The Sisters Arcana

By: Ken Janssens

Narrated by: Zidge Gray

Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Children from the town of Patterson, Oregon are disappearing. And it does not appear to be ending anytime soon. Until two sisters rise to the challenge of the bizarre mystery.

Pro Se Productions presents The Sisters Arcana by Ken Janssens. The latest entry in Pro Se's YoungPulp! imprint is an eerie adventure novel about the ties that bind and bend in a family of passionate people, and the mysteries a person can uncover if they just choose to believe.

A friendless science geek and a feisty sci-fi fanatic, Rowan and Nova are cut from a different bit of cloth. They don't always get along, but they may be the only ones with enough guts and smarts to save their missing classmates from something straight out of Nova's imagination. All they need is the right motivation. And to not disappear themselves.

Equal parts adventure and mystery, The Sisters Arcana invites listeners into a world where nothing is as it seems at first glance and strength is found when and where least expected. An adventure for all ages - The Sisters Arcana by Ken Janssens from Pro Se Productions.

©2014 Ken Janssens (P)2017 RadioArchives.com

Not really sci fi

This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com.

There's a problem with the narration. It sounds artificially slow, so you have to speed it up. Once you get that working, it sounds more normal. this is probably the first story i heard with alternating perspectives which didn't involve romance between the two. We hear the story from the two sisters. The narrator distinguishes between them by using a smaller voice for the younger girl. I thought the narrator sounds somewhat robotic, not reflecting excitement and fear of the children. She didn't really do accents for the minor accented characters Justin and his family.

Nova and Rowan are the two main characters. For much of the story, Rowan just deals with normal teen problems: lack of trust, crush on a boy, and sibling rivalry. Nova, the younger of the pair, is far more adventurous. She's consumed by the thought of finding aliens. When she comes across a creature she can't identify, she races on to find it again. When her best friend Sammy goes missing, nothing stops her. She breaks into houses, sneaks out of the house, ambushes (and mildly torture) another kid. She does eventually find the creature, but it's not quite what she thought it was.

I do think the story could have been told better in third person, or perhaps from Nova's point of view. But I didn't think the story was disjointed because of the alternating perspectives. Nova was more intense than I expected for a pre-teen, breaking the law and hurting people to get what she wanted. That's something I didn't really see so much in stories like the boxcar children. The story is tagged as sci-fi, but I think everyone reading it will be skeptical of the "alien". I'd put this much more on par with the boxcar children than a sci fi story.

Story drags on, too slowly

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Faster narration, for starters. The narration is so slow in this book that I had to listen to this book at 1.7x speed. And even then, the story seemed to go on and on and on and I was bored to death.

I feel like there wasn't enough content to make it as large a book as it is. There are quite a few repetitive elements.

The PoV jump from person to person in every chapter makes it worse. Right when I'm starting to understand and connect with a character, a different character's PoV starts and I'm thrown off balance. This happens throughout the book.

All in all, the book needs better editing to trim unnecessary parts, better organization of the story flow and faster narration.

Has The Sisters Arcana turned you off from other books in this genre?

I should save this paragraph in my text-expander app and paste it every time Audible asks me this stupid question -

No. No one book can turn off the reader from an entire genre.

What three words best describe Zidge Gray’s voice?

Slow. Clear. Sleep-inducing.

Any additional comments?

I received this audiobook for free from the author / narrator / publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

Fascinating story for all ages!

This story is perfect for a family vacation travelling by car. The plot and characters are entertaining. I wasn't fond of the narrator as many times she sounded mechanical but did get better with the progression of the story.

Nova is a young lady with a wild imagination and when Sammy goes missing she takes on the act of figuring out what happened and is encountered by a plethora of problems that prevent her from solving the mystery, including her sister Rowan. Rowan is a typical teen whose main concern in life is Mitchell the boy she has a massive crush on. When he goes missing to she jumps into action becoming her sister's accomplice.

There's plenty of action and suspense along with aliens and other strange characters to keep the story moving along.

I received this book free i exchange for an honest review..

This was read far too slowly

I normally wouldn't leave a review for a book that I haven't finished, and one that don't intend to come back to, but I received this title for free in exchange for an unbiased review, so here goes.

