I know this isn’t on a Monday, but I’ve posted on odd days before, and I was preoccupied. No, not with the election. I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo, that’s National Novel Writing Month for the un initiated. So for I’ve been hitting my goals so I feel good about winning this year. But then being unemployed helps a lot with finding the time.
Anyway since I’ve been sacrificing my reading time to increase my writing time, I’ve tried to up my audiobook time. So this month expect all audiobook reviews as I try to juggle being both a reviewer and a writer.
Today’s audio review is a twin pack as they are the first two books in a series. I specifically requested these audiobooks from a reviewer service called Story Origins because I’ve always loved the weird western genre. It’s where you take a traditional western but then throw in: aliens, time travel, centaurs or whatever you want. It makes the old west so much more interesting.
I’ll summarize the books in my reviews for the sake of brevity.
Let’s dive in:
Earthbound follows the adventures of a young man who is stranded on Earth. He tries his best to blend in and integrate into the culture of the American west. If they think he’s a bit strange, well he does have an Irish accent.
Zeb as he’s called, is an interesting character, but he isn’t the only one. The story also follows frontier wife Anna and her children after a native American raid separates them.
Over all the story was interesting, but I found the sci-fi elements to be over shadowed by the Western story and characters. It’s a hard genre to peg as Western readers may enjoy it more than sci-fi lovers.
The narrator, Benjamin Fife, was good. He kept the pace going and read long sections with no dialogue engagingly. But Dialogue is where this man shines. Especially with accents. And this story gave him plenty of accents to play with. Irish, German, Spanish, and even some southern gentleman.
On content: there is a good bit of violence, surprisingly little cursing, but I do need to mention the the sexual content.
Like most Westerns there is mention of sex and brothels but this is still pretty clean. It comes no where near being erotic, and the most description we get is from a married couple on their wedding night, which is still pretty tame.
Gather the Children, like the first book in this series, (Earthbound) is a science fiction western about the MacDonald family. Almost all of which are some form of Alien hybrid.
This is such an odd series. There are very small references to anything sci-f. For the most part it’s just a western. The story follows the various family and friends of the main character Mac, as they live life. They get married and conduct business, worship and fight for their lives in the unforgiving and lawless Texas frontier.
This is a very character based story and I loved getting to know all the characters as they struggled to build lives for themselves.
I hate that I feel like I need to give a content warning since this is not erotica, but the author is not shy about the facts of life. It may not be descriptive but it was enough to make me feel uncomfortable. Also there is language.
This is the third book in a row I’ve heard that was narrated by Benjamin Fife. Man this guy is prolific. As always he does a great job reading and this story gives him plenty of opportunities to play with accents which he is incredibly good at.
* I received audible codes to review both of these books. My reviews are my honest opinion of the provided material and are given willingly.*
Purchase book one here: https://www.amazon.com/Earthbound-Science-Fiction-West-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00THSCXOC
And book two here: https://www.amazon.com/Gather-Children-Chronicles-Maca-Book-ebook/dp/B015IZZ5T2
Right now the ebooks are $2.99 and you can add audio for $7.49.
About the author:
Mari Collier was born on a farm in Iowa. Since then she’s lived in Arizona, Northwest Washington (on the banks of a river), and moved to Southern California after retiring from Nintendo of America. She is the curator for the Accessions Committee at the local Historical Society and writes two columns for the Old Schoolhouse Museum. She also volunteers as a docent at the Old Schoolhouse Museum.
Come back on Monday for another audiobook review.
Interested in Story Origins? Check it out here: https://storyoriginapp.com/
Do you enjoy audio books?
How about science fiction westerns?
Let me know.
C. O. Bonham 