Ashley

Three short entries that detail lost files from the Torchwood archive. The Devil and Mrs. Carew is pretty standard for Torchwood and entertaining, Submission is forgettable, but the real star is The House of the Dead.

The House of the Dead is the last entry in the trio - and this is important the timing of the story is cleverly done and works nicely - it details Gwen, Ianto and Jack's attempts to stop a seance at the oldest pub in Wales and prevent the ascension of a terrible ancient force.

Fans of Jack and Ianto will NOT want to miss this entry.

This too follows the adventures of showbiz personnel and their adventures with employment. This seems to have more production value than the first though that may be more of a strength than a weakness as part of the charm of the original was its off the cuff visceral presentation. All in all an entertaining and charming series of tales.

presentation of several performers and their various firings. Some justified all amusing. A quick fast paced listen sure to elicit some chuckles the material ranges from the dry to the raunchy but all is quite entertaining. If you enjoy this seek out it's somewhat more staged and produced sequel

As the savvy reader may suspect this work revolves around whether or not one man spoke to another in the midst of war and passed on a warning.

A taught interesting discussion between two giants of history and science debates the morals of necessity and war and the foibles of memory.

Well worth the price of admission with excellent nuanced performances by all parties.

Three characters, Nancy, a mother struggling with the unexplained disappearance of her ten year old daughter, Ralph a loner and monster, and Agnetha Godsdottir, a scientist trying to find an answer.

The opening is jarring and confusing, possibly intentionally. The use of a mic effect for some of Dr. Godsdottir's scenes is useful in that it grounds the location and audience of the passages. While Agnetha's scenes sometimes jar and we're treated to more of her personal life and the wreckage thereof than is strictly useful or interesting the character is made more human for it. Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Touching Evil etc) is masterful as Ralph managing the vocalizations and accent beautifully. He's quite a vocal chameleon.

The theme of being frozen and in a way thawed runs throughout the play.

Nancy, the mother frozen in time by the loss of her daughter is crushed and freed by finding her.

While Godsdottir is caught like a bug in amber warring with grief and guilt in her personal life away from the horrors she is steeped in daily in her professional life.

And Ralph, emotionally frozen and separate from the rest of humanity be default earns no favors when his thaw comes.

This is in no way clean or light or easy fare and at the end there aren't even any heroes or villains there's just people and baggage and that's the point.

Well worth a credit though due to length I would recommend an outright purchase. You won't be disappointed.

That said the presentation is well done and I enjoyed it, however, the narration was well done until it came to ANY dialogue between the main characters (all children) at which point the narrator chose the obnoxious tactic of making his voice soft, squeaky, or soft and squeaky to differentiate between them. The most obnoxious of these was for the only young female character, Cordelia Cook. Her voice is described as a monotone in the book and not only is it not a monotone but the squeaky nature of the reading of her dialogue is almost unbearable at times.

This is one of my favorite books and I read my copy until the cover fell apart so I'm willing to concede that I may be biased to some degree however the irritating vocal choices bothered me so much that I found I had to force myself to finish the book.

Listen to the preview before buying.

Suzie Costello's character but not really a Torchwood book. That is to say Torchwood is offstage in most of the work. An interesting listen for long time fans and any fans of the character. Additionally the narration is quite good and I would enjoy finding more works read by Indira Varma I just felt as though it were trying quite hard to be a TW book but not quite making it.

Kathy Bates' narration makes me forgive this for being an abridged work. I didn't realize it was abridged when I bought it and likely would not have bothered if I had. I am glad I made the error.

Aside from being abridged this is not one of King's stronger works but is clearly King and strong enough when not compared against some of his greater works. It deals with the familiar themes of good vs. mindless evil though in this case it is more clearly a case of a god touched child (a la The Shining) vs. that evil than some of his other works.

What elevates this is the excellent use of music and chilling sound FX coupled with Kathy Bates' masterful narration. If you're a King fan and haven't experienced this title before you could do far worse than spending roughly eight hours with these characters and Bates' deft narration.

A solid and engrossing though slow moving tale of one hardened woman's journey through her life on Little Tall Island is brought to life both by King's familiar allure and deft handling of characterizations but in this case most especially by the skilled and nuanced narration. Certainly worth a credit!

He does a solid job but after 12 books with James Marsters there's just no going back. The writing, per usual, is sharp and complex still able to surprise and amuse long time fans but...it's not Dresden. Everything is there but Glover's interpretation of Dresden - while not far off - is, inevitably, not Marsters' and unfortunately that detracts from the punch and feel of the story.

I'm not sure what the schedule conflict was that kept Marsters from recording this or indeed if there was a conflict (assuming that wasn't the PC explanation for other issues) but I doubt I'll be picking up any more audio works in the Dresden 'verse sans Marsters. I'll just pick up the actual book from now on.

If you don't mind the learning curve and, like me, don't really have the time to sit down and read the book then this is a helluva lot better than nothing. But the dry sardonic delivery of Marsters is gone and Glover's reading is expert and well done but just not nearly the same.