My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into The Drafter. I did listen to the prequel novella Sideswiped, but to be honest, I didn’t remember a lot of what happened. I do think that having listened/read the novella did make it easier to pick up this book. Several of the characters are introduced and you start to get a feel for the world that Harrison has built. It takes place several years before the start of The Drafter. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t left such a big gap between listening to Sideswiped and The Drafter.

This book was a completely different story and world from Harrison has given us in the past. It is nothing like The Hollows. Here, she has a built a futuristic world with more gadgets that you might expect to find in a world of the future. Plus, there is a bit of a time travel like element.

Peri Reed is a Drafter. She has the ability to go back a few minutes and rewrite the history. She is limited in how much she able to go back. She also doesn’t remember what happens. She requires the use of another person called an Anchor to help her see the final timeline. A Drafter and their Anchor are a team. They always work missions together and they generally live together and have a sexual relationship. Peri has even lost memories in her life from before the draft. One time she lost the previous six weeks of memories. It is interesting that Harrison gave such strong consequences for even these small shifts in time and rewrites in history.

There are many side characters from two different agencies. Peri currently works for a government agency called Opti. There is also another agency called the Alliance who is working to take down Opti. They want Peri and the information she could provide them, if she could only remember it. Jack is her Anchor and lover. He is also an Opti agent. Silas works for the Alliance. He can be an Anchor, but is more of a scientist than anything. There is also Bill, who is Jack and Peri’s handler. Fran, who is in charge of The Alliance. Howard and Taft are two great side characters who I just loved. They are friends of the Alliance and more like freelancers for them than true employees. They were there for Peri when she needed them. They were my favorite characters in the whole book. I hope we get to see more of them going forward.

This is a very interesting story. I liked it. The story kept me guessing on who’s the bad guy and who’s the good guys. At times, I felt I was almost as confused as Peri with her missing memory. I do love the world and the characters in it. I love Harrison’s writing style. I’m very excited to get the next book. I just hope I don’t have to wait too long.

Narration

This is the first book (not counting the Sideswiped novella) that I’ve listened to narrated by January LaVoy. I think she did a great job. I loved how she pulled out the cocky voice in Jack. Taft had a Southern accent that came and went and she did a great job with that as well. I liked her male and female voices. I would love to find more books with her as the narrator.

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

This is such a fun series. First all, it is originally published as a serial on Ilona Andrews website for free for their fans. I just love that they are willing to do this for their fans. It is not something that they have to do, but they love doing it and the fans love it too. I’m not a fan of serials, so even with the first book, I choose to wait until it was done, planning to read the finished piece. Then they put the ebook for sale, which I quickly bought for convenience and to support this great idea. Then, they took it one step further and got their awesome narrator, Reneé Raudman, to put it on audio. This got me extra excited. So when they did the second book, I sat on my hands, holding my breath, hoping beyond hope that Reneé Raudman would read the second book. So here we are!!!

Okay, enough of me babbling about how much I love Ilona Andrews and Reneé Raudman. I should probably talk about the story. This series is about Dina DeMille is an innkeeper of Gertrude Hunt. Gertrude Hunt is no ordinary inn. It’s an inn for people not from Earth. It has special abilities and is truly a character in this story as much as any person in this story. It is also neutral ground. The innkeeper will protect anyone who is a guest within it’s walls.

Enter the arbitrator. He needs to try to negotiate a peace treaty between three warring factions. The arbitrator has asked all the other inns and they have turned him down. It is too dangerous and too unlikely to bring peace. But Dina, is desperate. Her inn needs guest and money, so she decides to take the risk.

One group are the vampires of the Holy Cosmic Anocracy, which appeared in the first book. The second group are the Otrokars aka the Hope Crushing Horde. Lastly are the Merchants of Baha-char. They are a fox like group, which are all about the money and are not the war-like race, unlike the two other groups.

