Cannot possibly recommend the company Graphic Audio enough as an audiobook experience. It was my gateway drug back into reading after an embarrassingly long stretch of fractured attention span. Their tagline is ‘A Movie in Your Mind’, which it pretty well succeeds at. They make everything a full Radio Play experience, with sound effects and music and a sprawling cast of voice actors for each book.

The only downside is that they do tend to retain the same voice talent, so if you bounce around between some series, you’ll be like, “Hey wait, why’s Wit here? Oh, no, he’s not. Just the same voice.”

Either way, cannot recommend it highly enough. The actors really swing for the fences, and when it lands, it lands so well.

Endlessly impressed with the one-man-show that the narrator is capable of putting on. I think it does sag occasionally (The Iron Tangle comes to mind), but it’s been such a different tone to my previous binge of the Cosmere that I’m all in on the dark comedy romp that it is.

God damn it, Donut.

I’m literally obsessed.

I’m reading Dungeon Crawler Carl and it is like a mash up of the most upsurd scenes where the GM is basically of the mindset, “Fuck it. Roll and let’s see what shit can happen.”

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman was, in my opinion, excellent.

The Daughter’s War by Buehlman came out this summer and is a prequel to The Blacktongue Thief. Very different than the Blacktongue Thief, but very good.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. Another take on the Arthorian legend. If you enjoyed the Magicians you’ll probably like this

I won’t spoil it too much, but the genre is broadly horror, though it can be quite subtle at times. Enríquez is an Argentine author and lived as a child through the coup of 1976 and subsequent junta period. Some of this is illustrated in her work, but she refers to the period rather than describes it directly (except in one specific case). I think that the violence in the book is a representation of that period given how she portrays it in terms of generational trauma.

There are some content warnings for it, notably violence in general. It’s not an extreme horror novel (think more Stephen King, not Jack Ketchum) and doesn’t go into too much detail about the following:

Spoiler

There is one scene of violence towards an animal. It’s about a paragraph long and not very heavily described in detail. A lot of folks have issues with that subject, so I figured I’d mention it.

Okay! All that aside, if you are a fan of horror in general, gothic horror, or (in a couple cases) cosmic horror, you should check it out.

In the book, she details her struggle with ADHD and the trauma she experienced inside & outside the “troubled teen” schools she was placed in. It’s heartbreaking and was honestly pretty rough to listen to, I was only mildly aware of the school thing and her activism related to it. As someone who was a young adult around the time she became famous, I definitely remember the negative press and remarks about her being famous for nothing, etc. The book touches on a lot of that and gave me a lot to think about.

I highly recommend it with the clear trigger warning bc it gets very dark. I can’t say I was a huge Paris Hilton fan back in the day but it’s definitely given me a new perspective on her.

Now I’m onto Fourth Wing and liking it so far! The audiobook narrator gives me a little anxiety bc of how fast she talks sometimes but it is pretty interesting.

You both better have screamed or yelled at the end.

ngl, I had to re-read the last paragraph about five time before my brain wrapped around it. I legit did not see the ending coming.

Appropriate response

I threw my phone.

In this same vein, I pitch the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. I’ve read her other series, A Court of Thorns and Roses and love it immensely but this one is hitting different. I think the writing is just better and I connect a lot more with the protagonist. Highly recommend both, though, if you liked Fourth Wing but with less modern influences and language.

I enjoyed it! Except for the dude that somehow kept not being killed even though I was sure he was dead at one point. -.-

So good.

Fourth Wing! I’m listening to the audiobook of this, I’m enjoying it.

(I’m mostly talking the TV shows because I’ve never read those books.)

A woman with what is likely rheumatoid arthritis and ehlers-danlos in a world were dragons are a thing, is forced by her general mother into the dragon rider’s quadrant despite having trained her entire life to be a scribe. She’s got to fight brutal battles to survive. Many people want to kill her either for revenge against her mother or because they think she’ll get other people killed.

My one biggest gripe is that there is a particular antagonist that gets to live way too long throughout the book, and then his death isn’t very satisfying.

That’s awful. My childhood. clutch heart

It is PAINFULLY obvious when the story fully came from him. I’m sorry, Lacky’s style may make a joke that foxes are having sex, but wouldn’t expound on it beyond the joke.

Also, there are a solid handful of things that just DO NOT ALIGN WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD.

Spoiler