looking for a new series on audible

[basschick]

i'm looking for a new series on audible in either detective/mystery/police procedural, modern fantasy or urban fantasy. maybe a novel, but nothing with modern politics, army stuff or hard scifi. most important thing is the narrator - no cutesy girly voices (this drives me NUTS when the character's supposed to be a tough 35 year old), no rich melodic important male voices, no radio announcer voices. not looking for someone who reads really slow or really fast.

if there's romance and sex, i'd hope not to run into TOO much of it, as it's annoying to fast forward through the naughty parts. no heroines or heroes who make lots of stupid decisions, no romances that develop ridiculously quickly, no characters who seem to do nothing but jump to conclusions. and for the love of god, if someone just died or is missing or something awful happened, spare me from books where the heroine is admiring some guy's butt just after those things happened.

a couple of my favorite audible series include the dresden files - the reader is a perfect harry - and the in death series. the reader for the in death series is superb. in fact, i don't like some of the books that much, but the reader - or in her case, actress - is flawless. her reading never gets in the way of the story, her voices for the characters are so consistent that i can tell who's talking immediately most of the time. i did feel her roarke was a little too irish at times, but hey - she was working with a director who must have wanted it. so i just fast forward through the sex scenes and the ones where roarke is threatening to pour a soother down eve's throat again.

[FizzyWater]

Have you read/listed to Alexandra Hughes' Mindspace Investigations? First book is "Clean", although there's prequel short story (which isn't worth the trouble of getting for an introduction to the story - I didn't get it until I'd read 3 of them).

Warning: the author had decided to go self-pub when the publisher wasn't happy with her sales. Then she got pregnant and discovered having a new baby in the house makes it hard to write! She still says she plans to add books to this series, but I'm not holding my breath.

I really got hooked on the world and main character, though, so I still recommend it.

One more note - it's a sci-fi police procedural series. But it's not hard sci-fi. In a way, it's more like alternative history with a bit of magic. It's a bit of a genre-bender.

[basschick]

i have listened to the sample of the first book, and at some point added it to my cart, but never quite bought it. i guess the reader has an excellent noire voice, but i felt like the sample didn't have any real noire to it. still, it's interesting, and since you suggest it, i'll probably give it a try. very short series, though. thanks for the suggestion.

[FizzyWater]

I'll admit, I read them, rather than listened to them, although I did purchase them from Audible for a future re-read/listen. I subscribed to the author's blog newsletter, and she did intend for it to be a longer series, but life (or rather "new life") happened.

Have you looked into Ben Aaronovich's Rivers of London series? I've only listened to the first book, but I really loved the narrator. Folks on the ongoing Dresden thread here at Mobileread mention this series (and the Alex Vera series by Benedict Jacka) as series to read while waiting for another Dresden book.

Someone on that thread also posted that the Michael Connolly series (which sounded like a mystery/police procedural) was very good - but I didn't check into it. It was something like 30+ books, and I wasn't interested in starting another long-term series!

One more series that is fantasy that I very much enjoy is Michelle Sagara's "Chronicles of Elantra" series. I'm not sure about the narrator, though....the main character is 20 or so, but IMO emotionally immature (not childish, more stunted development because of the way she grew up). I think she sounds like a quirky young adult. But I think the voice fits the character well.

I'd give a caveat to say I don't actually read a lot of standard fantasy, and sometimes there are portions of this series that I feel are going over my head because I'm not versed in the standard fantasy tropes. I don't quite know how to label this - the lead character is a young female in the emperor's guards....she wears leather pants and is skilled with knives. But it's a pre-industrial revolution world with magic. So to me, that puts it more in the standard fantasy line than "urban fantasy" (although it's set in a city, not the country side).

[basschick]

i had already red the rivers of london series when i got the books on audible. the narrator sounded JUST the way i thought the character would sound

funny thing - i'm not sure about the connolly series, but i just checked and my husband has apparently listened to all the books. that actually means i ordered them, as he uses my audible account. are those the harry bosch books?

i have at least the first ten elantras - the reader is someone i really didn't enjoy for the books. i might have accepted her as reading for the main character, but as a narrator and reading the parts of the male characters, she felt off-putting and she seemed very modern to me, too, for some reason. it felt more like regular fantasy to me, too, btw. i think nightshade was my favorite character in the first few books.

have you read michelle west (sagara's) sun sword series? the first few books are really great, not the happiest books in the world but wow, can that woman write!

