The Red Dragon by L Ron Hubbard (Audiobook Review)

Audiobook Reviews from Audiobook-Heaven

The Red Dragon
by L Ron Hubbard
narrated by a Multicast
Series: Golden Age Stories
Copyright: 2013 Galaxy Audio
Duration: 2 hours unabridged
Genres: pulp fiction, adventure
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Click the image to visit the publisher’s website.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Flame-haired Michael Stuart's career as an officer in the US Marine Corps abruptly ended after a failed attempt to return the Chinese Imperial Dynasty to power in 1930s Asia. Abandoned by his country, he's unable to find safe passage out of China by land or sea.

Now Stuart, also known as the "The Red Dragon," has a new occupation; he intervenes in matters for the good of the people. Despite the danger, Stuart agrees to help a beautiful young woman search for a mysterious black chest which her father hid in Manchuria before his murder. Their quest takes them from Peking north to the Great Wall of China and beyond. With enemies coming at him from every corner, Stuart finds he's playing a most deadly game of hide-and-seek

©2013 Galaxy Audio

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: It’s time for more action-packed adventure from one of America’s most prolific writers, L Ron Hubbard! During the 1930’s and 40’s Hubbard wrote literally hundreds of stories in almost every genre of literature and sold them to the various publications of the day. Now Galaxy Audio is gathering up all those stories and re-creating them in stunning three-dimensional sound featuring a cast of talented voice actors, sound effects, and original music.

By the age of 18, Hubbard had traveled twice to Asia via the Pacific Ocean. It was on his second journey that he met an “old China Hand,” British secret service agent, Major Ian Macbean, who ushered Hubbard into what was known at the time as “The Great Game,” involving a three-way tug of war between the British, Chinese and Japanese. It was through Macbean that Hubbard learned of a secret and dangerous society known far and wide as The Red Dragon—comprised of murderers, blackmailers, thieves and thugs.

The Red Dragon features all the same high-quality music and sound effects that I’ve grown accustomed to in Galaxy’s productions, and the same voice talents including R F Daley, John Mariano, Erika Christensen, and Jim Meskimen. Even if you are an avid audiobook reader it’s possible that you may not have heard of these people. They’re not what I would call big names, yet, but they are indeed very good at what they do. In Galaxy’s multicast productions the stories are not just read, they are actually acted out and in many cases the voice actors are called upon to perform multiple roles in the same story. This cast is definitely up to the challenge: they play their parts well, and their voice characterizations are well done and believable.

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CHECK OUT THESE OTHER AUDIOBOOK REVIEWS:
by L Ron Hubbard (Audiobook Review)
The Black Sultan by L Ron Hubbard (Audiobook Review)
The Dive Bomber by L Ron Hubbard (Audiobook Review)

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Special thanks to Galaxy Audio for this review copy.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt.
This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Come back soon for more audiobook reviews from Audiobook-Heaven.

Earth Abides by George R Stewart (Audiobook Review)

Audiobook Reviews from Audiobook-Heaven

Earth Abides
by George R Stewart
narrated by Jonathan Davis
Copyright: 2009 Audible Frontiers
Duration: 15 hours, 4 minutes unabridged
Genres: post apocalypse, science fiction
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Click the image to visit the publisher’s website.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

NOTE: This 60th anniversary edition of Earth Abides includes a special introduction written and read by Hugo Award-winning writer Connie Willis.

©1949, renewed 1976 by George R. Stewart; (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: If a plague ever swept the world killing off almost all humans, how would the planet itself react? Earth has been dominated by humans for thousands of years so what would the sudden removal of them mean?

This is one focus of George R Stewart’s Earth Abides. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel, sure, but rather than focusing entirely on the surviving people as most post-apocalyptic writers do, Stewart also studies nature itself: plants, animals, even weather patterns. It’s a rather unique approach I think, at least one that I haven’t come across before.

Our main character, Isherwood “Ish” Williams, a geologist, was in the mountains above California when the plague swept the world. George R Stewart doesn’t come right out and say it, but he insinuates that Ish may have contracted the virus even up in the mountains, but a fortuitous snakebite saved his life. Apparently the snake venom, not quite potent enough to kill the man, was at least strong enough to kill the virus within him. I found that to be an interesting, albeit unlikely, idea. But let’s not over-analyze shall we? This isn’t the point of the story anyway.

When Ish finally comes down from the mountains weeks later, he finds humanity all but gone. He gets the gist of what happened by reading some of the last newspapers that were published. Being something of a loner, Ish is not overly bothered by the sudden lack of people in the world, and being a scientist he realizes that he has a unique opportunity to study a post-man world. So Ish does some traveling, taking special note of how things are already beginning to change, both in the environment and in the few people he encounters.

