Audiobook Review: The Dispatcher by John Scalzi and Narrated by Zachary Quinto
The Dispatcher
Series: The Dispatcher #1
Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: October 4, 2016
Audiobook: 2 hours 18 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Date Listened To: October 11, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone – 999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don’t know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.
Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher – a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death’s crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death and that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge a supposed wrong.
It’s a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it’s too late…before not even a Dispatcher can save him.
Jessica’s Review:
This one was a re-listen because it was short and Audible had the next two novellas available! I had listened to it several years ago and enjoyed it. Kim and I actually had a double review for it. I don’t have any more to say that was in my original review so read it here!
The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Passage
Series: The Passage #1
Author: Justin Cronin
Published: June 8, 2010
766 Pages
Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 3.5 stars
Book Description:
IT HAPPENED FAST.
THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time an place where she must finish what should never have begun.
Kim’s Review:
How did I like this story so much, but hated reading it so much? I liked pretty much everything about this story. I couldn’t wait to see what happened next and I really liked all the characters, but my gosh was that book slow!!! I felt like I was sludging through it! It got to the point where I lost some of my curiosity and decided not to continue the series because the book took so long. I liked a lot about this story and like I said, I really loved the characters … but I could not get over how slow the reading was!
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This was a book that Jessica DNF’d many years ago, for basically the same issue that Kim had with it: the slowness! I tried, but just couldn’t keep reading it. I did watch the one season TV show in 2019 and enjoyed it and wish it had continued!
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Book Review: Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan
Walk the Vanished Earth
Author: Erin Swan
Published: May 31, 2022
384 Pages
Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 3.5 stars
Book Description:
The year is 1873, and a bison hunter named Samson travels the Kansas plains, full of hope for his new country. The year is 1975, and an adolescent girl named Bea walks those very same plains; pregnant, mute, and raised in extreme seclusion, she lands in an institution, where a well-meaning psychiatrist struggles to decipher the pictures she draws of her past. The year is 2027 and, after a series of devastating storms, a tenacious engineer named Paul has left behind his banal suburban existence to build a floating city above the drowned streets that were once New Orleans. There with his poet daughter he rules over a society of dreamers and vagabonds who salvage vintage dresses, ferment rotgut wine out of fruit, paint murals on the ceiling of the Superdome, and try to write the story of their existence. The year is 2073, and Moon has heard only stories of the blue planet–Earth, as they once called it, now succumbed entirely to water. Now that Moon has come of age, she could become a mother if she wanted to-if only she understood what a mother is. Alone on Mars with her two alien uncles, she must decide whether to continue her family line and repopulate humanity on a new planet.
A sweeping family epic, told over seven generations, as America changes and so does its dream, Walk the Vanished Earth explores ancestry, legacy, motherhood, the trauma we inherit, and the power of connection in the face of our planet’s imminent collapse.
This is a story about the end of the world–but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new. Thoughtful, warm, and wildly prescient, this work of bright imagination promises that, no matter what the future looks like, there is always room for hope.
Kim’s Review:
I’m starting to see differences within the sci-fi genre. And unfortunately, this book is in the group that I’m not a super huge fan of. I’m glad I read it; it’s an overall good story, I just feel like it wasn’t for me. It’s a multi timeline, multi POV story that covers a lot! The story line I liked most was that of Moon, an odd child in the care of a pair of odd robotic beings on an odd quest to save the human race and discover her own origins. She falls under the more traditional title of sci-fi and I wish I could have a book just about her. The rest of it was just necessary context for me. I didn’t really have any emotional attachment to most of the characters and the overplayed apocalyptic climate change trope just bored me. It’s definitely not a loss because it kept me entertained while reading and I am glad I did … I just don’t feel much for it now that I’m done with it. But … that cover!!!!
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
