Indexing

Indexing, Book 1

By: Seanan McGuire

Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal

Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

"Never underestimate the power of a good story."

Good advice…especially when a story can kill you.

For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected - perhaps infected is a better word - by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.

That's where the ATI Management Bureau steps in, an organization tasked with protecting the world from fairy tales, even while most of their agents are struggling to keep their own fantastic archetypes from taking over their lives. When you're dealing with storybook narratives in the real world, it doesn't matter if you're Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or the Wicked Queen: no one gets a happily ever after.

Indexing is New York Times best-selling author Seanan McGuire’s new urban fantasy where everything you thought you knew about fairy tales gets turned on its head.

©2013 Seanan McGuire (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

very interesting

the story was addicting, it was difficult to stop at times. the world the writer built was creative and elaborate.

Lost in a Good Fairy Tale

Fans of Jasper Fforde's novels and fairly tales would like this.

It's a reasonably interesting novel with some quirky characters and interesting plot devices. The narration is fairly well done, and the story is interesting enough.

Is it great? No, but it's fairly good. This is in the category of light fantasy summer reading.

It's about fairy tale archetypes which occur in real life and the squad of characters hired to stop the stories from taking over and having dire consequences. The main protagonist is a Snow White character who ends up getting pulled inside her own story.

As I say, if you like Jasper Fforde's work, then this is right up your alley.

Interesting twist on fairy tales

I just loved this book! It was original and had a great narrative voice which suited it well to audiobook format. Mary Robinette Kowal does a great job narrating. Though I wasn't a fan of her male voices, she did a fantastic job with the female ones, particularly the two main characters of Henry and Sloane.

Fairy tales must be the "in thing" as I have seen lots of books lately playing off this genre (not to mention the TV shows). This book puts an interesting twist on fairy tales which makes it even more enjoyable than your standard fare. The cast of characters is great. I especially love Henry (a Snow White) and Sloane (a wicked stepsister). The interplay between these two had me chuckling.

I'm not sure if the author has plans to write more books for these characters but I hope she does. This one was very entertaining. I highly recommend it!

Fun and thoroughly enjoyable audio book

This was one of the books that I looked forward to while driving -- it kept my interest and was fun. (Sometimes I start a book that sounded really great in the description, but is just so-so, and really a pain to get through.) Usually I just go along for the ride as far as the narrator goes, I don't pay much attention to whether they are good or bad, unless they are awful. A few have gotten through my consciousness as being very good, an addition to the experience, but this is the first time I really stopped to think about how much talent it takes to do this job well. Mary Robinette Kowal has unparalleled talent: how do you make it clear who is speaking when all the audience gets is voice? Ms Kowal changes personalities on the fly using just her voice, and it has never been clearer who is speaking; this has always been a problem at times with even the best narrators, but with Ms Kowal you can "see" who is talking because the personality conveyed is so different in each case.

The difference between the two main female characters is so startling, it is fast and entertaining, and the "bad girl", Sloan was so bad and cool, I have been secretly wishing I could have the choice of using her voice and personality for my Amazon Echo. Well, sometimes -- she cusses a lot, but somehow it suits her. (Amazon chose very, very well the voice/personality it uses for the Echo, but maybe someday, we can choose others for variety.)

I saw the second book in the series is at a low price for members; I couldn't believe it -- I can afford to buy it without using my credits. It is mine now!

Don't give up

Originally I disliked this book. The character that annoyed me the most turned out to be the one I liked the best. Sloan is type of person that you hate right away, and that's ok because of her story that's how she comes off. She begins to grow on you and I am able to live vicariously through her thinking of how it would be to just say what comes to mind at work. LOL. She turns out to be my favorite character. There is a lot of repetition in the white as snow, black as night, red as blood and it gets tiresome. I would enjoy a series just about Sloan.

Fun with delightful quirks and twists

I liked the concept and found that it really came to life with this narrator shifting the voices of characters depending on their mood and relationship with "the Narrative." This was also the first of Seanan McGuire's books that's held me all the way to the end I'm a page turning fashion and I think that's because from the start there are interesting questions on the table and unexpected answers popping up. I also appreciate the easy and logical integration of a fully diverse cast of characters, including people of color and LGBTQ folks. I will definitely be picking up the sequel! :)

Fairy Tail meets the FBI

I really enjoyed this book. I am kind of hoping Seanan continues it and makes it into a series. Sloan is a great character. It is fun to have a character that can be mean and evil and yet still may have a good heart. Plus some of the put downs she uses for Henry are just frickin funny (and really mean sometimes). Henry herself is interesting because at first you don't really see the Snow White connection (other than the looks), but as the book continues she has to decide who she really is Henry or Snow White.

The whole premises of the story was interesting and not the same old same old. Fairy tails waning to be played out over and over. When reading fairy tales you never think of all the other people that get sucked into them. Sleeping beauty is a really good example of it. One person causing everyone else's lives to come to a stand still. I will admit that in the begging all of the codes for the different fairy tails can be a little confusing. Just stick with it though because Seanan does actually explain everything.

One other thing that should be noted is that this was originally a Kindle e-serial. It can make the flow of the story a little choppy. I do not feel like this took anything away from the story though Just keep it in mind.

Really enjoyable return to form

Where does Indexing rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Up there among the top 30

What was one of the most memorable moments of Indexing?

Pretty much any moment involving Sloane

Any additional comments?

This is just an enjoyable book.

A fun premise

You can certainly tell that this was a serial at some point because it is broken up into smaller bite sized listens. I found I could listen to it very easily on 20 minute drive to work without being too wrapped up to go in and you know...do my job. There is an overarching narrative that is continued in the sequel. There are multiple shorter narratives with our little group of fairy tale FBI agents to resolve that make up the bite sized stories of the serial.

I like the world that is created here (enough so that I'm already listening to the second audiobook). Whispersync is a beautiful thing and at $1.99 there really wasn't a reason for me not to give this a try.

I found the performance of the narrator to be great. There were one or two voices that I didn't like, but nothing that made me quit listening.

The main character Henry gets the most development, but I'll be interested to see how the development goes in the next book.

Fairy tales meet Police Procedural

I read this book before i listened to it. I really liked it the first time around. Unfortunately the audio performance was... problematic in some non-trivial ways. The first was the voicing of Sloan's character. She's pretty prominent in the story but the voice actor chose to make her sound like an annoyed 90's Valley Girl. Even when the text was specifically "she deadpanned" it still came out as annoyed valley girl. The second was a character who is repeatedly referred to as The Nova Scotia Woman with a Nova Scotia accent, but she is presented with a strong Irish accent. I don't recall folks in Nova Scotia having strong Irish accents when I was there. The third is that when Henry's story is starting to overpower her, attempting to turn her into a full Snow White, she starts talking in what I suspect is supposed to be an innocent storybook voice but it comes across as the sacchariney way some people talk to babies. For me this _really_ knocked me out of the story at critical moments.

Mary's male voices we pretty good but they did feel like they blended together a bit at some times. She's a decent voice actor, I just have issues with some of the specific choices made for this book.

In the end the problems weren't bad enough that i stopped early, and I'll listen to the second book. The story itself was good enough that I enjoyed it the second time through even with the problematic voices.