After a while, Ish meets a woman and they settle down to begin a family. Two other couples join them and began raising children also. Earth Abides takes us through the remainder of Ish’s life and the difficulties he encounters while trying to restart the human race.

Earth Abides is probably one of the most thoughtful post-apocalyptic novels I have read. George R Stewart doesn’t seem to miss a trick and explored every possible scenario that might arise after the top of the food chain is gone: plagues of ants, then of rats, dogs going wild, cattle populations rising unchecked. He explored the apathy of the surviving humans who no longer need to work for anything. All they have to do is go and pick up whatever they need. Stewart also cogitates over the raising of children in a world where formal education seems unnecessary. This is one book that really makes you think.

One of my favorite ideas that Stewart forwards was how at the end of each year, according to their own calendar that the colony created themselves, the entire group gathers together to name that year. Anyone can propose a name based on the significant events of that year and then they vote. During one year they narrowly avoided being destroyed by unchecked forest fires and so that was the Year of Fire. In another year some twins were born so that was the Year of the Twins. And so on and so on. This was a neat idea that really captured my imagination. I wonder what names we would choose if we practiced this.

Narrator Jonathan Davis handled this lengthy novel very capably. He has a very natural reading style and reads both prose and dialogue very well. Davis has narrated more than 150 audiobooks, most of them in the science fiction genre including 30 Star Wars titles.

Earth Abides was originally written in 1949. It won the 1951 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and was listed as one of the All-Time Best Science Fiction Novels by Locus Magazine. It was also one of the primary inspirations for Stephen King’s novel The Stand.

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CHECK OUT THESE OTHER AUDIOBOOK REVIEWS:
The Road by Cormac Mccarthy (Audiobook Review)
White Horse by Alex Adams (Audiobook Review)
The Stand by Stephen King (Audiobook Review)

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Special thanks to Audible Frontiers for this review copy.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt.
This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Come back soon for more audiobook reviews from Audiobook-Heaven.

Marvel: Civil War by Mark Millar (Audiobook Review)

Audiobook Reviews from Audiobook-Heaven

Marvel Civil War
by Mark Millar
narrated by a full cast
Copyright: 2013 Graphic Audio
Duration: 6 hours unabridged
Genres: comic heroes
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Click the image to visit the publisher’s website.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The epic story that blows the Marvel Universe apart!

Iron Man and Captain America: two core members of the Avengers, the world's greatest super hero team.

After a tragic battle in Stamford Connecticut, the U.S. government demands that all super heroes unmask and register their powers.

To Tony Stark—Iron Man—it's a regrettable but necessary step.

To Captain America, it's an unbearable assault on civil liberties.

So begins the Civil War.

© Marvel

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: In Stamford, Connecticut a second-rate team of superheroes takes on a second-rate gang of super villains. For the heroes it’s an opportunity to gain some national attention and more viewers for their TV show. They get some national attention all right, but not quite the kind they had in mind. The end result of the battle is a smoking crater in a residential area of Stamford, nearly 1,000 civilians dead, and the death of the heroes and villains as well.

What happened next was all too predictable. It doesn’t take long for Congress to initiate the SRA, Superhuman Registration Act, making it a federal law for all super-humans to register themselves with the government: secret identities, powers, everything. Those who register will now work for the government through the SHIELD agency. Those who don’t will be hunted down and detained.

Iron-Man is all for the registration right from the start. After all, everyone already knows he’s Tony Stark so he has nothing to lose. The president even calls on the Iron-Clad Avenger to help implement the SRA, talking other superheroes into registering, or convincing them by other means whenever necessary. Tony takes on this task with a disturbing kind of enthusiasm.

On the other side of the coin you have Captain America, probably the staunchest defender of the constitution this country has ever known. Cap is all about saving lives and being a hero, but being forced to register and work under government regulations is just too much to take. Cap is soon forced to go into hiding along with other superheroes that feel the same. It’s plain to see that Cap’s band of rebels will have to go toe-to-toe with Iron-Man’s group sooner or later. And when they do, it will be all out Civil War.

For as long as there have been comic books, there have been writers dreaming up ways to get the heroes to fight each other, just to see who would come out on top. Comic fans themselves engage in endless debates on which hero is strongest. In Marvel: Civil War Mark Millar has come up with one of the more plausible scenarios I’ve seen to probe the minds and powers of some of my favorite heroes and I think he nailed it. Each hero is true to his or her own nature as they choose sides. I especially liked how the character of Spider-man was handled. Spidey really wants to do “the right thing” but revealing his secret identity would put his loved ones in danger. This side-story makes for some interesting additional drama.

