Die, Snow White! Die, Damn You! is a retelling of the Snow White story, with elements from a few other stories, such as “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and even “Aladdin.” I really enjoyed Yuri Rasovsky's Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls, and so I was looking forward to listening to this. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me at all.

This was a full-cast production, almost like a play, but with very little in the way of sound effects. The voice acting was fairly good, probably one of the best things about this audiobook. I'd likely have enjoyed it even more if Rasovsky had either refrained from including German words and phrases or if more of the cast had been able to pronounce those words and phrases without mangling them. Despite using the English version of Snow White's name in the title of the audiobook, Rasovsky named her Schneewittchen in the production. Everyone pronounced it as Shnee (rhymes with knee) vitshen, even the people who could pronounce the other German words just fine (maybe they were aiming for production-wide consistency?). It grated on my nerves a little.

The way the various story elements were blended together was pretty nice (although the Goldilocks reference was completely unnecessary), and the production even made use of some of the less popular aspects of the Snow White story, such as the stepmother eating the huntsman's evidence that he killed Snow White.

However, the humor almost never worked for me. It was generally very sexual. The new duchess is going to have to have her virginity inspected by a bunch of old guys! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, I wonder how they're going to do that? The first monster Schneewittchen encounters in the forest tells her he won't eat her because he only eats good wives (and so he's always starving, haha), but then chooses to attack her in another way...by raping her. I guess? She was so bored by the experience that I didn't even realize at first what had happened.

During one of her attempts to kill Schneewittchen, the evil stepmother pretended to be a lamp seller and used a gratingly awful Chinese accent. Then there was the ending. I actually gasped when I realized what the big twist was going to be that would allow everyone to have their “happy ending.” A great big spoiler warning here:

Rumpelstiltskin arranges things so it looks like the evil stepmother has finally managed to kill Schneewittchen. Previously, he hid Schneewittchen at the gingerbread house, where she began to gobble up everything in sight. When the stepmother asked the mirror who the fairest of them all was, it told her that she was...because Schneewittchen had eaten herself into a 200-lb. weight gain. But not to worry, Schneewittchen still got the sex she wanted, because fat is beautiful in the Ottoman Empire. Rumpelstiltskin just arranged to have her marry someone there.

(spoiler show)

So this was mostly a disappointment.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

 

[This is an old review. I just realized that, although I rated the book, for some reason I never posted my review.]

 

The Snowman is the 7th Harry Hole book, and the first one I've ever read/listened to. I started it because 1) it was long and I was hoping to slow myself down so I could catch up on posts (ha!) and 2) I remembered Robin Sachs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The basic setup is that someone is building snowmen nearby people who are about to disappear/die. Harry investigates the disappearances, realizes that there are more that occurred further back in time, and comes to the conclusion that Oslo has its very own serial killer.

I'd probably be willing to listen to another book in this series, but I don't think I could stand reading one. The pacing of this book was very slow and sometimes odd. It took a while for things to get going, and there were at least two or three moments that felt like they could have been endings but weren't.

I didn't really like Harry, and I flat-out cheered when Katrine Bratt turned him down, because, wow, hitting on her was super icky and unprofessional. I also raised an eyebrow at his complete lack of curiosity about the mold inspector. You'd think a supposedly sharp, paranoid police inspector would have had issues with giving a stranger extended access to his apartment without checking up on him first and making sure he was legit. This is not, by the way, a spoiler, because, as far as I can remember, the mold man stuff went nowhere and served no purpose other than to add "fear of mold" to Harry's list neuroses.

In general, the sexual relationships in this book were not my cup of tea – lots and lots of cheating, plus several unsexy sex scenes. The serial killer portion of the story, however, was interesting and creepy. And also gory. A couple bits were horrifying enough that I had to pause the book and listen to something else for a while, to give my brain some time to prepare for the rest. I had to pause some more near the end, when the tense moments came hard and fast. I had no clue whether Nesbø was the sort to kill major characters and the stress of it got to be too much for me sometimes.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

A Hunger for the Infinite - Gregory Benf...

This was a free audiobook on Audible, a novella written in the same universe as six other novels in the author's Galactic Center Saga. I read at least 5 of the 6 books in that series and have one vivid recollection of reading Tides of Light on the beach in the fading light of early evening, trying to get in a few more pages before it got too dark to see the ink against the page.

This novella is written in the same philosophical, somewhat aloof style of the series novels, and with very similar vertigo-inducing time spans. The series as a whole is a rewarding read and I rated all of the books I read in it 4 stars.

But ... how much story can one tell in 300k plus words without repeating oneself? Or, how many times can one get invites to the soiree until wearing out one's welcome? For sure, Gregory Benford tries to have something new and interesting to say each time, and in this novella, it is the role-change between humans and mechs in the far-future, but the milieu is the same, the extrapolative bases are unchanged and the voice is from my past.

Plus ... it's just different listening to a book versus reading it, especially in fading beach light. It seems a bit fast, less conducive to rumination, a medium more in tune with today's lifestyles than it is with that of the 80s. Hearing this novella now so far removed from those years when I read the series, I find that the gosh-golly-wow element has gone elsewhere, along with fragments of my youth.

I'm sure others will find something of value here, but I am perhaps too jaded now to dig deeper. Am rating this 4 stars for old times sake, and the classy ending.

War changes you and whether that is for the better or not, you deal with it. This book took a different approach to war and had the reader dealing with the rekindling of a relationship that WW II tore apart. This marriage was strong before the war and after the war the relationship had secrets that neither party was ready to let go nor ready to put on the table and discuss. Silvana lived in a hostile environment with a small child without her husband for 6 years and finally was reunited with her husband in a foreign county. She tried to play the part of the good wife but the secrets from the past came flooding back and haunting her. Janusz's secrets kept flashing back to him and his emotions were all over the board. Their son Aurek was the interesting character. They say you are a part of your environment and well, this 6-year old holds true to that saying.This book is not a happy story but it is reality and it sure held my attention. Amanda did a great job with the details of the characters as I felt the emotions of the characters and enjoyed them as they developed in the story. This book does a lot of flash-back and present-day presentation and sometimes I get lost when reading these books but Amanda did a great job(awesome really). I also enjoyed how she has the some chapters split up between Silvana and Janusz. Enjoyed this story.

This is a powerful and moving, but sad story about a family torn apart by war. The story moves back and forth in time (pre-WWII, during the war, and after the war), location (Poland, France, crossing the channel, and England) and between three characters – wife/mother, husband/father and child/son. Despite the fact that the story involves very painful topics – death of family members, rape, loss of loved ones, separation, witnessing violent deaths, etc. – the story was not depressing. I won this book from First Reads hear on goodreads, but I chose to listen to the narrated version instead. I believe the story is a good first start from this author. I think the transition from each character’s point of view, was done well but perhaps could have been done better. I did not like the male protagonist. I thought he was weak and easily influenced, but ultimately he does right by his family. I also thought that the silence and secrets between the reunited characters was overly dramatic, I just did not believe the level of secrecy and lack of intimacy between them but then I have never survived a war while separated from my spouse. I was completely surprised by the twist in the story and the revelation still breaks my heart. I am giving this 4 stars, while I think it is a 3.5 star book because the story left me emotionally moved and thinking about the characters. I believe if a reader is a fan of literary fiction, interested in the post-WWII time period, or interested in stories of surviving and moving on – then this book will be enjoyed. It isn’t the best book I have ever read, but it is good.