I loved the Hells Rejects series which was my initial encounter with the work of M. R Forbes and the amazing performance of Jeff Hays. This series started out as well as I could have hoped for. However, this novel which picks up from the final occurrence in the previous novel has been quite difficult to enjoy as much as all previous novels due to the dual intertwined yet separate main characters story lines. Add to that all the different names and ‘hosts’ held by most of the entire cast of main characters and it became quite tough to just sit back and listen to while doing other things. Typically I listen to audiobooks while I’m doing other things as others might do with music. Being a former lifelong professional musician, I’m honestly tired of music as it reminds me of what I can no longer do making me both sad and angry. So instead I listen to audiobooks. I’ve been powering through hundreds of hours of books every week for a few years now. Before, I’d typically only listen to audiobooks while I was in bed trying to fall asleep. So I never bought books with complex plots or stories since they’d get my attention and because of how my brain is wired…keep me awake listening.

The point of this review is to let the author and performer both know that I think they did their usual terrific job in a very difficult scenario set up by the first three books. I hope book five will be more like the first few and not similar to this book in how the story is told, etc. This is the first time I’ve not given all five stars for each of the three categories. I had to go back and re-listen to several chapters to figure out what I must have missed because of how this book needed to be told and the complexity of both the characters and story. I’m not angry, but I thought I’d just mention why I gave the ratings I gave.

I recommend this series as well as the Hells Rejects series to anyone who enjoys excellent fantasy based stories that have vey interesting characters fully developed and a wonderfully new style of narration. These two artists take full advantage of their born talents AND are smart enough to use modern recording technology to enhance the performance. Now off to begin book five.