[FizzyWater]

Yes, it was the Harry Bosch books the others were talking about.

A friend of mine loved the Sun Sword books, but I'm just not all that into regular fantasy. Too much politics and intrigue for me.

I'd agree that there's a modern feel to Elantra narrator, but when those first came out, I actually expected typical urban fantasy not regular fantasy. The cover had a woman in leather head-to-toe, and in that kick-ass-urban-fantasy-female-pose that is used for urban fantasy. Nightshade is a bad man - like a mafia boss! I'm afraid I've always leaned more toward Severn, even given what he did. Sagara has sort of dropped most hints of Kaylin going either way IMO. I have wondered is she put that in because - at the time those books first came out - "love triangles" were pretty common in urban fantasy. (She was first released in Harlequin's LUNA line, which wasn't officially supposed to mean there was romance, but category readers expected it and so tended to prefer the authors who put some hint of romance at the least in the stories).

I don't think Sagara truly feels Kaylin isn't emotionally mature enough - in many ways, she still acts like a mid-teen. I started a re-read/listen after the last book came out, and it really hit me this time around that while Kaylin insists she's grown up (not the team mascot any more), she still acts like the kid she was (always late, ignores what she's told and just does what she wants...)

I really like the series and the world, but I get frustrated with on-going series where there's no emotional growth. The 11th book (last year's) was probably my least favorite of all of them - however, I listened to it again before I listened to this year's book, and the theme she introduced in that book ("is Shadow always evil") was carried forward in the next book in a storyline that I enjoyed more, for whatever the reason.

Do you have any interest in history mysteries? I am hooked on a few of them (one was only 6 books long). None are police procedurals.

P B Ryan's "Gilded Age" mysteries (series might have been renamed to "Nell Sweeney mysteries" when she self-pubbed them) has 6 books, with the main character being a governess with a hard past. Yes, there's an ongoing (slow, slow) romance, but I don't remember sex scenes. Sadly, only 4 were released in audiobook. I don't remember my impressions of the narrator.

CS Harris has her "Sebastian St. Cyr" series - disenchanted son of an earl (after returning from the wars) gets pulled into helping find murders. There are romantic elements in the books, but again, not the focus. The first time I listened to the narrator, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to listen to this series...I think she has a pedantic, school-marmish tone. But a LOT of the reviewers on Audible love her narration. So I'm willing to say, it could be me, not her.

I got hooked on Victoria Thompson's "Gaslight" mysteries in print, although I always seem to be a few books behind. I don't know why I don't start these as soon as I buy them, because I almost always enjoy them. I haven't listened to them yet, though, so I have no idea whether the narrator is any good.

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by basschick

i'm looking for a new series on audible in either detective/mystery/police procedural, modern fantasy or urban fantasy. maybe a novel, but nothing with modern politics, army stuff or hard scifi. most important thing is the narrator - no cutesy girly voices (this drives me NUTS when the character's supposed to be a tough 35 year old), no rich melodic important male voices, no radio announcer voices. not looking for someone who reads really slow or really fast.

if there's romance and sex, i'd hope not to run into TOO much of it, as it's annoying to fast forward through the naughty parts. no heroines or heroes who make lots of stupid decisions, no romances that develop ridiculously quickly, no characters who seem to do nothing but jump to conclusions. and for the love of god, if someone just died or is missing or something awful happened, spare me from books where the heroine is admiring some guy's butt just after those things happened.

a couple of my favorite audible series include the dresden files - the reader is a perfect harry - and the in death series. the reader for the in death series is superb. in fact, i don't like some of the books that much, but the reader - or in her case, actress - is flawless. her reading never gets in the way of the story, her voices for the characters are so consistent that i can tell who's talking immediately most of the time. i did feel her roarke was a little too irish at times, but hey - she was working with a director who must have wanted it. so i just fast forward through the sex scenes and the ones where roarke is threatening to pour a soother down eve's throat again.

You might want to try https://www.amazon.com/Time-Shifters.../dp/B01NAGA5XH

Mature female voice, light on the romance, very interesting story about people who can shift through time.