S. Sackinger

I started reading this book before my eyes started to go, so I was full aware of the text before listening. It is a wonderful tale written by a master story-teller. The characters are immediately recognizable and easy to identify with. The story line is complex, coming to a climax at least three different times in the telling of the story.

All that is what I alread knew. What I didn't know was that the reader was a master at her craft. Each voice was distinctly different and identifiable as if it were really another person speaking the lines. The male protagonist, Dag, is hard for a soprano voice to manage but she does a reasonable job.

Even if you've read this book, you'll enjoy hearing it again as a Twice Told Tale.

Listening to a tale such as this should send shivers up and down your spine. This one sent me to sleep. Repeatedly.

The book failed on several points. First, the primary character spends most of the book in close proximity to a vampire. She recognizes vampires repeatedly, but never suspects her mentor. This is so even though he fits the steriotype better than a drag queen fits the term cross-dresser.
Second, no real progress is made in the story line until the last two chapters. Also, in her first walkabout in Dublin, our heroine spends hours (so it seems) walking the streets in an area chock full of ghosties that would scare the monster-under-the-bed out of it's skivvies. Yet she remains un-harassed. The rest of the book has drivers who get out of their cars being killed in seconds in the same area.

Inconsistencies in a book can often be overcome by the reader, but in this case it only made things worse. The woman who narrated had a vocal range too short to do justice to the male voices. Her attempts at invoking a male presence were valiant, but unsuccessful and her only truly successful accent was the southern belle heroine's.

While the book isn't a stinker, it isn't stuff of legends either. I'd recommend you give it a miss.

Science Fiction has been around for about a century and yet this is the first book that bases a story on a Time Machine only going forward in time. While the scenarios are sometimes a bit odd, and the secondary premise is left unexplained, I still feel this is a book worth reading. Something about the characters stays with you long after the book is back on the shelf.