Tag: John Scalzi

Audiobook Review: Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi (The Dispatcher #3)

Travel by Bullet
Series: The Dispatcher #3
Author: John Scalzi

Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: September 1, 2022
Audiobook: 3 hours 43 minutes

Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: October 13-15, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars

Book Description:

The world has changed. Now, when someone is murdered, they almost always come back to life—and there are professionals, called “dispatchers,” who kill in order to save lives, to give those near the end a second chance. Tony Valdez is a dispatcher, and he has never been busier.

But for as much as the world has changed, some things have stayed the same. Greed, corruption and avarice are still in full swing. When Tony is called to a Chicago emergency room by an old friend and fellow dispatcher, he is suddenly and unwillingly thrown into a whirlpool of schemes and plots involving billions of dollars, with vast caches of wealth ranging from real estate to cryptocurrency up for grabs.

All Tony wants to do is keep his friend safe. But it’s hard to do when friends keep secrets, enemies offer seductive deals, and nothing is ever what it seems. The world has changed… but the stakes are still life and death.

Jessica’s Review: 

Scalzi is back with a third Dispatcher novel and Quinto narrates again! And this one is a recent release too! This new novella seems even more real because the pandemic is brought into play and affected this world as well as ours! It affected a dispatcher’s job too, and we get to see this mentioned.  And wearing a mask is commonplace in this world as it can be in our world, with people choosing to wear masks whenever they are out.

The world is much darker too with the rich/elite/villains taking advantage of ‘murder’ and the 99.9% chance of coming back by ‘traveling by bullet’, hence the title of this new novella. This world has so much more greed, corruption, and death manipulation than what we have now and if this actually happened I can see our world becoming like Tony’s world.

These novellas are fast paced, and enjoyable! You like Tony, but is he as good as we think?  Quinto is the perfect Tony and I really want to see these stories play on tv with him starring!

I hope Scalzi gives us more Dispatcher novellas!  This series is one to make you think a lot about this world, and Scalzi has done a brilliant job of bringing us into it.

Purchase Links:
Please Note: This new release is only currently available as an Audible original.
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Audiobook Review: Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi (The Dispatcher #2)

Murder by Other Means
Series: The Dispatcher #2
Author: John Scalzi

Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: September 20, 2020
Audiobook 3 hours 33 minutes

Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: October 12-13, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars

Book Description:

In the world of the Dispatchers, a natural or accidental death is an endpoint; a murder pushes the do-over button and 99.99% of the time the victim comes back to life. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher who’s been taking shadier and shadier gigs in financial tough times, and after witnessing a crime gone wrong, he finds people around him permanently dying in a way that implicates him. He has to solve the mystery of these deaths to save the lives of others–and keep himself out of trouble with the law.

Jessica’s Review:

This novella should follow your reading of The Dispatcher and then continue on.  This world is such a strange world where if you are murdered, there is a 99.9% chance that you will come back to life. We still don’t know why this started or the cause, and I don’t think we will ever know.  This world has just come to accept this and move on in a new way, the good and the bad.  

We have Tony Valdez back and you just can’t help but like him. And he gets in way over his head when he witnesses a bank robbery gone wrong: One of the bank robbers doesn’t come back to life.

This story is definitely of the noir category and a quick read/listen and Quinto is just brilliant and makes the story enjoyable!  This is not a world I would like to find myself in, or even find myself in the job of a Dispatcher: There are so many issues with this type of job of being a Dispatcher along with morality issues and the law in general. And just the temptation of becoming ‘dirty’ for money. I hope Scalzi brings us more of Tony and his misadventures of life as a Dispatcher!

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

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A Double Review of The Dispatcher

Today Kim and I both review The Dispatcher by John Scalzi. We both listened to the Audible version which is masterfully narrated by Zachary Quinto. It is a short book, the narration is 2 hours and 18 minutes.  Needless to say both Kim and I loved The Dispatcher!

Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: October 4, 2016
Audible: 2 hours 18 minutes

Book Description from Goodreads:

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.

Zachary Quinto: Best known for his role as the Nimoy-approved Spock in the recent Star Trek reboot and the menacing, power-stealing serial killer, Sylar, in Heroes – brings his well-earned sci-fi credentials and simmering intensity to this audio-exclusive novella from master storyteller John Scalzi.

Kim’s Rating: 5 stars
Kim’s Review:

This was a short, simple mystery, with a doozy of a twist! I had never heard of anything like the dispatchers before. If a person is murdered, then 9 times out of 10, they’ll end up alive and well in their bed at home. I’m not sure where that idea came from, but I love it! And I’m totally crushing on Tony Valdez . . . it helps that he has Zachary Quinto’s voice. ? I liked that it was a short listen; the author didn’t detail every little thing in every room, conversations weren’t repeated, and the mystery was easily solved with some good, old detective work. It’s simple, enjoyable, and easy. I really enjoyed this audiobook!

Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Dates Listened To: March 16-18, 2018
Jessica’s Review:

The Dispatcher has an interesting premise to it: If you die at the hands some someone else, 999 times out of 1000 you come back to life.  If you die of natural causes you do not come back to life.  It is a mystery why this started happening, but we do learn about the first person that this happened to.  The Dispatcher is short at just 2 hours 18 minutes long.  And it covers a lot in that short time period!  I listened to the Audible version which was narrated by Zachary Quinto and I couldn’t help but picture him as Tony Valdez as the story progressed.

Tony is a Dispatcher, one who helps to bring people back. In other words, he murders them.  We see several examples of Tony doing his job, which he has done for eight years.  One of his dispatcher friends disappears and it is a race to find out what happened to him.

This is a novella that will make you think about many things: who could become a Dispatcher and how do they handle their job when there is that one chance out of 1000 that the person will not come back? What does someone experience when they die and then come back? There are also theological, ethical, and moral issues that surround this story and the novella brings those up as well.

I liked Tony’s character and hope that Scalzi will expand on him and write more. If this ever comes to life on film I hope they cast Quinto in the Tony Valdez role!

The Dispatcher is highly recommended.

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

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