Wild Card

By: Lisa Shearin

Narrated by: Eileen Stevens

Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

My name is Raine Benares. I'm a seeker, a finder of things lost and people missing. I've never had to do both in one day, or had this many lives at stake - including mine. The search for a missing ring leads me to the abduction of eight magically gifted children. Their souls were stolen while they slept, and unless I find those souls by sunrise, their bodies will die.

Both cases have one thing in common - they're linked to a goblin secret society high-stakes poker game, whose members are practitioners of the blackest of black magic. As a seeker, I can track those captured children's souls, but to spring them will take magic I haven't got.

That's where Tamnais Nathrach comes in. He's the seductive embodiment of sin itself. He's also a goblin dark mage with an even darker past, the owner of the city's most notorious casino - and the only person with magic enough to reach the kids in time. Why are the most dangerous predators the most beautiful? The stakes are high; the odds of success are low. And I'm betting with my life - a life I'll have to trust to a darkly tempting goblin mage I just met.

©2014 Lisa Shearin (P)2015 Audible Inc.

enjoyable

performance was fine but average. story was excellent as is the rest of the series.

Happy I found this new (to me) series!

Not long ago I found Lisa Shearin through her SPI Files series books, The Grendel Affair and The Dragon Conspiracy. I enjoyed those books greatly, so nosed around to see if I thought I would like any of her other books as well. It made sense – if you like one series, you will in all likelihood enjoy the author’s other work as well. Looking at Lisa’s page on Goodreads, I noted that the first novella of the Raine Benares series, Wild Card (Raine Benares .05) was available, and was the perfect way to begin, especially as the audio is only $5.95. Besides, I like Eileen Stevens, the narrator, so I downloaded it from Audible to give the series a try.

I wasn’t disappointed. I like Raine. She is strong, though not overpoweringly so. While she is a magical elf, her magic isn’t of the “Blow them all up” type. Rather, she is a Seeker – she finds missing items, missing people, that sort of thing. Now, she has been asked to find the stolen jewels belonging to Lady Kaharit (listening on Audible means you can’t always know how things are spelled!) a high standing Goblin lady. Of course, who she is to steal them from is scary in its own right – and it leads to even scarier things very quickly.

Magic Lost, Trouble Found (Raine Benares 1) is playing on my tablet now! Oh, and the third in the SPI Series, The Brimstone Deception, is due out January 26, 2016 (Soooo Long!! :-() but I already have it on my “must have” list.

Better than expected

Not great, but this very short work was better than most of the "only from Audible" novellas I've listened to lately.

Great Introduction To The Series

After reading and liking her SPI Files series, I thought I’d give Lisa Shearin’s Raine Benares series a try. I started with the audio of "Wild Card", a prequel story to the series.

"Wild Card" is a quick adventure story about Raine, her criminal cousin Phaelan, and a seductively handsome goblin mage, Tamnais Nathrach, saving the souls of children being used as chips in a high-stakes poker game. This story gives me a little background about Raine and her family as well as the world she inhabits.

The narrator, Eileen Stevens, does a pretty good job with the voices. I haven’t listened to Stevens before, but her voice is good. I might look into speeding up the narrative just a bit, though.

I both read and listened to this story. Reading it didn’t do much for me (but admittedly, I was sick at the time and possibly not focusing well), but the audio did much more. I like not having to worry about how to pronounce the names when I listen to the audio – a benefit I hadn’t thought of before.

Overall, I think I will listen to the Raine Benares series rather than reading it, and I’m looking forward it.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