Tag: novella

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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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!

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

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