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A review by graculus
The North Side of the Sun by Malinda Lo, Racheline Maltese, Joel Derfner, Patty Bryan, Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson
4.0
Tremontaine - episodes 1 and 2 Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner is one of my favourite books, so I was an incredibly easy sell for this series - published weekly by Serialbox, Tremontaine is a prequel to that book set some 15 years earlier in the same universe. So far, I am in love once more with the whole universe Ellen Kushner has created and she is now letting other authors play in it with her as well.
Anyway, how the whole Serialbox thing works is that you subscribe and each week, for 13 weeks, you get a new part. It comes out in various ebook formats or as an audiobook, with the ebook running to about 45-50 pages and the audiobook being naturally significantly longer (episode 2, for example, clocked in at 1 hour and 38 minutes if I recall correctly). The audiobook is narrated by a number of different people, so it's not just a straight reading of the text, and so far I've decided that's the route I'm going to go with Tremontaine.
Here's how the website describes it, since I can't really sum it up much better than this:
A Duchess whose beauty is matched only by her cunning; her husband’s dangerous affair with a handsome scholar; a foreigner in a playground of swordplay and secrets; and a mathematical genius on the brink of revolution—when long-buried lies threaten to come to light, betrayal and treachery know no bounds with stakes this high. Mind your manners and enjoy the chocolate in a dance of sparkling wit and political intrigue.
I've very much enjoyed the two episodes I've heard so far and am looking forward eagerly to next week's installment - it's a close-run thing to say who is my favourite of the characters, with the main contenders being Kaab and Micah. Kaab is so clearly an outsider, not quite as adept as she thinks she is with the culture in which she now finds herself, while Micah is so very fascinated by numbers, even while simultaneously being used by others to make money by counting cards in the local taverns! Can't wait to see how these storylines develop...
Anyway, how the whole Serialbox thing works is that you subscribe and each week, for 13 weeks, you get a new part. It comes out in various ebook formats or as an audiobook, with the ebook running to about 45-50 pages and the audiobook being naturally significantly longer (episode 2, for example, clocked in at 1 hour and 38 minutes if I recall correctly). The audiobook is narrated by a number of different people, so it's not just a straight reading of the text, and so far I've decided that's the route I'm going to go with Tremontaine.
Here's how the website describes it, since I can't really sum it up much better than this:
A Duchess whose beauty is matched only by her cunning; her husband’s dangerous affair with a handsome scholar; a foreigner in a playground of swordplay and secrets; and a mathematical genius on the brink of revolution—when long-buried lies threaten to come to light, betrayal and treachery know no bounds with stakes this high. Mind your manners and enjoy the chocolate in a dance of sparkling wit and political intrigue.
I've very much enjoyed the two episodes I've heard so far and am looking forward eagerly to next week's installment - it's a close-run thing to say who is my favourite of the characters, with the main contenders being Kaab and Micah. Kaab is so clearly an outsider, not quite as adept as she thinks she is with the culture in which she now finds herself, while Micah is so very fascinated by numbers, even while simultaneously being used by others to make money by counting cards in the local taverns! Can't wait to see how these storylines develop...