Audio Reviews: Cleopatra’s Moon and White Cat

Cleopatra Selene is the only daughter of the brilliant Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and General Marcus Antonius of Rome. She’s grown up with jewels on her arms, servants at her feet, and all the pleasures of a palace at her command, and she wants only to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a great and powerful queen. 

Then the Roman ruler Octavianus, who has always wanted Egypt’s wealth, launches a war that destroys all Selene has ever known. Taken to live in Octavianus’ palace in Rome, she vows to defeat him and reclaim her kingdom at all costs. Yet even as she gathers support for her return, Selene finds herself torn between two young men and two different paths to power. Will love distract her from her goal – or help her achieve her true destiny? 

My thoughts: 

Look at that. I finished it!! It only took me a year, but then audio and I are very meh. I just do not have the time, but now I have found the time and it works great..well only for those times. Everything else it still no.

Right, how to review it then..I honestly do not know. I do not get the same feeling from listening that I get from reading. I do not get feelings. So I can’t say much. It was interesting listening to. I have read a book about Selene before and I did not know her story before that one. But it was still interesting listening to another version of what could have happened.

The audio, the narrator was good but I got annoyed when she did Isis’ voice. It felt lame. But for the most part it was a pleasant voice to listen to.

And I am wondering what I would have felt reading the book. I doubt I would have felt it was better. But would I have thought it was worse? 

For a YA book it dealt with more mature subjects. Attempted rape, seduction…but then again it was another time and it was Rome.

Audio
Published August 1st 2011 by Oasis Audio
12 hours or something
Own
YA /historical

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers—people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn’t got magic, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail—he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

            

Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to outcon the conmen.

My thoughts:

I was not sure about Jesse Eisenberg as the narrator. He sounds so insecure at times so it was like Cassel was constantly in doubt. But I got used to it as Cassel was pretty unsure about himself.

Narration, seems it worked in the end then.

Story. I think I dosed off in a vital part (don’t I always 😉 But otherwise it was a good and thrilling story. I liked the concept of curse working, and the plot had a good pace as I got more and more answers. The end promised more good things to come.

It worked well on audio but as times before I wonder if I would like it as much in print. I think not.

Would I listen to more?

Yeah

Cover

meh

Audio CD, 6 hours or so
Published May 11th 2010 by Listening Library (Audio) (first published May 4th 2010)
Curse Workers #1
YA /paranormal
Own

Review: Tithe by Holly Black

Tithe by Holly Black
A Modern Faerie tale

Group: YA
Genre: Urban fantasy
Pages: 336
Published: 2004

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother’s rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms — a struggle that could very well mean her death.

(Author’s site)

It seems I have had a YA week of the futuristic and paranormal kind. I heard about Tithe long ago from a friend but back then I didn’t read YA and didn’t see the point. But now I know that they have changed from the few I read some years ago. Not that I will read many now because I have more or less gone through those that looks nice. Those that seems to be books I want to read.

Tithe was a good book, and I truly enjoyed it. I can’t belive I hadn’t read it before. It’s a very dark book and it takes up the normal things a teen goes through, sex, violence, alcohol, and feeling different from others. In that aspect I liked it, it was not a rosy sweet world, but a dark one where she didn’t attend school anymore, and everyhting was just dirty and bleak.

If you thought the faerie world was better then you are mistaken. This is how the seelie and unseelie world should look like. They are not a bunch of happy cute faries that Disney made them out to be. In the old stories they are a dark, blood thirsty, baby stealing and people drowning folk. You thread lighly when thinking you are near them and you are careful and use charms to ward them off. I like that Holly Black uses this in her book, and the fairy world is just as dark as ours.

I liked Kaye, she was a good heroine of this book. She is a bit different and she can see things that others can’t. Soon enough when back in her hometown she is thrown into a dark world and she will become a pawn in a bigger game. Then there is the dark knight Roiben, well I had to like him too. What was there not to like. Was there even ne charcater that was actually nice and sweet in this book, in a way the answer is no. For some reason I liked that because it was more real. They were nice in their own ways, like her friend Cory. Such a nice guy actually. Good truthful portraits.

I was sucked into this grim world, and I came back up wanting more. There are two more books, the second I can skip but I am curious about book 3 because there we meet Kaye and Roiben again. And I want to know how things turns out.

I would have liked to known why it was called Tithe, I just googled it and still don’t know why. Otherwise this was a great book that I do recommened. It was a bit like Wicked Lovely in the faerie aspect but much darker and more true I thought, and better. I really enjoyed this book.