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Audio Review: A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer

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The BluStar pandemic has killed most of the Earth’s population. Nadia and her little brother Rabbit (nickname for Robert) managed to survive thanks to an injection given to them by their Uncle Bean, who somehow knew what was going to happen and had a vaccine available. Their mother, though, never got the shot, and after Nadia and Rabbit watch her die, they pack up the family’s Jeep and head out east, intending to travel to their Pappy’s home, where Uncle Bean mentioned he’d meet them when he saw them last.

They know it’s not going to be an easy trip, but their father – a military man who died a few years ago – taught them how to “be the cockroach” and “survive the effects.” They know how to shoot a gun, how to forage for food and supplies, how to survive without electricity. Rabbit actually read up on survival guides while Nadia was taking care of their dying mother, so he neatly avoids embodying the annoying younger sibling trope. He’s a kid, sure, but he’s also helpful.

The story is very episodic: Nadia and Rabbit travel for a bit, make a stop, run into some trouble (with wildlife, unsavory people, or the environment), survive it, then move on. They’re alone for much of the story, though they do pick up some strays along the way (a dog, a bird, a teenage boy, and a little girl).

The narration, done by Alex McKenna, is a failure. She voices Rabbit like a 60-year-old with a lifetime smoking habit. Nadia doesn’t fare much better, but the problem with her voice (which is the primary one, since this is a first-person story) is where McKenna chooses to place emphasis. More often than not, she’ll overemphasize entire sentences that should have been read neutrally or matter-of-fact. When sentences should be emphasized, the words she chooses to emphasize are strange and don’t carry the meaning she intends. It often made me wrinkle my brow in confusion and brought me out of the story.

Still, the book wasn’t a complete loss. Despite its episodic nature, I found myself fairly engaged, in a “If I miss a bit of this because I’m not fully focused on it, it’s not a big deal” way (great for driving!). There’s no complicated overarching storyline that the listener needs to puzzle out – just a girl and a boy traveling across the country, meeting and overcoming a series of obstacles.

In a way, this reads like a younger version of Ashfall, except with a pandemic instead of a supervolcano. But where Ashfall was frequently harrowing, A Matter of Days is not nearly so dark or filled with tension. There is certainly danger, but it’s not felt very strongly. Most of the story involves the fairly mundane aspects of survival: finding food and fuel, coping with poor hygiene, navigating roads full of stalled vehicles. For the most part, I thought it was nice to read a book without having to constantly worry if a beloved character would be violently murdered (or eaten).

That’s not to say there is no threat of violence. There is, but much of it occurred in the past. Nadia and Rabbit stumble upon a lot of dead bodies, and not all from BluStar. Nadia does have occasion to use her gun, and they run into some people who wish them harm. Where other end-of-the-world survival stories tend to emphasize the violence, though, A Matter of Days tries instead to emphasize the kids’ loss and the other non-violent horrors. Nadia and Rabbit are now orphans, and they’re not even sure Pappy and Uncle Bean will still be alive when they reach their destination. There’s a genuinely heartbreaking moment during a flashback as Nadia cares for her mother on her deathbed. There’s also a lovely moment when Nadia is hiding from a group of violent raiders in a room with a decomposing body and she mentions she tries to swallow her own vomit. Early on in the book, Nadia and Rabbit rescue a dog and have to pick glass out of its paws. There’s not a lot of blood, but there are a lot of moments like these.

This will probably appeal to fans of Ashfall, though hardcore post-apocalyptic readers will likely find it a bit tame for their tastes. (And I’d recommend picking it up in print.) If you’d like to listen to a bit of the book and see if you agree with me about the narration, Random House has an excerpt on their website.

Finished copy received from the publisher. A Matter of Days is available now.

