Modern Sorcery – The first Jonathan Shade novel – by Gary Jones, narrated by Joe Hempel I’ve been listening to some shorter pieces this last week, so I’ve not reviewed them here, ( a couple of erotic books as well, shock horror) but this one was a very pleasant listen, so it gets to come here.
As usual, some spoilers, but enjoyed this one, I’ll be listening to more in this series.
You can find the audio book here – http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Crime-Thrillers/Modern-Sorcery-Audiobook/B0193XZ55E
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Of course when you start following a narrator, you begin to see all the books they’ve done. this came on my newsfeed, and I thought okay why not. So I started to listen to it… I didn’t take much notice of the title, just more the ‘jonathan shade-novel’ and knew it was part of a series, I mean come on guys, the more series I listen to the more complicated my listening life is.
However, in all seriousness, I had no idea it was paranormal and no idea what this book entailed. So from the very first ‘Ester poked her head through the wall’ I was laughing at her, Jonathan and my own stupidity for not even realising this was paranormal. I presumed it was a normal PI kinda book. And I was very pleasantly surprised.
Joe does a great narration, and that’s one of the reasons why I picked this up. His characters stand out a mile, but I’ve gotta say that fact is marred by the ‘I said, she said’ you know when each character is speaking, and it got in the way a few times through this book. Of course not Joe’s fault, more down to the author. I could after listening to some of Joe’s other books tell this was an earlier version of him as a narrator, so I’ve still rated it according to all my thoughts.
What I really enjoyed about this book was the characters of course, Jonathan is a great guy, he’s his personal issues, and his life is plodding along, all until an old flame walks in and wants him to investigate the murder of her mother by her father. The murder itself is brutal and horrid to listen to, but it adds in some great tension. Naomi isn’t however letting Jonathan and his team in on all the facts and she’s quite the secret keeper. Of course only his team keep warning him that there’s something off with her and because he’s still got love blinkers on, he doesn’t listen till it’s too late.
I admit here, one of my fav characters, is Kelly, she’s the total kick ass woman we all love in these books, strong, not afraid to give an opinion and really not afraid to get stuck in and use what she’s got to get the information they need.
Ester comes pretty close as a great lovable character too. 🙂
I admit, Joe you’ve got me wanting the rest in this series, it’s action packed the characters are awesome, so much alive that you’d think they were real people. Goes all fangirl at the great storytelling and narrator acting. Haha now I gotta go pick up the others.