Audio: The Beast Player - Nahoko Uehashi

By: Nahoko Uehashi, Cathy Hirano - translator

Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly

Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins

Unabridged Audiobook

Release date: 03-26-19

Language: English

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Fantasy YA

My Thoughts

I enjoyed this one. Wow, was it actually almost 15 hours? It did not feel like that, I listened to it really quickly.

It follows Elin, whose mother is killed at the beginning when the serpents under her care die. (yes aholes much!) The rest of Elin's family is nothing to have and she is sent away.

There was a lot of bee talk. Complicated creatures. But I liked it, Elin is 10 and she needed something stable. I liked her time there. Will say no more.

Then there is a school and beasts. This country uses water serpents to fight and then there are the royal beasts that are treasured beyond all as a symbol for the country. Elin comes into her own here. She is a very peculiar 10 year old, she loves to question things and think things true. And she does not loose that as she grows up.

The world was well done too. I felt I was there. The bees made it so.

The end, well it must be a series since this is book 1 and 2. And there are a book 3 and 4 too in Japanese. And I can not read the blurb, srsly, I want to know! Is it about Elin still? About something else. Ok I have to ask someone. Because it does end, sort of good. Happy for now, but things are not calm.

Also, it does start of as MG, then it turns YA. But at the end she is 20...I would say this is a MGYAADult then ;)

Narrator

She did a great job with male and female, old and young. I felt Elin grow under her narration and it fit her well.

 I think this was my first narration by her and I would listen to her again. She felt good for fantasy too

Blurb

Elin's family has an important responsibility: caring for the fearsome water serpents that form the core of their kingdom's army. So when some of the beasts mysteriously die, Elin's mother is sentenced to death as punishment. With her last breath she manages to send her daughter to safety.

Alone, far from home, Elin soon discovers that she can talk to both the terrifying water serpents and the majestic flying beasts that guard her queen. This skill gives her great powers, but it also involves her in deadly plots that could cost her life. Can she save herself and prevent her beloved beasts from being used as tools of war? Or is there no way of escaping the terrible battles to come? 

Audio: A memory called Empire by Arkady Martine

• Teixcalaan, Book 1
• By: Arkady Martine
• Narrated by: Amy Landon
• Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 03-26-19
• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

My Thoughts

This was a planet bound scifi, and it really was more about this alien city, which was not that alien since they are human too. This was politics and mystery.

Mahit has lived her entire life on a station. She has never seen anything else, and she has dreamed of the City. Teixalaan, the empire. She speaks the language, she reads the poetry and she is chosen to be the ambassador. Since the previous one died all the sudden. Which of course is the whole mystery, why did he die? Is something rotten in this vast empire?

Mahit's people also saves the memories, if they are good memories and implant them into others. She gets the bad end of the stick, 5 years of the previous ambassadors life, since he has not be back to the station in 15 years. And she does not have enough time since it is a sort of symbiotic relationship. She will no longer be just Mahit. She is Mahit, and Iskander at the frey.

She is enchanted by the city as she arrives but she can also see the faults as she is new and not stuck in old ways as the Teixcalaan.

“You pump the dead full of chemicals and refuse to let anything rot—people or ideas or … or bad poetry, of which there is in fact some, even in perfectly metrical verse,” said Mahit. “Forgive me if I disagree with you on emulation. Teixcalaan is all about emulating what should already be dead.”

It was a fascinating culture. They sure liked their poetry. If you did not know poetry you were like dead to them. It was all about poetry.

And I liked Mahit, she is doing her best and she knows that she needs to know more to survive. Politics and murder mystery. And she gets a  great sidekick along the way too!

I enjoyed this story, but it did end. So I am curious what the next book will be about, if it will still be about her or someone else.

Narrator

I liked her voice. She brought desperation into Mahit's voice and the superiority to the Teixcalaans, since all are barbarians to them. She did well with male and female voices too as Mahit does have a male voice in her head

Blurb

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident - or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.  

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion - all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret - one that might spell the end of her station and her way of life - or rescue it from annihilation.  

A fascinating space-opera debut, Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire is an interstellar mystery adventure.