Jack Till is a retired LAPD homicide detective turned P.I. Six years ago, he helped a woman named Wendy Harper vanish from the face of the Earth. She'd been horribly beaten and was afraid that next time she wouldn't survive, and neither would her loved ones. But now, for reasons unknown, someone has framed her former business partner/fiancé for her murder. It's clearly a trap set for her, but the only way to prove his innocence is to prove that she's still alive.

 

Even though Till knows the tricks he taught her to disappear, he doesn't know how she applied his lessons or where she might have gone. It takes some ingenuity, tenacity and luck, but he eventually does. It then takes a lot more of the same to get her back to LA to demonstrate that she habeas her own corpus.

 

Meanwhile, Paul and Sylvie Turner, ballroom dancing aficionados and professional killers, perpetrated the frame and are on Till's trail as he looks for Wendy (or whatever her name is now). They flirt, bicker and kill their way across California and beyond in their efforts kill Wendy.

 

The narration jumps between the perspectives of Till, Paul and Sylvie for most of the book -- with a little bit of Wendy's and, eventually, the man who hired the Turners. Perry makes some interesting choices about whose perspective we see some events through, giving us Till when you'd expect a Turner (and vice versa). Not only do we see the current action from their perspectives, we get a pretty detailed backstory for Till, the Turners and their boss -- interestingly, almost everything we learn about Wendy, we learn from her disclosures to TIll, so we only see her from his point of view.

 

I really got into the story, and found the Turners pretty interesting -- ditto for Till. The focus was on the Turners enough that if you told me that Perry'd written a sequel about them, I'd believe it (he did write one about Till). I never managed to get as invested in the backstory (or the current-story) about the man who hired the Turners. There's some good twists, some smart reveals, and just good action moments.

 

I found the dialogue stiff, awkward and occasionally painful -- the interior monologues of the various POV characters could also grate my nerves. I'm honestly not certain if that's Perry's issue or Kramer's. Thankfully, the story was strong enough that I could put up with the problems I had.

 

Kramer's got a huge list of credits, and is clearly beloved by many. But man . . . I found him tolerable at best, and frequently annoying. There's a lot of problems that I had with the book that I'm attributing to his narration -- I may be wrong about that, but I think if I'd been reading the book, I'd have overlooked and/or not had many of the problems that I did.

 

A strong story, with enough tense moments to satisfy any thriller reader, Silence is something to try, but probably only in text-form.

A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab,Mic... After finishing the first book in the Shades of Magic, A Darker Shade of Magic, I jumped right into this one. As mentioned before, I loved the characters and this one not only introduced a few new ones, but let us see some more of my favorite second tier characters.

*Some spoilers for the first book, and maybe a small one for this book*

Kell and Lilah are still the main characters and we learn early on that Holland survived his time in Black London and has returned to White London. He continues to be our main protagonist, along with the being that was inside the black stone and who we definitely get to know much better. This time, though, Rhy is much more interesting as he attempts to come out of the shadow of the spell Kell had cast to save hime. Kell, on the other hand, is not for much of the story out of concern for what his own risks could cause to the crown. The king and queen mostly annoyed me but their responses to the whole crisis between this book and the last is well founded and I would have done the same as a parent fully knowing and not caring that I was annoying the crap out of everyone who was just trying to live their lives.

Lilah gets much more interesting here, though. She isn't so much paired with Kell in her adventures anymore, but with a new character Alucard Emery. I love him too. He's a bit of a scoundrel but in a very Rhett Butler kind of way that I've always loved. I don't want to give away too much of his involvement in the story, as I had gone in not knowing much more than that beautiful title and the events of the last book. I will say, though, that he is much more fun than Kell had been in even the first book and gives Kell a run for his money in ways not necessarily associated with Lilah.

I also loved that there continued to not so much be a love triangle or love story of any significant sort in these books. There's plenty of making out, but nothing that distracts from the actual plot. I can't possibly express how much I miss reading books with no romantic subplots. Aside from that, there are plenty of loyalties forming and testing in this one that does propel the story in a similar fashion that a romantic subplot does.

Again, the world building is spectacular. We do get to see a little more of it as Lilah has traveled some by the beginning and we get to meet newcomers from other places for the Elemental Games that the plot surrounds. It's not so much about the Games as what happens when the Games are in town, if that makes sense. The Games themselves are quite a bit like the Olympics here rather than the Triwizard Tournament of Harry Potter or the Hunger Games.

This was an even better listen than my initial read of this two years ago. This book was extraordinary in audiobook format with a perfect narrator for the material as presented. Moving directly on to the next book in the series.

If you you enjoy fantasy stories in any of the many iterations available, you should jump right into this series as this one is stellar!!!

This was an even better listen than my initial read of this two years ago. This book was extraordinary in audiobook format with a perfect narrator for the material as presented. Moving directly on to the next book in the series.

If you you enjoy fantasy stories in any of the many iterations available, you should jump right into this series as this one is stellar!!!

So I'm maybe 45% of the way through this book (a re-read for me) in audible and I've finally gotten to the 2nd narrator. The female narrator isn't as good as the male but she isn't bad. I think it will just take some getting used to. Hoping though that Michael Kramer (I think that's his name) will come back, his voice is amazing.