Five Essential Elements for Great Audiobook Narration

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Narration can make or break an audiobook. No matter how excellent the writing, how exciting the story, how deep the characters, if it’s narrated poorly, it makes for a bad listening experience. Below are my top five requirements for great audiobook narration. What other elements do you look for in a satisfying audiobook?
Title links lead to places you can hear excerpts.
1. Authentic Gender Voicing
I tend to favor female narrators, and that has a lot to do with how they voice male characters. For some reason, many male narrators feel like the best way to make their voices sound feminine is to be breathy. Really, really breathy. Like they’ve just run several yards and could use a drink of water. Or like they’re slightly aroused, even. This technique almost always makes the woman sound weak, like she might faint at any moment. I’m listening to Inferno by Dan Brown, and narrator Paul Michael falls into this trap, hard. Female narrators don’t falter as much when voicing characters of the opposite sex. Usually a slight change in pitch is enough. Even if the character doesn’t sound completely male, at least he sounds human and in full control of his faculties.

Example: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling, narrated by Jim Dale
Jim Dale is one of the few male narrators who I think does justice to female voices. His female characters never sound weak unless they’re written that way. I know people are divided with him, particularly on how he voices Hermione, but I love him. All of his characters in the Harry Potter series (and there are hundreds) sound distinct. His Luna is appropriately dreamy without becoming a caricature, and his McGonagall is fierce and a little old and quite stern and just overall wonderful.
2. Voice Variation
I don’t need a fully-voiced audiobook, but I think some differentiation among character voices is essential, even if it’s just a slight change in pitch or tone.
Example: The Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda, narrated by Bruce Mann
Mann wisely chooses not to completely transform his voice for the characters in Chadda’s story. When he voices characters, it’s clear it’s still his own voice, but there’s just enough differentiation between his normal narrating voice and the character to distinguish the character, to make her or him memorable and easily recognizable. I thought his voicing of the rakshasa Parvati was especially good – her voice has just a bit of a hiss to it, and he slows down his speech just a tad for her. My review
3. Authentic Accents
This one is pretty self-explanatory. A bad accent can completely ruin a book, particularly if it’s used frequently. A good accent will pull you even further into the story, adding dimension to both character and setting. Accurate national as well as regional accents are important. People’s ability to judge accuracy varies, but what’s important is that it sounds right to the listener. (Although inaccurate stereotypes, even if they “sound fine” to the listener, should be avoided!)
Example: Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
Rosenblat juggles English, Arabic, and American accents in this series about female Egyptologist Amelia Peabody. Amelia is an Englishwoman who tells the story in first person, so it’s mostly done in an English accent. Rosenblat does it so well that I did not know for years that she herself is an American, with a natural American accent.

Honorable Mention: The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman, narrated by Robin Miles

There’s an interview at the end of the audiobook where Sherman mentions that she knew Miles was the right narrator for the job since she pronounced “Grandmama” the proper Southern way. Miles voices the entirely Southern cast (some black, some white) without stooping to stereotypical or exaggerated depictions. My review
 
4. Smooth Editing
All the pieces of the narration should fall together smoothly. There shouldn’t be any irregular gaps in time between sentences or chapters. It should seem like the narrator recorded the whole story in one go, without pausing to eat a sandwich or visit the restroom or pick up the kids from school. There shouldn’t be any static or strange background noise. An audiobook with poor editing will sometimes have sections that are louder than others (probably the issue I notice most frequently).
Example: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, narrated by the author and a full cast
It’s much easier to come up with a non-example in this category, since good editing should be something you don’t even notice. It’s when the editing is bad that it stands out. That said, anything that incorporates as many different narrators as a Full Cast Audio production does and does it without a hitch deserves to be recognized. The Golden Compass is one of their best.
5. Narrator Enjoyment
This is more difficult to pin down. Narrator enjoyment of the story leads to natural, unforced changes in tone, pace,
pitch, volume, and so on. It makes the listening experience interesting
and fulfilling. It’s obvious when a narrator isn’t enjoying the story he’s telling. There’s no emotion behind his words, no oomph to the action scenes, no  swoon during the kissing scenes, no cracked voices during the sad parts. I want a narrator who is so caught up in the story that she makes me caught up too. I want a narrator who makes me feel all the feelings, who can take a possibly mediocre story and turn it into something that makes you sob in the parking lot as you finish the last disc before heading in to do the shopping.
Example: Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans, narrated by Jenna Lamia
Lamia is known in the audiobook world for having a spot-on teenage girl voice. I was very impressed with her rendition of Level 2, a book that relies heavily on flashbacks. I don’t generally enjoy flashbacks (actually I actively try to avoid them), but Lamia’s narration, fraught with love and yearning and regret and all of those other delicious emotions, made me care intensely about them. I fully believed she was the voice of Felicia, and I fully believed she was just as hooked on the story as I was.

The Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda

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Thirteen year old Ash Mistry, along with his little sister Lucky, is visiting his aunt and uncle in India for the summer. Though he’s of Indian descent, he doesn’t feel much of a connection to the place, having grown up in England. Actually, he kind of wishes he were back in England anyway, since the heat in India is killing him and there’s nothing much exciting going on.

And then his uncle is summoned to the home of Lord Savage, a very wealthy and powerful man with connections to Indian antiquities. Savage offers his uncle – an archaeologist – a job, but the uncle is wary and ultimately refuses, despite the promised huge paycheck. Ash, who had been wandering the fortress, is unlucky enough to stumble upon Savage’s secret – he has rakshasas (demons) in his employ, and Savage’s offer of employment to Ash’s uncle is not what it seems. Savage’s actual aim is to release Ravana, an ancient demon king, who he hopes will grant him immortality.

Ash’s discovery sets Savage and his rakshasas after him, and what follows is an action-packed adventure as Ash, Lucky, and a band of allies – including a rakshasa named Parvati who has her own vendetta against Ravana – fight to stay one step ahead of Savage. Ash – a chubby nerd – finds he has hidden powers, both in terms of character as well as magic. 

Aside from the inclusion of Indian mythology, which is refreshing, the story itself is fairly generic. I found myself disengaging quite a lot once the first portion of the story had passed, and I can’t really blame narrator Bruce Mann, who does a fine job. I suppose I’ve just read this story all too often – the loner kid discovers he has hidden powers and is able to avert the end of the world through magic and a few plucky friends. It’s well told and exciting enough, but doesn’t have the oomph that would propel it to an above average read for me.

All that said, for kids who haven’t yet lived enough years to grow weary of these stories (after all, they’re the audience, not adult me), The Savage Fortress is a solid choice. I liked it about as well as I did the Percy Jackson stories, to which it’s a natural readalike. Hand this to the kids who can’t get enough of mythology and have already read all of Riordan’s books. (Loki’s Wolves by Marr and Armstrong is another likely readalike, though I’ve yet to read it. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen a huge crop of middle grade mythology novels aside from Riordan’s, and it makes me wonder if Riordan has cornered the market on it.)

Audiobook provided by the publisher.

Audiosynced: March Edition

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Welcome to another edition of Audiosynced, co-hosted by STACKED and Abby over at Abby the Librarian. This is a monthly round-up of audiobook news, reviews, and interesting posts throughout the blogosphere and more. If you’ve written anything about audiobooks in the (short) month of November and we left you out of the roundup, leave a link in the comments. If you didn’t get to write anything in February but plan to in March, the round-up will be hosted by Abby next month, so send her your goods to be included!

Reviews

  • Lee over at Reading with my ears offers reviews of Cornelia Funke’s Ghost Knight, Jacqueline Woodson’s Beneath a Meth Moon and M. T. Anderson’s Feed (which is one of my all-time favorite audiobooks). 
  • Beth over at A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust has a review of Walter Dean Myers’s Riot. 
  • Audiobook enthusiasts: you are reading The Gilded Earlobe, right? This is a fantastic audiobook blog, which includes not just reviews, but other audiobook-related posts, including interviews with narrators and more. 
News & Features
  • Sarah Thompson has a great post asking how people listen to audiobooks. Where do you find the time to sneak in audiobooks? Read her post and the comments. Great suggestions for those trying to find the time and place to dive in. 
  • Don’t forget about RUSA’s Listen Lists, either. Not only do you get to know about the “best of” titles from the last year, but the read alikes here are excellent. Talk about a great reader’s advisory tool! 
Pinterest

