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Review – Vatican Assassin by Mike Luoma (Podcast)

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March 9, 2013
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VatAss2012 Today I’m reviewing Vatican Assassin, an audiobook/podcast novel by Mike Luoma. You can follow follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeLuoma.

Synopsis: Bernard Campion’s friends call him “BC”. Not that he has a lot of friends. You don’t make a lot of friends when you’re an assassin. His mission: eliminate the governor of Luna Prime, Meredith McEntyre. His bosses, The Office of Papal Operations: The OPO, tell him she’s been sympathizing with the enemy, the Universal Islamic Nation (UIN). His boss? BC works for the Pope.

It’s 2109, a time of war. BC is “officially” assigned as PR man to the Vatican Mission on Luna Prime, the major city on The Moon, as his cover. Just a mild mannered, young, twenty-something priest working for the New catholic Church on public relations. But he’s really a weapon pointed at the UIN by the NcC and their Earth based allies, the Universal Trade Zone, the UTZ.

Production: I believe Mike has experience in radio. His voice is excellent and the recording quality is good. He plays a little with the audio, using reverb and other audio effects to tweak the listener experience. Perhaps my one nitpick here is that when he has explosions or other onomatopoeias, he actually says them rather than using actual sound effects. With such a broad availability of free sound effects it would have been a better experience to use those.

Grade: B-

Cast: Mike voices all of the characters. For the most part they’re variations on his own voice and are reasonably consistent. The only problem is that when it comes to emoting, every character sounds “upbeat”. Mike also sounds like he’s reading the text more than acting it out. Finally, there are a number of places where it would have been good to add a brief pause between characters speaking. Because some character voices don’t change, there are times where it’s hard to know who’s speaking. It’s a bit like reading text with no paragraph breaks.

Grade: C

Story: There are some issues with the writing in this podcast novel. First, and this is mostly a stylistic preference, he writes in present tense. That can work to lend a sense of immediacy. I’ve seen it used to good effect, but here for some reason it doesn’t work for me. It also feels like he really wanted to write this in first person, since we get BC’s internal monologue. As it is it’s written in kind of a 3rd person limited.

My biggest beef with the story is that it’s listed as a science fiction adventure. There’s definitely a science fiction element, but I never got a sense of adventure. The story of an assassin, particularly one that’s being used by the Vatican in a war torn future, should be action packed. Approximately a third of this story is dedicated to his imprisonment and subsequent theologically based brainwashing. The few times there is action it feels glossed over. This is less James Bond or even Dan Brown than it needs to be.

There’s a fair amount of strong language, itself not something I ordinarily object to, but for some reason it was particularly jarring in the second half of the story.

Grade: C-

Verdict: I had a hard time making it all the way through this podcast. It wasn’t bad. I’ve certainly experienced far worse. There were times that I really wanted to put it down, but I kept hoping that it would live up to the potential that I felt it had. The last third had glimpses of that potential. I can’t really strongly recommend this.

Grade: C

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Review – Enemy Lines (Podcast)

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January 11, 2013
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enemylinescover2 Today I’m reviewing Enemy Lines, an audiobook/podcast novel by John Mierau. His site can be found at http://johnmierau.wordpress.com/ or follow him on Twitter at JohnMierau. This is an EPIC bit of science fiction, both in terms of scope and length.

Synopsis: In the near future, an alliance forged by powerful men will challenge the US government for control of secret technology. As their machinations gear up, the true owners of that technology will face a challenge of their own, deep in the asteroid belt. At stake? The future of the human race. ENEMY LINES is a science fiction adventure about conspiracies, spies…and aliens… in a future where the lines aren’t as clear as you think.

Production: The recording quality is good. I noticed more than a few repeated lines. The intro music is a bit louder than the narration.

Grade: B-

Cast: John does the narration and character voices.

Grade: B

Story: I mentioned that this is a huge story. He’s released the first half of it in ebook form with Subversion and Infiltration. I believe that the final two books will be out sometime this year. It logs in at forty-five episodes that are somewhere around thirty minutes each. It’s packed with political intrigue, action, thought provoking characters, action, thrills, and have I mentioned action? All of that serves (mostly) to keep the story from getting bogged down with its multiple plot lines and points of view. I found John’s take on the typical gray alien tropes to be fascinating. I also enjoyed the concept of the Wrights, human’s who are using alien tech to help humanity.

