Having read Sloan's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, I knew to expect something quirky, but this one is more bizarre than I thought. It's only around 6 hours on audio but felt longer. I liked the parts about Lois learning to make sourdough bread and how it invigorates her. It's when she joins a strange underground market that the story goes a little off for me. The novel's summary describes a fusion between food and technology, similar to the way Mr. Penumbra combines books and IT, but I didn't expect the way it morphs into a bit of science fiction — or maybe even fantasy? I'm not sure. It's still quite charming though, and some funny parts did make me chuckle.

What helps this book is having Thérèse Plummer as the narrator. Her engaging delivery makes Lois' excitement over bread-making infectious. However, she has a distinct way of pronouncing certain words which makes me wonder if it's a kind of regional US accent — which I'm not very familiar with since I'm not from the US. A lot of her [i] vowels sound more like [e] or [ei]. For instance, she pronounces 'me' closer to 'may', kind of like that Justin Timberlake 'it's gonna be May' meme. I'm just a linguistic nerd who notices these types of things.

 
Virgin River, Book 2

I Picked Up This Book Because: Continue the series.

The Characters:

John “Preacher” Middleton:
Paige Lassiter:
Christopher, Jack, Mel, David, Mike, Liz, Rick, Brie

The Story:

So I went into this story thinking it was going to be Pracher’s book however its a lot more than that. Yes a lot of the story focused on Preacher, Paige, Christopher and Paige’s crazy husband but it also continued Mel & Jack’s story. Also Liz and Rick had a heartbreaking development. Mike has also moved to town and he is a welcome addition to the family. I hope this trend continues throughout the series as we get to know more residents. I love an ensemble cast.

To break it down a little bit (view spoiler)

So many things happen in this book it’s difficult to sum it all up but I think I hit all the highlights.

The Random Thoughts:



The Score Card:



4 Stars

I read Robin Sloan's previous book, and I liked it a lot so naturally, I was looking forward to reading Sourdough. I didn't know a lot about Sourdough (compared to the books in the previous novel) but have googled a bit since then, but it sounded fascinating.

It was a really nice read. The author clearly has a love for San Fransisco, it was nice to see him so enthusiastic on the topic. I recently saw a documentary on sourdough and apparently San Fransisco is the place to be when it comes to it.

I find myself still thinking about this book from time to time.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I’ve been a fan of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast for a while (although I’m woefully behind at the moment), so I was very excited when this book was first announced. I’ve owned it in two different formats since it first came out in 2015, but I kept putting off reading it because I couldn’t decide which format to start with, audio or paper. I finally settled on audio, figuring that something that started as a podcast would be better that way. Now that I’ve finished it, I feel like I made the right decision.

Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel stars Jackie Fierro, a nineteen-year-old pawn shop owner, and Diane Crayton, a single mom with a shapeshifting teenage son named Josh. As far as Jackie knows, she’s been nineteen forever and has owned her pawn shop forever. She doesn’t really think too hard about any of that until a strange customer, the Man in the Tan Jacket, comes in and gives her a slip of paper she literally can’t put down. Whenever she tries to get rid of it, it ends up right back in her hand. All it says is “King City.” Even worse, Jackie suddenly can’t write anything except “King City,” making it impossible for her to do her job.

Meanwhile, Diane’s life seems perfectly normal until one of her coworkers disappears. No one but her even remembers he existed, and it’s a mystery she can’t bring herself to leave alone. Her situation is further complicated by her son’s sudden desire to talk to his father. Diane would rather never talk about Josh’s father. Unfortunately, she keeps seeing him everywhere she goes. It gradually becomes apparent that the solution to both Jackie and Diane’s problems lies in the mysterious and possibly unreachable King City.

I vaguely recall one of the announcements about this book stating that it was written to be Night Vale newbie-friendly. Although, according to the Welcome to Night Vale wiki, Jackie, Diane, and Josh had all previously been mentioned in the podcast, I didn’t remember a thing about them and was still able to follow their stories just fine. That said, I don’t agree that this book is newbie-friendly, and I’d advise newbies to listen to at least a few episodes of the podcast before giving the book a try.

I went into this expecting it to be more like a normal genre novel. Instead, what I got was something that felt exactly like the podcast, except without weather reports, separate narrators for all the characters, and Cecil Palmer keeping the whole thing anchored. It took a long time for the connection between Jackie and Diane’s stories to become apparent. If I felt somewhat adrift and confused, I can only imagine how newbies who knew nothing the Glow Cloud, Tamika Flynn, the ban on wheat and wheat by-products and other Night Vale characters and events felt. This isn’t the kind of book you could jump into cold, unless your tolerance for the strange and surreal is extremely high.

