Humane Killer

By: Diana Gabaldon, Sam Sykes

Narrated by: Jill Tanner

Diana Gabaldon, New York Times best-selling author of the immensely popular Outlander series, teams up with son Samuel Sykes to pen this supremely funny satire on religion, sexism, and power. A decidedly unusual pairing, half-breed sorceress Armecia and her constantly stoned sidekick, Sir Leonard of Savhael, join forces with a cowardly church vassal and a giantess posing as a nun. Their quest? To catch and kill Zeigfried, a fiery - if not too fearsome - dragon.

©2009 Samuel Skyes and Diana Gabaldon (P)2014 Recorded Books

Not for me

Not my cup of tea more fantasy than I usually take read it because of author

Laugh

I had no idea what to expect from this book. What I got was a wonderfully well written, humorous, sometimes grossly detailed, fairy tale styled short story. LOVED IT. The trio made up of the authors and the reader is unsurpassed! Enjoy and be prepared to laugh!!

Not What I Expected But Okay

What made the experience of listening to Humane Killer the most enjoyable?

The narrator was good and made the characters interesting. I don't guess I care for fantasy like this. I bought it because of Diana and her son but it isn't a story type that I like.

Would you recommend Humane Killer to your friends? Why or why not?

No. I think most of my friends would not like it.

Which character – as performed by Jill Tanner – was your favorite?

I liked the sorcerer but really none of the characters grabbed me. I found that it didn't really matter to me what happened to any of them. I was glad to see the dragon didn't die.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Nothing extremely good or bad. I'll try another book by Sam Sykes.

Weird, cute & half-clever

A strange sort of fairytale of Dragons, Knights, stoned Zombies, Giants and Nuns.

(none of those are actually plural)

Sometimes the dialogue is funny and sometimes it’s unclear. Sometimes the action is predictable and sometimes it’s bizarre. As far as the story goes, it’s very confusing when trying to tell the difference between the four main characters, as they seem to resemble each other in their separate partnerships. I think both men and both women are easily muddled.. Perhaps this is partly the fault of the performance, not getting their voices distinctly enough to tell them apart?

One thing the performer definitely did that distracted from the experience as a whole was in the pronunciation of the word “grimace”. Not only did her otherwise perfect British accent draw attention to her extremely irritating mispronunciation of “GriMACE” but it quickly became clear that the word was being overused as well, regardless of how you pronounce it.

In the end, I don’t think I cared much for the characters, except perhaps Nitz (sp?) and of course Siegfried was OK. The authors missed the opportunity to play with the idea of a stoned dragon.

This was a great short story.

As always Diana Gabaladon grabs you right away and keeps you sucked in. These two authors together are nothing short of amazing. Dragon hunting and wayward hero's, what more could you ask for?

I would call this a story snippet

The story was Not bad. The length of it not good. The story could have shed more background on the characters.
At 1st I felt like the narrator was scolding or lecturing me or the characters I'm not sure she was very harsh. I went and sampled some of her other work to see if this is how she always reads stories and with the exception of one she seemed to hold a softer tone. so I'm not sure what was going with that. The narrative got better towards the end.

Not as good as I expected

I had trouble understanding the narrator's speech patterns. Accent also seemed strange. The plot unfolds very slowly with a lot of unnecessary conversation. After enjoying the Highlander series I was very dissapointed.

A short but exciting tale!

A funny little band of strangers become united in a common cause of killing the dragon “zigfreid”.

I was intrigued by the idea of a dragon, but it was really hard to follow

It was hard to follow. I kept getting lost as to which character was which, because it was just four characters all talking to each other, and it was just kind of boring. I expected more action with the dragon. I was expecting a dragon story not a bunch of people thrown together to go on a journey

so funny

reminds me of monthy python. I and going to listen to it again :) Love it!