Back when Abby and I started writing Audiosynced posts, we included round-ups of interesting blogs and Twitter accounts for audiobook enthusiasts. We’ve talked about updating some of these lists since we’ve been doing this series for a long time now, and since this last month was light on content throughout the blogosphere, I thought I’d get us started with some interesting Pinterest accounts worth checking out. If you know of other worthwhile Pinterest boards or accounts related to audiobooks, including your own, lay ’em on us! This is only a small sample of what’s probably out there. 

Audio Review: The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall

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Seventeen year old Hope Long’s older brother, Jeremy, has been accused of murdering their town’s beloved high school baseball coach, Coach Johnson. Hope knows he is innocent, but all the circumstantial evidence points to him and no one else. What’s really damning Jeremy, though, is that he hasn’t spoken a word in over a decade, and so cannot speak in his defense. Aside from his selective mutism, Jeremy is different in other ways, too: he collects empty jars, sometimes empyting their contents out onto the floor if they’re full and he feels he needs them; he carries his baseball bat wherever he goes; one time while waiting in line at a soup kitchen he gave away all his food to other people in the room and then proceeded to give away everything else he had on him, right down to his socks and shoes, too; and so on.

Readers may guess that Jeremy is autistic, but it’s never explicitly stated in the book. Jeremy’s lawyer is going for a not guilty by reason of insanity defense, but Hope thinks Jeremy is neither guilty nor insane, and she’s determined to prove it.

As a mystery, The Silence of Murder functions pretty well. There’s one obvious red herring, and Mackall keeps the tension high until the reveal at the end. One aspect I appreciated is that Jeremy never stopped being a legitimate suspect, too. Hope’s belief in him is mostly steadfast, but she has her moments of doubt, and as a reader/listener, I had those moments, too.
Hope isn’t the brightest girl, which can be frustrating sometimes. She’s not a terrific sleuth, meaning I often figured out aspects of the mystery before she did (but fortunately not the culprit). She’s also clueless about her best guy friend’s feelings for her, and even more clueless when she sits on the witness stand being cross-examined by the prosecutor. (This scene in particular was very, very painful to listen to). While I won’t say that all protagonists need to have above average (or even average) intelligence, it seemed like this was not actually Mackall’s intent and was perhaps done for plot development rather than character development. Other characters seem to regard Hope as being reasonably intelligent, which I just couldn’t buy.
Strangely for me, I found the family drama more compelling than the actual whodunnit. The relationship between Hope and Jeremy was interesting and frequently moving, and while Hope isn’t a whiz at reading other people, she knows Jeremy to his core. Through her eyes, we come to care for Jeremy and understand the need for Hope to speak for him when he won’t speak for himself. And when she fumbles, it’s brutal to experience. Aside from this central relationship, there are plenty of family secrets that are only tangentially related to the mystery but provide a lot of interest.

This is a bit slower-moving than I generally like my mysteries, but slower stories tend to work better on audio for me. My attention is usually divided at least partly between the story and another task (cleaning, cooking, or in this case, wrapping gifts), so if a story is too action-packed, I could miss something important. I realize this explanation doesn’t sound like a rousing endorsement of the audio, but I can appreciate a leisurely-paced story that is narrated well, and not every book should be an edge of your seat page-turner in any case.

Kelly’s commented on the change from hardcover to paperback for this book before. While I’m neutral on both covers, I think they did a really cool thing with the discs for the audio, placing the central cut-out right where Jeremy’s mouth would be.

The Silence of Murder is a decent story that succeeds more as a family drama than a mystery. It’s a good pick for readers interested in autistic or developmentally disabled characters (who are making more of a showing lately, but are still underrepresented). Readers looking for a fast-paced mystery with a twist every ten pages may be disappointed, but the narration is good and the story is rewarding for patient listeners.
Finished audiobook received from publisher.