I could only take this book in small chunks, at first. It got better as Jackie and Diane’s paths crossed more, and in the end I’d call this a “must listen” for Night Vale fans, although I still think the podcast is way better. I loved the scene in the Night Vale Public Library, the creepy Night Vale community radio ads, and the various peeks at what daily life is like in Night Vale. After many podcast episodes worth of wondering, I finally got to find out the Man in the Tan Jacket’s identity and goals. I laughed when I realized how the Erikas had helped Jackie and Diane out, and I cringed in arachnophobic horror whenever the tarantula got an appearance (that said, I

When I saw that this was narrated by four different people, I assumed it would be like other audiobooks with multiple narrators: one narrator handling the narrative parts and the others doing the dialogue, or each narrator handling a different POV. Instead, it was primarily Cecil Baldwin, with the other three narrators coming in about three quarters into the book to voice Cecil Palmer’s special radio guests, Old Woman Josie and two of the Erikas.

So there you have it: it wasn’t exactly bad, but it also wasn’t nearly as good as I’d hoped it would be. I’m glad I listened to it because it gave me more of the overall Night Vale story and let me get a better look at more locations in the town. I’ll probably relisten to it at some point, because I enjoy Cecil Baldwin’s voice and might like the book better now that I know how long it takes for the multiple strange and seemingly separate storylines to come together. That said, I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a big Welcome to Night Vale fan.

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

Review originally posted at RabidReads.com.

I’ve been struggling with reading books lately. My attention span is very low for some reason. I can’t really sit down and read for more than an hour before I start finding something to distract myself. So, I decided to try the last book in the Age of Legends series on audio instead of reading, like I did with the previous two books. This worked out really great. I was able to finally finish this trilogy without having to sit down and read in little bits.

If you’re not familiar with this series, it is a fun one. It is set in a world that does have magics and spirits, among other things. The stories are told from the point of view of sixteen-year-old twin sisters, Moria and Ashen. They have the abilities to calm spirits and even banish them. Moria is known as the Keeper. She helps protect the empire from angry spirits. She also has a bond-beast that is a wildcat named Daigo. Bond-beasts are warriors that have died and come back to help the Seeker and the Keeper. Ashen is the Seeker. He has a hound for her bond-beast, named Tova. Moria is the one that has always been more outgoing and popular with the people. Ashen has always been a little more introverted. The two girls have been separated for a long time now as they try to solve the issue of Shadowstalkers and find the missing children from their town.

There are also three guys who’ve been part of the story from the beginning, or almost the beginning. The first one that we met in the first book is Ronan. He is a fugitive from the empire. He is also castless, which is very important in this world. It also makes him keep his distance from Ashen, even though he has quite the crush on her. He doesn’t feel that he’s good enough. He also uses little brother and sister as an excuse to keep his distance. He is responsible for them, since they have no one else. But at the same time, he feels he needs to protect Ashen.

There is also Gavril. He is quite the magician, though not as strong as his father. He has also been branded a traitor. His father is not a good man has done many horrible things (I won’t go into details to avoid spoilers). There are several times where you can’t tell which side Gavril is on. He and Moria have become very close friends. She has even been branded a traitor because of her ties to him in friendship.

Lastly, there is Tyrus. He is the emperor’s bastard son. He is also the emperor’s favorite child. He has also been branded a traitor because of events that happened in the second book (once again, I won’t give further details). He has been traveling with Gavril and Moria.

This story continues where the second book left off. We go back and forth between Ashen and Moria telling their tale. Both are witness to horrors along the way. You can really see the two girls, and also the boys, all grow up and leave childhood behind as they face things that even humans shouldn’t have to face. There is betrayal from family members, witnessing the aftermath of horrible murders (truly, these murders were awful. The kids didn’t witness it, but they came across the bodies and even that was bad enough), dealing with the zombie-like shadowstalkers. They even had to deal with the idea of raising dragons from a magical induced sleep. Yep, you read that right, dragons have made an appearance (and no, neither of the girls went into a bonfire with eggs LOL).

I’m a huge fan of Kelley Armstrong. I think she writes amazing characters. Now this series is one that isn’t as fast paced as some of her other stories, but the characters and the world she has built is still pretty great. I like how she kept me intrigued with trying to figure out who is betraying whom and never knowing what type of horrors the girls would come to next. I will say that end the end, I enjoyed the overall series, more than I enjoyed each book. I think part of that is that Armstrong ended the first two books with cliffhangers (grrr), but this being the final book, that didn’t happen here. I thought the story wrapped up pretty well. I liked how the people whose names were cleared were able to convince the emperor of their loyalty without having the emperor lose face. I will say that there is a bit of a love triangle, but not a strong one. Moria had always knew the choice she wanted, though she did second guess herself from time to time. If you like high-fantasy YA stories, this was a fun trilogy.

Narration
I think this was my first time listening to Therese Plummer. I know I recognized her name. I would’ve sworn I had listened to her before, but I can’t find anything that could’ve been the book. Anyway, I thought she did a great job with narration. I loved how she was able to make the kids sound like the teenagers they were and the adults sound like adults. I thought she did a great job with the male and female voices and that you could really feel the horror some of the kids experienced through their voices. If you haven’t tried Therese Plummer, I highly recommend her. I will looking for more books by her.

The Age of Legends Trilogy
	My Review