I love audiobooks and I love comics. Any chance I get to put the two together and I’m in fan-boy heaven. That’s what is so great about Graphic Audio. When they set out to make an audio production from a comic graphic novel, they pull all out the stops. We’re talking cinematic music and sound effects along with a full cast of talented voice actors. And those voice talents are well chosen. The characters in Marvel: Civil War have been around for a long time and comic fans know them well. We’ve spent years imagining what Iron-Man’s voice, or Captain America’s voice, might sound like and I think Graphic Audio did a good job of filling those roles with appropriate voices. Marvel: Civil War is a full cast production so there is a pretty long list of actors, but some of then include:

Richard Rohan, Richard Cutting, Tim Getman, James Keegan, Kimberly Gilbert, Jeff Allin, Julie-Ann Elliott, Ken Jackson, Evan Casey, Elizabeth Jernigan, James Lewis, Thomas Penny, Danny Gavigan, Tracy Olivera, Elliot Dash, Nick DePinto, Tim Pabon, Michael Glenn, Thomas Keegan, Alyssa Wilmoth, Lily Beacon, Colleen Delany, Karen Novack, Scott McCormick, Caleb Brown, Bradley Smith, Nora Achrati, Sherry Berg, David Coyne, Christopher Scheeren, Eric Messner, Joe Brack, Terence Aselford, James Konicek, Alexander Strain, Casie Platt, Joel David Santner, Nanette Savard, David Harris, Michael John Casey, Yasmin Tuazon, Patrick Bussink, Casey Jones, Steven Carpenter, Drew Kopas, Lily David, Dylan Lynch and Damyon "Chop" Richardson.


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CHECK OUT THESE OTHER AUDIOBOOK REVIEWS:
Batman: No Man's Land Part 1 by Greg Rucka (Audiobook Review)
Final Crisis by Greg Cox (Audiobook Review)
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe (Audiobook Review)

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Special thanks to Graphic Audio for this review copy.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt.
This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Come back soon for more audiobook reviews from Audiobook-Heaven.

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe (Audiobook Review)

Audiobook Reviews from Audiobook-Heaven

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
by Sean Howe
narrated by Stephen Hoye
Copyright: 2013 Harper Audio
Duration: 17 hours, 52 minutes unabridged
Genres: non fiction, comic heroes
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Click the image to visit the publisher’s website.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Throughout this decades-long journey to becoming a multibillion-dollar enterprise, Marvel's identity has continually shifted, careening between scrappy underdog and corporate behemoth. As the company has weathered Wall Street machinations, Hollywood failures, and the collapse of the comic book market, its characters have been passed along among generations of editors, artists, and writers - also known as the celebrated Marvel "Bullpen". Entrusted to carry on tradition, Marvel's contributors - impoverished child prodigies, hallucinating peaceniks, and mercenary careerists among them - struggled with commercial mandates, a fickle audience, and, over matters of credit and control, one another.

For the first time, Marvel Comics reveals the outsized personalities behind the scenes, including Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939; Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades; and Jack Kirby, the World War II veteran who'd co-created Captain America in 1940 and, 20 years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company's marquee characters in a three-year frenzy of creativity that would be the grounds for future legal battles and endless debates.

Drawing on more than 100 original interviews with Marvel insiders then and now, Marvel Comics is a story of fertile imaginations, lifelong friendships, action-packed fistfights, reformed criminals, unlikely alliances, and third-act betrayals - a narrative of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and beleaguered pop-cultural entities in America's history.

©2012 Sean Howe (P)2012 Harper Collins Publishers

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: In 1939, Martin Goodman started up a little company called Timely Publications, which began publishing comic books under the imprint Timely Comics. Their first book, Marvel Comics #1, featured characters such as The Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner. The issue sold more than 900,000 copies and an American icon was born. Later that year Goodman hired his wife’s brother, Stanley Lieber, as a general office assistant. It wasn’t long before Stanley was writing comic stories of his own under the assumed name of Stan Lee. Other talents such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were added to the fold until Marvel Comics became a real contender in the comics industry.

Those are all some pretty basic facts that you can learn about Marvel from reading Wikipedia or any of a number of other sources. But did you know:

That Stan Lee only had a passing interest in comic books? His real vision for the future of Marvel always lay in Hollywood, where he struggled for decades to get a legitimate feature film based on a Marvel superhero. That Jack Kirby, credited for co-creating most of Marvel’s core characters spent decades suing the company for the rights to those characters? That time and again veteran comic creators like Steve Ditko and Chris Claremont were shoved aside to make room for some new hotshot talent?

