Norylska Groans

De: Michael R. Fletcher, Clayton W. Snyder

Narrado por: Curt Bonnem

Norylska Groans . . .

with the weight of her crimes. In a city where winter reigns amid the fires of industry and war, soot and snow conspire to conceal centuries of death and deception.

Norylska Groans . . .

and the weight of a leaden sky threatens to crush her people. Katyusha Leonova, desperate to restore her family name, takes a job with Norylska's brutal police force. To support his family, Genndy Antonov finds bloody work with a local crime syndicate.

Norylska Groans . . .

with the weight of her dead. As bodies fall, the two discover a foul truth hidden beneath layers of deception and violence: Come the thaw, what was buried will be revealed.

Contains mature themes.

©2021 Michael R. Fletcher and Clayton W. Snyder (P)2022 Tantor

Great inner dialogue. Great performance

Really liked the pace, the setting, the dialogue. Done good dark humour.
Does get violent (typical fletcher)
Very cinematic

Norylska is a Misandrist

The world and culture are interesting. Very grim and gritty. The plot is pretty good, though is still a bit predictable. Scenes with gore and violence are kind of infrequent, but are descriptive. Most of the characters are pretty well written, EXCEPT for the main two.

One is a big guy, who was supposedly one of the most savage soldiers people had ever seen during a recent war; keen, intelligent, ruthless, unbeatable. Yet, now that he is back in society, he is the meekest person you can imagine. He takes everything lying down, barely attempts to argue, always loses. More importantly, he repeatedly is beaten up by women who are described as diminutive of stature. Keep in mind this is a guy who is supposed to be a hulking giant, like Conan and has killed hundreds or thousands of trained enemy soldiers in hand to hand combat. Yeah.

So, right off the bat we have a character who is basically a treatise on men's inevitable propensity for violence, their uselessness elsewhere and inexplicably, violent misandrist fantasy.

Now the second main character is a woman of diminutive stature. The story starts off with her being forced into a secretary role, then tricked into a different job. She is manipulated by literally every man she encounters in the book. Her boyfriend, her bosses, her peers, her enemies. She manages to repeatedly win fights that she would have no chance of winning in reality (though it can be partially explained away by magic). Without spoilers, her character arc is to become a gurl boss and she does achieve that in very ridiculous ways.

So, the second main character is another treatise. This time one that basically says that all men are irresponsible, abusive, untrustworthy, manipulative, arrogant, selfish, violent and deserve to be dominated. On the female side, it says that all women are secretly gurl bosses. That they are better than men and that because they've been oppressed, indulging in the negative traits that supposedly all men have, is justified. They just need to gather the strength to break free from the patriarchy and then flip the tables.

Even the city itself has a woman's name and has been brought to ruin by men.

Why two men would write something like this, I have no idea. Too bad they had to insert modern politics into the book, because it could have been good otherwise.