Elizabeth

The way characters frequently held conversations that should have been confidential in loud voices in public places really stretched credulity--that's a lot of naive characters!

I'd have made the plot a little less dependent on loose talk.

Character voices/accents are fun.

Stay on earth.

It was still fun to see how it all worked out. I did come to care about the characters and their outcomes, so overall--a success.

This was a one-time listen. Entertaining, but not the kind of thing I'd come back to. YMMV, but if I'd bought the physical book, it wouldn't be a keeper.

I'm sure there'll be a sequel, and I'll probably read it/listen to it, because I'm curious about what happens with Atticus's apprentice.

Luke Daniels also narrated Hearne's HOUNDED. It was equally engaging.

As contemporary fantasy goes, this was pretty good fun. The Celtic mythology is pretty solid, if you care about that kind of thing, so that wasn't annoying.

Love, Chivalry, Tragedy

White manages to gently satirize medieval society (in his alternate history, Uther Pendragon takes the place of William the Conqueror) and 20th century culture (the psychoanalysis of the Questing Beast), while at the same time taking medieval life and human beings quite seriously. I learned a great deal about real medieval hawking, hunting, and chivalry--things Malory takes for granted, as they were part of daily life in his times.

Arthur & Guinevere listening to the stories of the knights' Grail quests.

I always cry when Lancelot does his one last miracle, and of course, at the end. But there are several scenes that made me laugh as well.

The narrator reads clearly and does all the voices very well, including different accents.

The narration by L.J. Ganser was fine. A few clever surprises and characterizations were fun, but the heroines couldn't keep up. I'd like to make allowances for the young Sisters Grimm--they've had a hard life, what with being orphans and surviving a series of rotten foster families, and they're YOUNG, but at some point--at least, if this were a real Grimm's tale--they would stop griping and bickering and get down to business. I've enjoyed many YA fantasies and quite a few for younger readers, but maybe I'm too old for this one. Particularly annoying: the author's tendency to regularize all irregular verbs, and to insert definitions of long or unusual words into character conversations. That's what dictionaries (or even Kindle word look-ups) are for. Allow children to be enterprising. My advice: read the original Grimm tales.

I remembered The Door into Summer as one of my favorite early Heinlein novels--before he started writing the long wacky rants after Stranger in a Strange Land. So I expected to enjoy revisiting it in audio form, and for the most part, I did. The best part, as I recalled, is protagonist Dan Davis's relationship with his cat, whose determination to find a way to a "better" outdoors gives the book its title. Also entertaining: the many near-predictions of 21st century technologies--the book was originally published in 1957 & the story is set in 1972. The narrator was appropriately matter-of-fact.

On the other hand, on this listen, I also heard many hints of the more extreme Heinlein to come--casual sexism combined with "women are superior" that probably didn't make a ripple in the 1950s, a kinda creepy romance (which didn't register a bit when I was much much younger and more innocent), and a lot of "every man a king" libertarian business. Still, a good story, and Heinlein is still one of the century's sci-fi masters. Plus, a man who likes cats can't be all wrong.

One thing I like about Chief Inspector Alleyn is that, unlike today's detectives, he pretty much does things by the book--if you don't count letting that unreasonably discreet journalist hang around--and yet still manages to be rather dashing. Marsh is very much a writer of her time, so don't expect political correctness--stereotypes abound. Nevertheless, one of the pleasures of listening to DEATH IN ECSTASY rather than just reading it to oneself is that reader James Saxon is a master of dialects & accents. These add greatly to the characterization and even enhance a clue here and there.