Strange Practice

By: Vivian Shaw

Narrated by: Suzannah Hampton

Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Meet Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead.

Dr. Greta Helsing has inherited the family's highly specialized and highly peculiar medical practice. She treats the undead for a host of ills - vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies.

It's a quiet, supernatural-adjacent life until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice - and her life.

©2017 Vivian Shaw (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"In Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice, a charmingly unusual doctor and her charges keep the city of London from grave danger. In the process, they peel back the covers of familiar (and according to them, somewhat 'libelous') stories to find that reality - especially with the undead - is more poignant and complex than it seems at first glance. An excellent adventure." (Fran Wilde, award-winning author of Updraft, Cloudbound, and Horizon)

Please put in noticeable BREAKS!!

This novel is a delight! Truly enjoyed the story as well as all the characters-very intriguing & fun!
The narrator did a fabulous job with one exception- OFTEN I couldn’t tell when the scene CHANGED. The narrator, or more probably the editor, did not put any noticeable pauses/breaks between scenes. Quite literally you would be transported from one dramatic cliff-hanger to a banal scene in one sentence. I was CERTAIN I missed something! No, change of scene. Happened enough to be distracting, which is a shame because the story is very enjoyable & the narrator does an awesome job otherwise!

Listen at reduced speed!

A really enjoyable book. Wonderful world building, a fantasy that feels real. The Characters are the real draw, really interesting and captivating.
I saw reviews about the strange editing and pacing but got the book any way. I began to regret it immediately as the narration was actually as difficult to follow as other reviewers had stated. But reducing the listening speed to .75 fixed most of the problems, and it didn’t sound slow at all. Makes me wonder if they sped it up in post for some reason. Get the book, it’s great. I highly recommend.

Supernaturals being more human

I quite like it when that happens. Stories where characters not human are also not overblown. Vampires and ilk, ghouls and demons - lots of them about in different shades of human. The way they are written about makes them sound almost pedestrian, but in an interesting way. Add to that a female protagonist who is only as silly as everyone is allowed to be. The flow is slightly erratic. My attention sort of waned when there was too much thinking by various entities even during a phase that was evidently raring for a certain pace. The narration by Ms. Hampton is clear and lucid.

Different

Reading a story about kind, sometimes funny, eccentrics monsters vampires and demons was not really my cup of tea. I found the whole theme a bit pretentious. There was also unnecessary profanity that didn't seem to match characters very well.

Good premise, great character, painful slow climax

overall the story was fairly good and I really enjoyed the characters, however the climax was so painfully slow and drawn out that it lost one star for the review. it literally took three chapters for the author to get to the point. I nearly gave up and didn't finish. And then by contrast the ending seemed rushed. Greta, Ruthven and the Ghouls are great characters though. I might consider a sequel.

A fun listen!

It's amazing how a good narrator can lift a book up: Susanna Hampton is such a narrator. She was the ideal narrator for this book!

This book could've been ruined by a less-than-great reader.

truly fantastic

everything about this was exquisite from the writing to the tone of phrase to the creation of characters to world explanation to magical understanding I felt all of the range of emotions with this and at the end of it all Joy

More, please

I am enjoying this storyline, and I really look forward to the next book. The narration is clear and pleasant as well.

Super Well-written and Fun

Susanna Hampton is a treat to listen to and Shaw’s prose is just as engrossing. I am sure that I will be listening to this again in order to make sure I really got everything! Towards the end there is so much interesting detail put into everything that it would be a shame not to.

**SORT-OF SPOILERS AHEAD**
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The only reason that I am giving the book four, instead of five, stars is because the ending mismatched the rest of the story. It seemed like Vivian Shaw was beginning another book (which I wouldn’t be apposed to) and just tacked the first or third chapter of that on to this one. :(

Engaging

Grabbed me from the beginning and kept me enthralled the entire time.
Well developed story and top notch narration.