With the Festive Tasks in full swing, Halloween reads behind me, and the end of the year in sight, I'm turning to seasonal reads. 

 

While Bleak Expectations is obviously a spoof on Dickensian works and themes, and while I am not a fan of Dickens (tho I still want to read A Tale of Two Cities), the programme is brilliant and has had me laughing out loud all morning. There is a stellar cast here who bring out the silly while still keeping the tone in line with what I expect from a Dickensian tragedy.

 

Oh, and Anthony Head - already a firm favourite - playing the arch nemesis is priceless.

 

Created as a radio series in 1982, this humor filled, fast paced, outer space, sci-fi adventure really jazzed up my daily commute. Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe is hired to find out who’s been manipulating the media on the 6-mooned planet Summa Nulla (crossroads of the galaxy, highpoint of nothing), and she’s just the dame for the job. Savvy, tough, and with a well developed sense of irony, none of the weird planetary inhabitants faze her--not the mustachioed informant with tentacle appendages who wants to shake “hands”, not the pun-loving mole creatures who excavate ancient underground cities that keep caving in whenever she’s around, and not the sexy android who sicced slimey genetically engineered assassins on her. Actually Angel Lips (the sexy android) and the slime assassins do exasperate Ruby, but Ruby handles them all with her usual sharp witted determination.

There’s about  three hours of audio story with very cool high-tech sound effects, stunning other-world “visuals”, occasional musical interludes by the Android Sisters, and witty repartee worthy of a movie comedy from the 1930’s-40’s. It’s broken up into 3 or 4 minute sections and there’s sometimes a little repetition of plot points since it was originally broadcast in a serial format, but if you also have to keep your mind on something else--like driving--that’s actually an advantage. The Adventures of Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe and its nine or so sequels(!) are available on the ZBS website and Audible.

The times they are a changing and the changes are quite spectacular! I am so ready for book 4.

The third book in the amazing WVMP series brought so many new aspects to the table, I couldn't put it down! Our favourite Vampire DJs are back and dealing with more trouble than they've faced before. I loved every moment. There's a bit of a time jump between books 2 and 3, and I'll admit I thought I'd missed something at first. I was almost certain there was more to the story than what was in front of me - but that was probably because I wanted to see every detail of Ciara and Shane's life, I didn't want to skip anything. Even with the timeline hiccup, I loved where we jumped into the story. Ciara is in the middle of training for her time with The Control, learning the best way to attack and move around rogue vampires. There's action and sarcastic comments right from the start. I love getting straight into a story with action - can't mess up with a few heart pumping scenes. In the previous books we found out that Ciara has special properties within her blood - a gift, a power or just religious scepticism; either way, her blood has vampire healing potential. But it turns out she's not the only one with special gifts. It makes sense that if one person shows up with a power, there might be others out there who also have a little magic...or a lot. Trouble brews for Ciara and the vampire gang when they discover one of these extra powers is necromancy and suddenly protecting the world from vampires doesn't seem so important, not when the necromancers are raising the dead. You would not believe how thrilled I was at a zombie invasion - and I'm not a big zombie fan. I love when authors don't stick to the basics in their series - I've never come across vampires and zombies in the same book. It was fun and exciting and the mystery of who was raising the zombies and how they could be stopped made it so hard to put the book down. Part of me didn’t expect to learn so much about the vampires so soon. Maybe it’s just me – because I read the series so close together, I still sort of think of the vampires as these mysterious beings, but it shouldn’t have surprised me so much to learn more about them in the third book of a 4 book series. That being said, I loved it! We got to see more of the vampire OCD-ness – how it begins, the reaction to it, its continued effect on the other vamps. We come across sunlight, more holy relics and even learn about the difference between willing donors and ordinary humans! There’s so much to the WVMP vampires and while ‘Bring on the Night’ is not the first book to feature newly turned vampires, we definitely learn more this time around. And of course, our favourite DJ vampires are tied up in all the vampire/human/zombie drama - or adding to the drama. Their tight little group is falling apart at times, mostly through Jim, but he's not the only vampire with issues. It's hard not to get frustrated with a couple of DJs, but you have to love most of them in the end. I can't wait to see what happens next. 5/5 stars