When Dina realizes that she will need a staff to cook for her and her 36 guests, she goes looking for someone. She locates a highly rated chef, that has been disgraced because he has been accused of poisoning someone. He is also full of drama, which gives many chuckle worthy moments. Orro is a character that really helped make the book.

My future chef was an oversized, hysterical hedgehog with a martyr complex.

Lastly, I’ll add the icing on the cake. If you’ve read Ilona Andrews The Edge series, you will recognize  the arbitrator. He is George Camarine. He appears as a child throughout the series. Here, he is all grown up. You can still see many of his aspects, though he is not the same person as he was in that series. He also brings along Jake, his shapeshifting brother, and Gaston another character from the Edge. Lark/Sophie also makes an appearance too. I’ve been wanting to see them again, ever since they ended The Edge series.

This is another great addition to the series. I love how Ilona Andrews is able to ordinary and make it extraordinary. When she buys PS4 to alleviate boredom of a group of warriors. She is sent on a mission to find a “grumpy cat” for a different guest. And hands a football to the other warriors and explains that “Football is a wargame of land acquisition.” It is just a well written series, with phenomenal characters and some of the best world building on the market.

A quote of when Orro first sees Dina’s kitchen. Needless to say, he is unimpressed. LOL

“Like a primitive savage, who sets out to tame the wilderness armed with nothing but a knife and his indomitable will, I will persevere. I will wrestle victory from the greedy jaws of defeat. I shall rise like a bird of prey upon the current of the wind, my talons raised for the kill, and I shall strike true.”

“Oh wow. I hope the inn filmed that.”

Narration

Once again, Reneé Raudman is an artist with the narration of this story. There are so many different characters and yet she is able to do all the different voices and give them all different personality and voice. There were men, women, children and Orro. Orro, was full of enough drama to fill an entire high school theater. She even did a great job bringing back the personality of characters that she hasn’t voiced in at least three years in The Edge characters. She continues to prove to my why I keep her on my list of favorite narrators.

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

This series just keeps getting better and better. As we learn more about the members of the Dallas SWAT team, we are also learning more about werewolf lore. Ms. Tyler is not willing to give us too much information in any one story. We are just getting bit and pieces of this lore. In this story, we learn that alphas are not the only kind of werewolves that exist. There are also betas and omegas. These are not the same betas and omegas that we get in other stories and I liked the take that Tyler took with her lore.

We continue to see stories of traumatic events that are turning people into werewolves. We also are reminded that traumatic events can come from family just as much as it can come from war. Seeing the events that turn Jayna were tough. She’s had a rough start to life and it didn’t get easier for her after becoming a werewolf.

One thing that really increased the action in this story, was the fact that the group of bad guys are also werewolves. Jayna’s pack has been working with Albanian mobsters. She believes that she is doing dangerous jobs for these mobsters because her pack owns them money. She isn’t comfortable with the amount of danger that herself and her pack are put into for each mission. She still continues to put her faith in her pack alpha, because that is what a pack does. That is until Becker saves her.

Cooper continues to be the protector of the SWAT guy who is bending/breaking SWAT rules because he has found “the one” for him. I’m hoping that he will get his story told soon, so he can have some of those favors returned for him. There is also time spent with the previous couples from the first two books. It was a fun story and I can’t wait for the next book. After being able to binge through the first three, now I have have wait, I don’t even know how long, for the next book. *pouts* LOL

Narration

Abby Craden does another great job with the narration of this book. In this book she has the job of tackling the Albanian mobsters. I have no idea what an Albanian accent should sound like, but she had to create the accent of several different eastern Europeans mobster type guys. I thought she did a pretty good job with this task. She continues to do well with both men and women, pace and tone as well.

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

One Good Dragon Deserves Another starts about a month after the end of the previous story, Nice Dragons Finish Last. We are still following the main character of Julius, the youngest of the Heartstrikers. He is also known as a failure for being so nice. He doesn’t possess the ruthlessness and selfishness that are synonymous with being a good dragon.

