Jane Carver of Waar [Soundtrack Edition]

By: Nathan Long

Narrated by: Dina Pearlman

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

This version of Jane Carver of Waar features a soundtrack that includes music and sound effects designed to enhance the listening experience. We will send you a survey in the next few weeks to ask for your feedback on this version. Your feedback will be very helpful and is much appreciated.

Jane Carver is nobody's idea of a space princess. A hard-ridin', hard-lovin' biker chick and ex-Airborne Ranger, Jane is as surprised as anyone else when, on the run from the law, she ducks into the wrong cave at the wrong time - and wakes up butt-naked on an exotic alien planet light-years away from everything she's ever known. Waar is a savage world of four-armed tiger men, sky pirates, slaves, gladiators, and purple-skinned warriors in thrall to a bloodthirsty code of honor and chivalry. Caught up in a disgraced nobleman's quest to win back the hand of a sexy alien princess, Jane encounters bizarre wonders and dangers unlike anything she ever ran into back home. Then again, Waar has never seen anyone like Jane before.

Both a loving tribute and a scathing parody of the swashbuckling space fantasies of yore, Jane Carver of Waar introduces an unforgettable new science-fiction heroine. Nathan Long is a screen and prose writer with two movies, a Saturday-morning adventure series, and several TV episodes to his name. His official website is www.sabrepunk.com.

©2012 Nathan Long (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Conan-esque raunchy adventure

A raucous adventure from a first person female point of view. Fun and sometimes over the top, the writing is engaging, raw and raunchy. The reader is excellent at maintaining our biker-girl hero's toughness and passion. The sound effects were distracting in that they did not match the expectation of my imagination, but the reader was good enough to overcome them.

Great listen!!!!

I really enjoyed this book. It was very, very funny. I bought the next book before I finished listening

Biker Chick does Alice in Wonderland

But Wonderland is more like Mad Max and Thunderdome. So a nice gal on a Harley chopper goes down the hole and crawls into an alternative reality of primitive medievals. Lots of action and sword fighting. The author pushes so close to comedy it's great. I had to laugh out loud a few times. So Action and characters and tongue in cheek. Good Listen

Excellent

It was an amazing and wonderful sci-fi book, from start to finish. I hope she made it back.

Why this?

We received this book free for review as part of Audible's venture into what they're calling "soundtrack" books. It seems a strange choice if they're trying to appeal to a wide audience. This book is essentially a spoof, parody, or homage (depending on how you choose to read it-I felt parody, my wife felt homage) of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books. There is an attempt at a feminist? point of view with the heroine being female, but Long is not a deep thinker. He only gestures towards thinking about slavery, gender based power structures and other socially structured forms of dominance and privilege. This book stays firmly in the space of pulp fiction. This is not philosophical thinking in the guise of speculative science fiction. It's meant to be fun not challenging. Is it? Meh. If you haven't read Burroughs, go there instead. If you've exhausted the pulp cannon and crave more, perhaps this is just the thing, but how many of those are there?

As for the added value of the soundtrack experience, I don't hear it. Literally the soundtrack is so faint it's really not contributing, even when headphone listening. What I did hear and notice seemed borrowed and stock sound files, not particularly well matched to the text. The quality of the experience rests solely on the reader, and she's adequate, not great. Compared to the partial cast recording of the Dune books, this pales. But I'm sure those were much more expensive productions.

Great fun audible production

This book was so much fun, with its swashbuckling imagination. The narrator was perfect in her pitch and attitude. The sound effects and music never interfered yet added immensely to the whole package. I have nothing to complain about. My friend and I made evenings out of listening and ripped thru the audio book in three days without it ever feeling long winded or drawn out. I look forward to the sequel. This review is my first honest to goodness 5 star plus. I just wish we were still in the middle of the tale.

Sailor's delight

Enjoyed listening. The background noises were distracting. Definately not one to listen to with kids in the car. At first I wasn't sure I could finish, but glad I did. This book is more of an acquired taste. It was very rude and crude at times.

Not bad

This story was fairly interesting and flowed well. The narrator was excellent. A lot of people didn't like the cussing but it suited the character's attitude. I thought it was not too bad except for in a couple of places. Jane was meant to be humorous and an "I don't care" biker chick.

This author must be a "Firefly" fan. The dialogue often reminded me of that show.


Sound effects:
-This book is pretty light hearted. During the fight scenes, the music was just too ominous and made it corny.
- I normally hate music inserted into audiobooks. It is usually jarring, too loud, and pointless. I was pleasantly surprised at how low key the music and sound effects were in this story. It did not interfere at all. I don't know that the effects added all that much to the story, but it didn't ruin the experience.
- If I could change one thing it would be to delete the long silences between chapters. I kept thinking that the story had gotten turned off. Bravo for not putting music between chapters though.

Doesn't stand out particularly in either direction

Would you try another book from Nathan Long and/or Dina Pearlman?

I probably wouldn't namely because I think that my odds of finding something remarkable would be better if I sought something new.

Any additional comments?

The story is definitely done in the classic adventure mold with strong references to "Princess of Mars" (at least that portion of the book that I've read). There are some standout scenes and clever turns (that in retrospect I should have seen coming). It kept me entertained.

There are some downsides though. One is the constant theme of society's double standard with how it regards identical behavior from men and women. I feel that it would have been more effective to use it once or twice. The other is the soundtrack. It is fortunately mostly absent, but I feel that it largely doesn't help when it appears. Conversely, sound-effects were used much more liberally and with more refinement and customization could have been something. I think the sound-effects were unfortunately limited to a set sound library though.

Not my genre but liked the attempt at soundtrack

The background music and sound effects were unfortunately too soft compared to the voice. So I couldn't get the most out of it.