Bookish Wednesday: Otherlife Awakenings by William D. Arand

Hey all this week for Bookish Wednesday I’m back with the third book in Runner’s adventures. It’s Otherlife Awakenings by William D. Arand!

Plot Synopsis: Runner and his team managed to bring peace to Tirtius, successfully log the crew out, and have begun settling in to make a home on the isle of Vix. North Wood fort itself. Fate isn’t going to let them go that easily though. She clearly hasn’t decided on what to do with him. Plots are in motion. Threats local, outside of the ship, divine, and abroad in game scheme to exterminate Runner and the threat he represents. The possibility of what he could become. To top it all off, the server is clearly ramping up towards a full awakening. What does one do with an entire world of “living” beings who are aware? It all comes to a head when an assassin attempts to take his life in his own home. Now comes the true test. What is he willing to wager to build the future he wants, both in game and out? Or rather, who?

Plot: The plot is awesome, with plenty of revelations all around about the world Runner has come to inhabit. It also deals with Runner’s severe depression after the events of the last book, which I won’t spoil. There’s more “idiot plans” and new additions to Runners group of close followers.

Characters: Of all the new characters I found Satomi to be the best, though that may be slightly affected by the soft spot I have for the name as that was one of my teacher’s names in my Japanese High School class. That said Runner still was great to live the world through, even if Scott and Linda weren’t as present in this book as I would have liked. The rest of the cast was great, but truly the female leads were awesome in this entry with plenty of screen time for Grace, Sparky, Minxie, Brighteyes, Angel, and Bell.

Overall: An excellent ending to the trilogy, but not the end of the series apparently. The series will continue in the future, hopefully by the end of the year.

Bookish Wednesday: An Ending

Hi everyone, I’m going to interrupt your regular Bookish Wednesday with a quick announcement regarding future audiobook reviews. It’s about an ending, but not all things are ending.

What’s changing?: I won’t be reviewing any more audiobooks for Graphic Audio, the details aren’t important and we ended our arrangement with no hard feelings between us. If they change their mind in the future and wish to have me review for them once again I’ll gladly do so, but for now I won’t be doing anything for them from now on.

What about your Audible reviews?: Nothing is changing there, and I hope to continue writing reviews for Audible for a long time. If I can keep up my current pace of going through their books, I’ll be able to have a review out every week. This may change if the book is longer than 15 hours, and it may take two weeks instead. However for the moment continue to look forward to my weekly reviews of Audible Studio’s productions every Tuesday at Game Industry News under the Book Review section!

That’s it for this week’s Bookish Wednesday, I’ll be back to reviewing books like usual next week!

Book Series Wednesday: A New Venture!

Recently I’ve been reviewing books for Audible Studios and posting them to the book review section of Game Industry News, and I’ve got some great news for this week’s Book Series Wednesday. It’s all about A New Venture!

I recently contacted Graphic Audio, a newer Audiobook studio that does wonders with Audiobooks and makes them truly wonderful for book loves and audiophiles alike. I’ve mentioned them before, but now I’ll be reviewing both Audible Studios productions and Graphic Audio productions. The current plan is to alternate between the two for reviewing purposes.

While Graphic Audio has a much slimmer selection of books and they are slightly pricier, considering the work that goes into them it’s well worth the money. So give them a look, or wait for my reviews to pop up to see if they are up to snuff *Spoiler* They are*End Spoilers*. Either way keep an eye out on GIN’s front page for my audiobook reviews in the future and I hope everyone enjoys.

That’s it for this week’s Book Series Wednesday, next week I’ll be going back to the Sparhawk series.

 

Book Series Wednesday: The Joys of Audiobooks

For this Book Series Wednesday I’m going to talk about why I enjoy audiobooks so much.

The Length: For myself I read much faster than the average person, I’m able to read a 1,000 page book in a day if I put the effort into it. However some people aren’t nearly as fast as me, or even the average reader, and lose out on good stories and expanding their knowledge. An audiobook allows everyone to enjoy a story no matter how fast or slow they personally read. Myself personally I’m able on average to enjoy an audiobook for at least three times as long as I would be able to enjoy it if I read it in a physical or digital format. For me this is a great thing, but others can shorten their time if they are slow readers.

The Reader: Often they get amazingly talented people to read the books, some of my favorites are Scott Brick, Michael Kramer, Kate Reading and James Marsters (The person who played Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer). When I think of their voices I can imagine them as the characters I loved listening to. Sometimes they even get celebrities to read books. A more comical version of this is the Go The F*@$ To Sleep reading by Samuel L. Jackson, which you can find on Youtube very easily.

Consistency: Often authors will use specific readers for their series, for example Michael Kramer and Kate Reading are the people who read the Wheel of Time and The Stormlight Archives series. Michael Kramer also did an excellent job with the Mistborn series.

The Extreme Version: Recently a company, Graphic Audio, has released versions of audiobooks that are above and beyond the standard audiobook. Graphic Audio’s tagline is “A movie in your mind.” and they add sound effects, and multiple voice actors to their works. Granted that these versions are more expensive, and may be split into multiple parts if they are really long.

The Cost: Audiobooks are more expensive than their physical and digital counterparts. However in recent years public libraries have started to lend out digital versions of audiobooks via their website, or a secondary website.  You can also find the CD versions of the audiobooks at libraries and borrow them as well and copy them to your MP3 player.

That is it for this week’s Book Series Wednesday!