I listen to things as I work, and sometimes that's podcasts, sometimes it's audiobooks. Looking for suggestions on audiobooks, preferably fiction. Sci-fi, fantasy, urban fantasy, but anything goes. Bonus points for long, consistently good series since, as mentioned, I listen to it daily as I work, so we're talking dozens of hours per week.
What does everyone like and recommend? Thanks.
Hope everyone is having a good weekend, too!
The Dresden Files series is narrated by James Marsters and he does a DAMN good job at it. I have all of them, well worth the time.
Thanks!
I've already read/listened to that like three times at least. You're right, though. Fucking good shit. Dresden Files and MHI are both excellent in the urban fantasy genre.
In which case I recommend another of my favorites, The Saxon Tales by Bernard Cornwell. Can't remember off the top of my head who narrates it but I enjoyed the whole thing of those as well.
Jonathan Keeble is the best, but he drops off pretty early. Bounces around a few narrators until Matt Barnes takes over and ends the series really strong.
An awesome series. I still think Bob should be an angry New Yorker, but I can understand the weird British one.
The Dresden Files revolves around an abusive relationship between Harry Dresden and Karrin Murphy.
Murphy knows for a fact that Harry is a mage who can say things to cause rooms to explode and people to die. She keeps insisting on absolute transparency from Harry, and when he withholds information to protect her life, she gaslights him into admitting that he is an abuser.
Murphy keeps leading Harry on and using him fucking ruthlessly to play cop regarding supernatural forces that she is utterly unequipped to even understand, all the while gaslighting the fuck out of him.
As a survivor of an abusive relationship with a ruthless narcist who used police and the law to further abuse me, this whole book was toxic fucking sludge.
The author doesn't even acknowledge what is happening and the fan base can't suck Murphy's cock hard enough.
It gets worse in the following books.
You have been warned.
This is not accurate to the series in my opinion. To anyone who hasn't read it yet I'll try to avoid spoilers.
The core dichotomy in the series is the distinction between people who have a clue, and normies. The supernatural community has a sort of Geneva Conventions of their own, and a core rule of it involves keeping normies ignorant or scared.
Harry flouts this by placing himself in the yellow pages. He's spent most of his adult life butting heads with the idea of keeping normies in the dark, but even he himself understands that some of this crap is secret for a reason. The supernatural world of the series is one consisting of about 5% relatively benevolent beings, 20% creatures who consider humans a nuisance, and 75% predators.
Case in point, vampire groupies. In the series people who find out that vampires are real frequently try to make contact with them because they think it'd be cool, and end up as food. More than once in the series, people who Harry helped by giving them some knowledge of the supernatural end up killing themselves with it. In one of the books it is brought up that it is completely possible to learn dark magic without having any natural talent at magic at all.
Harry himself is effectively a paroled murderer. In his past he killed his old master with magic, claimed self defense and got off on a technicality. The series explains in the post Dead Beat arc that 99 times out of a hundred the governing body of wizards just executes you for this on the spot.
This combines into his attitude towards Murphy. Who, and I'll agree with you here, is worst girl and it's not even close. Hell I'd take a couple of the one off side girls over her.
Dresden is on the books for Chicago PD as a psychic consultant, something which is pretty much paying his bills in large part. As a ranking wizard he essentially is psychic anyway.
Murphy's character starts out as a normie and represents the emergence into having a clue. She doesn't understand the rules and regulations of the supernatural order, the real world behind the facade, and wants to bend them to modern day mortal law rather than accept the truth of reality. Which eventually she does, at the cost of her job, position and reputation.
Each of them condescends towards the other. Reality condescends to the facade and the facade to reality. Same behavior, but only one of them is right.
That's the underlying theme of the books. At least the first arc of the series anyway. Willful ignorance.
I think this is a fair take. And, yeah, that her bad behavior is never acknowledged, she isn't called out, and she doesn't really learn and grow is probably the worst part, I agree. I'd say she gets pretty decent, and definitely has her good qualities, but in the first book or two it's true she's largely shit.
I think this misrepresents things a bit. His master summoned one of the worst beings in existence for the express purpose of hunting him down and killing him. And at this point, Harry has no idea about the existence of the wider magical world; he’s not going to be able to get help from the White Council or anything. There’s no “technicality” there—Harry really didn’t have other choices.
Now, I also understand why the council was (is) edgy about him, both because of the way using magic to kill can corrupt you and because of essentially all of his actions since then. But to suggest that killing his master was anything less than a legitimate necessity in the moment is unfair.
True but the Council didn't know that or believe him, and I was trying to avoid spoilers so I kept it succinct.
The first book ends ... well you know how. So he is two for two.
The White Council was no help at any point; even when fully aware of the stakes.
The fist book begins with Murphy investigating a crime scene where she knows for a fact that the murderer used magic to cause the victim to die in horrific and spectacular way.
Later, when Dresden doesn't share magical secrets with her, she gaslights him about how badly hurt she is; then tries to fucking pin him as the murderer. "I can't trust you Harry. Perhaps you killed him!"
She is an abusive, insufferable cunt. She uses her position as detective and control of his access to wages to leverage Dresden, all while pretending that she a victim.
Harry yums it up, and half of his internal monolog is about how everything is his fault.
The book has redeeming qualities, but it is unforgivable that the author doesn't even acknowledge what Murphy is doing, and never, ever will.
I bet a shiny dollar that she is going to get a supernatural ascension or some such later in the series due to Murphy being a fan favorite.
Perhaps I overstated things. Dresden and Murphy's relationship is certainly the central relationship in the first book. She is a major character in the series.