Anzulla: According to ISH

This is an absolutely mind-bending story containing alternate Earth history, SF wonderful characters and steamy romance. I enjoyed every minute of it and here are a few of the reasons why. First, with all the doom and gloom AI stories in the news these days, I loved the AI character of Lasitor. His chapter introductions were a great mix of actual facts and information about the way things work in this fictional world. He also saves our characters multiple times and you can "hear" the eye rolls every time at the antics of these irrational flesh and blood creatures. Second, we get the return of old friends from previous books in the New Beginnings series like Cian, Eryn, Ivan and others and they aren't used as minor, secondary characters. They play major roles in this book and we see them grow and change and learn new things about them. Next, the characters felt real to me because I didn't like all of them from the beginning. I found Peter especially hard to warm up to just like I find some people in real life but I came to appreciate him more as we see him through Ish's eyes and because like all the characters he develops and changes over the course of the story. I loved the way the author organized this story so that it was not told in a linear fashion. It felt like a wonderful jigsaw puzzle/mystery/stained glass that I had to pay attention to and try to catch all the clues and pieces as we changed time periods and locations and got to see events from different perspectives. I love a book I can't coast through. Finally, there are just some genuinely great lines in this book. My favorites from the first time I read it, that I couldn't wait to hear performed were "Hmmm, an alien, an angel, and a dead prophet. Welcome. We've been expecting you. Please come in." If that has vague Dracula vibes, there's a reason and every bit of this is important to the story and paid off.

Now to Jonathan Waters' performance. This is a long, complicated book and can't have been easy to perform with all the different characters, characters appearing at different ages and in different time periods and with plenty of scenes of high emotion. It would have been so easy to create caricatures and/or go over the top but Waters never puts a foot wrong. The emotions are spot on, the voices are distinct, his voice is great to listen to for 17 plus hours and it sounds like he's having a ball.

Very much looking forward to more from this author and narrator combo.