This book had caught my eye because I thought it would be a good one to listen with my 13 year old daughter on our 20 minute drive her to school every morning. The story is definitely targeted towards teenage girls. I can't really say much about the story beyond that, since I did not finish it. I will say that it wasn't the story that caused me to stop listening.

What stopped me was the fact that the narrator read the book very, very S L O W L Y. I found myself nodding off when listening to it, which is a very dangerous thing when you're driving. My daughter got impatient with the narrator and purchased the book and read it on her kindle. I just stopped listening.

For what its worth, my daughter says the book was pretty good.

A delightful story

it is probably best to start by saying this book was probably not for me. But I listened to it to the end and am glad I did. the payouts were awesome!

While I think the narratir did a good job, and much better than I ecet could, there was one thing that bothered me. she paced her naration a bit slow and slowed it down more so for certain characters and while ai understand why she did, it still didnt work for me. I listened to most of the book at 2x the speed to overcome this.

I do recomend this book for those who it was intended for and I will be checking out the next one.


I was given a free copy of the book in exchange forna fair and honest review via audiobookboom dot com.

sloooooooowwwwww and disjointed

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Wow, even speeding up the narration, this was book was a complete drag. Each chapter jumps from one character to another so you never get into their story long enough to actually be engaged. At 13 hours, I just couldn't finish it. I was so bored and un-engaged I stopped it halfway through. I couldn't drum up enough interest to continue.

Horrid narration

I have to be totally honest, I spent so much time trying to adjust the speed of the playback that I am not really sure what the book is about. After listening for 5 hours I had to draw the line for how much of my time I'd give this audiobook. The narrator reads like a child reading a Dick and Jane book. It was excruciatingly slow. After a few hours of listening I gave up. I can't give a fair star rating so I went with 3.

I was given a free copy of the audiobook for my honest review, and I wish I could actually review the book, but as I said, the narration was terrible and I couldn't suffer any longer.

Um, yeah ... It was okay ...

What did you like best about The Sisters Arcana? What did you like least?
Nothig pops out as a peak or valley. It was okay and similar to the flat plains - it went on f o r e v e r

Would you be willing to try another book from Ken Janssens? Why or why not?
I'm not sure.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?
Only when I increased the speed to 1.5

Could you see The Sisters Arcana being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
No

Any additional comments?
Who watches time as much as these characters?
"A minute later" "half a minute", "forty minutes". If I got a penny for each time "minute" was written ... Wait a minute (figuratively speaking)- rather, if each "minute" was deleted, I think the book would be 1/10th shorter (yup, easily shave nearly an hour off the listening time!)
Normally, this comes from too much telling and not showing. Too many tedious details which clogged the story and prolonged it.
Since no one has cell phones, I'm kind of curious when this story actually took place. Then again, there was waaay too much time spent on the caller id on the land line phone, too.
Overall, I think the multiple first person POV made the story drag. Again, it would be shorter and tighter if it was written third person. The alternating first person POV created a very choppy and distorted tale.
Dialogues, in general, didn't felt forced and awkward. Just strange and awkward.
I did like the originality of the plot idea. I do think the bones of the story is intriguing. I hope another edition will be forthcoming and more satisfying.
The family relationships were refreshing and grew with the story. It was the pleasant light that kept me listening to the book.
The narrator did speak very slowly and I had to change the speed to 1.5 to keep my attention. She did speak well and clearly and has a very nice voice.
Would I recommend the audiobook? Definitely not. Perhaps the book, so pages could be skimmed or skipped. I did not enjoy the book as much as I had anticipated, but it wasn't a clear waste of time; more like time not •very• well spent.

"I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

Action and Suspense

Two sisters Rowan and Nora are attempting to find their classmates who have disappeared. They are facing a real mystery. There is lots of action and suspense and surprises at the end. The narrator did a great job changing voices.

A fun little mystery

The Sisters Rowan and Nova set out to solve the mystery of their disappearing classmates. An enjoyable book that reminds me of the innocence and action of a Nancy Drew book but with a modern twist. I found the narration enjoyable and it was read with emotion and care. I think some readers might nor be aware that you can adjust the speed of the narrator either faster or slower, as you prefer. In this case, I found that the narration was a little slow for my listening pace, so I sped it up to 115% rather than complaining about the pace of the reader! I received this book in exchange for an honest review..