There were a few character actions and incidents that made me raise an eyebrow. The didn’t interfere with my enjoyment. I say mostly above because there’s a lot going on here. As a result it may be easy to get lost. There were also a few things I was unclear on, particularly towards the end. That could easily be because my listening was broken up by other podcasts I listen to, so that may not be the books fault entirely.

Grade: A-

Verdict: This gets a solid recommendation from me, as do the rest of John’s podcast stories. His strength’s lie in building tension and creating interesting characters. There were also a few chuckles along the way.

Grade: B+

Review – Spirit Blade Podcast

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June 22, 2012
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Today I’m reviewing Spirit Blade by Paeter Frandsen.

Synopsis: In a future where the government mandates the spiritual beliefs of its citizens, only a few rebellious “Seekers of Truth” remain to free the world from deception.

On his quest for meaning, Merikk follows a path that leads him across our world, and into another. Against his will he is thrown into action alongside members of the Underground Liberation, standing face to face against forces human, alien and demonic. Science fiction and the supernatural collide in a genre-bending adventure! Open your mind and then brace for impact as you discover the power of the Spirit Blade!

The Spirit Blade Audio Book is a novel that serves as the source material for the scripts of the Spirit Blade Audio Drama Trilogy. This archived draft has been converted into an enhanced audio book format read by Paeter Frandsen and featuring sound effects and musical score from the “Spirit Blade” and “Spirit Blade: Dark Ritual” audio dramas!

Production: Absolutely stellar. This is, in my opinion, professional quality. The music and sound effects all add to the atmosphere.

Grade: A+

Cast: Paeter does all of the voice work, male and female. He truly acts it out. There’s also a fair amount of digital manipulation unless I miss my guess. This does lead to a few oddities, like one character who reminds me of Christian Bale’s Batman.

Grade: B+

Story: Paeter describes this as “Christian Science Fiction”. From his site:

[It] is simply science fiction with a Christian twist. The realms of sci-fi and fantasy have already been touched by classic writers of the Christian faith like John Bunyan, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Modern authors like Frank Peretti, Stephen R. Lawhead, the duo of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, along with several others, have also delved into worlds of Christian sci-fi and fantasy.

Sometimes these stories are allegorical. Other times they are more literal. They may take place in our future, an alternative past, or possibly in worlds and realities completely different and alien to our own. They may contain clear presentations of Biblical truth, or simply uphold the values and ideals of the Bible. But something of Christianity is always found in their depths.

Overall, I’d say that the writing is good, though perhaps not great. The story certainly entertained me. I did like his take on demons and how they might interact with the real/spiritual world. The story moved quickly (at times too quickly) and there was a great deal of action and a surprising amount of violence. I say surprising given the nature of this otherwise typical bit of Christian fiction. By that I mean, Paeter doesn’t use any swear words, pulling a BSG and making up his own. There’s also a lack of sexual situations. The characters are all a little two dimensional, especially the bad guys. I barely noticed that though as the action and pacing pulled me along.

Grade: B-/C+

Verdict: The best part about this book was the action and the production. It really immersed you into the world that Paeter created. If you’re a fan of the authors he mentions then you’ll likely get a kick out of this.

Grade: B+

Addendum: While I enjoyed this, I will say there are some things about it that made me ponder. This is one of those works of Christian fiction that both displays and disproves some things that bother me about the genre (if Christian Fic is really a genre per se).

For the former, this strikes me as something that only a Christian would listen to and enjoy. That bothers me a little since, as a writer who is a Christian, I believe we need to produce things that make it out of our little ghetto. The amount of “preachiness” is in places excessive. Does the book really need that considering its audience? There’s also that weird vibe I get from books that splash a fair amount of gore and violence around but won’t drop an F bomb (unless it’s “frell”) and won’t show a boob (not that sex is necessary, but it’s at least as human as violence). This isn’t limited to Christian lit, but we seem to fall prey to it most often.

For the latter, this proves that Christians can put out a quality, polished product. Much of what I’ve seen in our ‘verse suffers in that department. There’s also some grayness in some of the characters that one doesn’t often see in this slice of entertainment. Some of the good guys aren’t all that “good”. If Paeter had slowed the pace down some and developed some of the characters further that would have made for a more solid story.