Those are just a few of the behind-the-scenes stories that you will find only in a book like Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. And trust me, this is barely scratching the surface. Sean Howe dives deeply into not only the history of Marvel Comics, but also the very character of the organization. He draws from previous histories and biographies, but also from never before seen interviews with the people who were there. Howe’s book is arranged in a very neat and easy to follow timeline, beginning with Marvel’s earliest conceptions in 1939, and bringing us right up to the recent release of the mega-blockbuster Avengers film in 2012. It’s all in here: the triumphs, the failures, and the dirty laundry.

Narrator Stephen Hoye did a perfectly good job with Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Non-fiction books don’t leave a lot of room for a reader to flex his or her narrative muscle, but Hoye kept up a comfortable pace and never got boring. I’d like to hear him read some fiction. AudioFile magazine named Stephen Hoye a Best Voice in Biography and History in 2011 for In the Garden of Beasts.

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CHECK OUT THESE OTHER AUDIOBOOK REVIEWS:
The Supergirls by Mike Madrid (Audiobook Review)
Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher (Audiobook Review)
Final Crisis by Greg Cox (Audiobook Review)

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Special thanks to Harper Audio for this review copy.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt.
This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Come back soon for more audiobook reviews from Audiobook-Heaven.

Free Giveaway: Strange Detective Stories

Audiobook Reviews from Audiobook-Heaven

Hey audiobook lovers! Even though Audiobook-Heaven is no longer giving away free audiobooks every month, you can still find plenty of freebies around the internet. Check out this one from Radio Archives

Strange Detective Mysteries
by Various authors
narrated by Various narrators
Unabridged 6 hours
Copyright: 2013 Radio Archives
Filed in: Free Audiobook Giveaways
Click on the cover image for more details.

In the Fall of 1937, Popular Publications launched a new type of detective magazine, one that combined the Weird Menace-style stories that had made Terror Tales and Horror Stories so hot with readers of hardboiled detective-action tales.They called it Strange Detective Mysteries.

In his first-issue editorial, Managing Editor Rogers Terrill set the stage:

“Remember the time you read that one perfect knockout, detective story—bizarre, mysterious, thrill-packed, different? It still remains the detective story for you. You’ve wondered why you never found another. You searched bookstores, library shelves, newsstands—but you just couldn’t find that brand!

“Beginning with this issue—we give you Strange Detective Mysteries—not only one bizarre, thrilling eerie-laden mystery story such as you’ve searched for, but a whole magazine full of them!

“Because you have sought for this highest type of detective story, without finding it, you can understand at what cost we bring you this magazine. Months of planning and effort have gone into its making. The best known and most able detective-story writers have been called upon—for their best. Only the smallest proportion of a flood of manuscripts has been chosen.

“Crime-detection, adventure, baffling mystery—all this you will find in Strange Detective Mysteries. In addition, you will find that quality which appears in a detective story only once in a blue moon—the bizarre!”

Terrill used the word bizarre no less than five times in his editorial, italicizing it twice. He was serious! Strange Detective Mysteries was beyond weird.

For his lead novel, Terrill served up “When the Death-Bat Flies,” by the writer he called “America’s No. 1 Master of the Extraordinary Mystery Tale”—The Spider’s Norvell W. Page. Starring master magician Aubrei Dunne, it was a wild excursion into a criminal cult dedicated to murder and mayhem.

In “Madame Murder—and the Corpse Brigade,” Paul Ernst offered an even more bizarre hero—Seekay, the man with no face!

The detective protagonist of Wayne Rogers’ “The Headman’s Hat-Box” witnesses a murder committed by—himself!

In George Armin Shaftel’s “The Miracle Murder Case,” a prison break is engineered by an unknown mastermind who terrorizes society with a strange super-weapon!

Terror Tales favorite Arthur Leo Zagat’s “Patients for Dr. Death” revisits the realm of Jack the Ripper—but with an uncanny twist.

Finally, Norbert Davis’ “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake” takes us to a weird mansion and the grisly mystery of the missing hand.

Read by Michael C. Gwynne, Roy Worley and Roger Price, this RadioArchives.com audiobook brings to vibrant life one of the most exciting first issues of any pulp mystery magazine ever published!

Sounds pretty good, eh? So there it is, be sure to take advantage of this great offer from Radio Archives