By Stone, by Blade, by Fire

Barbara Holloway and her team are challenged again. Carrington MacDuffie does an outstanding job narrating this book. Don't miss it. Get ready to listen and stay listening because it is hard to stop till you get to the end.

Kate Wilhelm has done a great job on keeping the Barbara Holloway series alive. Looking forward to the next one.

If I haven't listened to books by an author recently and download a new one, I typically go back and re-listen to all of them in order adding the latest one at the end. Having done that, I was SO very disappointed with this book. If you took all of her liberal rants out of the book, I'm quite sure you'd have a short story. Perhaps if I shared her beliefs, I wouldn't find them so objectionable, but I don't and I really don't care what she thinks about global warming or any of the other half a dozen views she sprinkles liberally throughout the book. I listen to books to be entertained, intriqued, and even amused NOT to listen to the writers political views. And she does so as if it were facts that we all know and believe. Anyway, should there be another Wilhelm novel, I for one will avoid it. I think Ms. Wilhelm ran out of anything to write about 2 or 3 novels ago.

My major disappointment is that Carrington MacDuffie uses a terribly dull voice for the central character. The central character ends up sounding like a peevish, irritating helpless old woman.

Although I was intrigued by the plot line, I decided to stop listening and borrow the book from the library.

I am a huge Kate Wilhelm fan and have listened to every Barbara Holloway novel. That's why this one was such a huge disappointment. Both the author and the narrator seem to have run out of gas. The plot was boring and the characters were so underderdeveloped that it was difficult to care about the outcome. I really struggled to get to the end. If you have not experienced this author before, skip this one and go for the earlier books.