He has survived his mother’s plot to kill him and is now really enjoying the life that he has made for himself in the DFZ, Detroit Free Zone, with his new friend, business partner and mage, Marci. Their animal control business is making enough money to stay afloat, even if they are making large amounts of money.

It seems that the oldest daughter of the three sister, and one of three dragon seers, is up to something. She appears and other dragons’ future are no longer able to be seen by Bob, the Heartstriker seer. The dragons that Estella visits also don’t appear to act right.

There is also the appearance of Amelia, A-melia Heartstriker. She is the heir to the Heartstriker throne. Which means she is a threat to her mother. Amelia is a planeswalker. She has spent the last fifty years on another plane of existence, so Julius and Justin are meeting her for the first time.

There is also Ghost, who we learn a lot more about. Ghost is a spirit cat that Merci bound to herself in the first book. He is a large player in this story and I think has an even larger part to play in the future.

We also see a lot of Bob and his pigeon. I just love Bob and his pigeon. Not only does he have the quirks that many would expect of a seer, he is just quirky in and of itself. Plus, he is never seen without his pet pigeon and how can you not love that.

Oh, we also get to finally meet Algonquin and her pet dragon slayer Vann Jeger. Algonquin is the Lady of the Lake, a spirit who runs the DFZ and she hates dragons.

This was a fun story with several laugh out loud parts. There are also some great action scenes, especially the fights with the water spirit of Vann Jeger. The political maneuvering of the seers, Bethesda the Heartstriker and even how Julius out thought them all was well written. There is suspense in that you know who the bad guy is, but you have no idea how the good guys will prevail. Lastly, there is the start of a romance between Julius and Marci. This is a fun urban fantasy series that has it all. I do recommend that you start with Nice Dragons Finish Last. As with most UF series, you can’t pick up this series in the middle without being lost.

Narration

Vikas Adam did a wonderful job with the narration once again. He is great with both male and female voices. He has the spirits that he has to voice in this story. The spirits came in both male and female too. You can really feel the difference in the spirits and the dragons and humans. I really loved how he voiced the fun-loving aspects of A-melia and Bob. I would highly recommend this series on audio. I will also be looking for other books narrated by Vikas Adam.

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I listened to the first book in this series on audio earlier this year and really enjoyed it. I thought it was fun and a great listen. I was very excited to be told that this book was to be released on audio as well. The narrator, Tavia Gilbert is perfect for this series. Now, I’m hoping that more will be released as well.

This book takes place not long after the ending of The Accidental Demon Slayer. LIzzie is starting to figure out her power, somewhat. She is still traveling with the Red Skulls, her grandmother’s biker witch coven and with her gryphon boyfriend, Dimtri. When she learns that her fairy godfather/uncle is being seduced by a succubus, she must travel to Vegas to save him.

Lizzie learns that she still has a lot to learn to not only master her powers, but also just about this new magical, demonic world in general. She has to get a permit from Department of Intramagical Procedures (DIP), which only goes to show how much she doesn’t know. This makes her decide that she needs a book with all the information that she acquires as she learns it, hence the title.

While if Vegas, she meets up with a demon hunter, Max. I was a little concerned when Max first made it into the picture that there would be a love triangle, but fear not, this is not an issue.

This has been a fun and cute series. It reminds me of a Molly Harper story. It has great characters that are a little quirky. I mean, Lizzie is a former kindergarten teacher turned demon slayer with a talking Jack Russell terrier, Pirate. She doesn’t cuss, even in her thoughts. She flies by the seat of her pants, but gets things done in the end. The beginning of each chapter even has a snippet from The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers to start each chapter off.

Narration

Tavia Gilbert once again does a great job with the narration of this story. I don’t know that I would like this story as much just reading. Her narration really adds to the story, in my opinion. She really brings out the humor in the characters. If you’ve listened to her narrate the Cat & Bones books, just know that these books she uses a completely different feel because of the different type of humor. I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other, but that she did a great job of tailoring her narration to fit with the story. I just hope that she has more of these books in her future.