar aspects were mentioned, but Helen Duff’s pronunciation made me realize how amazing O’Neill was. Furthermore, Duff struggled with the Greek pronunciation in this novel. Overall, I was a little disappointed in both the story and the narration.

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Not Much Plot to the Story

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
3 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-08-14

While listening to this, my eight-year-old asked me, “Daddy, what is the point of this story? I mean I know it’s about Bat, but what is the point?” It was a question I couldn’t really answer. Most of the story is just following Bat through his life. The story’s main conflict isn’t introduced until the final couple of chapters and is very quickly resolved. This was a bit of a let down after listening to book one of the trilogy.

As I wrote before Patrick Lawlor is a decent narrator, but he just sounds too old to be voicing a boy.

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Still a Spectacular Series

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
4 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-07-26

The story is as great as Season 2. The heroes continue to grow and capture my interests. This season’s villains on the other hand were surprising lackluster. I expected more from vampires that had lived for centuries. The end of the final episode was exciting and was a good set up for Season 4.

The voice acting was, as expected, spectacular. However, I noticed some mic issues this season, nothing that ruined my listen though.

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A Bit Repetitive

Overall
3 out of 5 stars
Performance
4 out of 5 stars
Story
3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed: 2024-07-23

This was a free listen, from the Editor’s Extra, I grabbed it because it sounded interesting, but it was a little disappointing.
The story is actually several short stories. I was frustrated with the information that Koontz kept repeating. You’ll hear many times that, “he has no name, he’s Nameless” and “Nameless didn’t know if Ace was a man, woman, AI or something else” “He rarely carried ID” and other information.

The stories themselves followed a mostly predictable pattern, however, the final story broke that mould. The final story was the best of the lot.

Koontz is great at crafting sentences. Some of his sentences were great fun to listen to. However, they didn’t make up for the repetitive story telling. Worse, some of what happens in the stories is laughable. For example, who in their right mind would think that The Great Depression was a good time? Nameless does, which is odd for a guy who can’t remember anything beyond the past two years of his life.

I enjoyed Edoardo Ballerini’s narration, he seemed like a good choice for Nameless. He isn’t one of my favourite narrators, but overall he did mostly great work here.

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