Audiobook Review: May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

Author: Peter Troy
Narrators: John Keating, Allyson Johnson, Barrie Kreinik, Adam Lazarre White
Duration: 16 hrs, 24 mins
Publisher: AudioGO
Source: Own

Description from Goodreads:
An American drama told from four distinct perspectives, spanning the first major wave of Irish immigration to New York through the end of the Civil War. Ethan McOwen is an Irish immigrant whose endurance is tested in Brooklyn and the Five Points at the height of its urban destitution; he is among the first to join the famed Irish Brigade and becomes a celebrated war photographer. Marcella, a society girl from Spain, defies her father to become a passionate abolitionist. Mary and Micah are slaves of varying circumstances, who form an instant connection and embark on a tumultuous path to freedom.

Review:

Phew. Audiobooks over ten discs long just seem to go on forever. When I ventured out of the house for lunch with friends today, I passed a woman leaving the library with a James Michener audiobook about as large as a freaking toaster and I just don't know how she does it. May the Road Rise Up to Meet You felt really long, and it's only 13 discs. Overall, I definitely enjoyed this, but it took some commitment to get through.

Parts of this novel, I simply loved and did not want to stop listening to at all. Unfortunately, the bulk of the novel bored me, especially in the beginning. When the book first starts, the four main characters are all children, and I just did not find myself as interested in those aspects of their lives. Two of the characters, Micah and Mary, are slaves in the United States, who, from separate places, get sold to new masters. While I know I should have been moved by this, there wasn't anything original in this part of the narrative, so I kept finding myself zoning out. Meanwhile, Ethan made his way from Ireland, beset by the potato famine and resulting hunger.

As the characters grew up, their tales became much more engaging. Micah and Mary both become slaves of utmost importance, respected, though still without freedom. Micah does better carpentry work than any white men, and Mary can make dresses just as nice (and for which her master charges just as much) as those French designers.

Ethan enlists in the Union Army with his friends, in the Irish brigade. He takes pictures of the conflict, because of his training as a photographer. The discussion of the slow movements of the army took me back to half-remembered lessons in a course on American Military History, which mostly taught me what a horrific memory I have for battles. His story line, more than any other, highlights the civil war from a regular man's perspective.

Marcella, though, had to be my favorite. Her family moved, a generation or two back, to America from Spain. She has so much sass. When the reader first meets her, she's playing a poker game with some wealthy, slave owning white men. She simpers and pretends to be a sweet, simple thing, but, actually, she's a card shark, taking their money to use for the abolition movement. Later, she gets involved in women's suffrage too. Marcella has so much strength, power and an indomitable will. In a dream cast, she would definitely be a young Natalie Wood, using all the sass from The Great Race and a little bit of the accent from West Side Story.

I rather expected this novel to be endlessly depressing as such lifelong, sweeping dramas as thing one tend to be in my experience. Actually, the message is one of hope and inspiration. The romances are sweet, and all of the characters utterly lovable.

Rating: 3/5

Narration:
Finally a full cast narration done well! Thus far, all the one's I've listened to have made some questionable casting decisions and lessened the impact. Each one of the voice actors matched their part well. Marcella sounds a bit like a sassy Natalie Wood, Ethan has his Irish brogue, Micah sounds deep and reliable, and Mary seems like just the kind of woman to excel at putting forth the face she wants whoever she's talking to to see.

Even better, they all do a pretty decent job imitating one another. The narration switches from character to character, but, once they meet up obviously, they converse with one another, so the actors sometimes need to do the voices for another actor's character. Some do better than others, but all do well enough. I doubt I would have been able to finish this in print form, as I might have DNFed in the slow passages.

Rating: 4.5/5

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Possession - Sarah McLachlan

Blue Asylum
Author: Kathy Hepinstall
Pages: 270
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good, compliant woman. Iris knows, though, that her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property.

On this remote Florida island, cut off by swamps and seas and military blockades, Iris meets a wonderful collection of residents--- some seemingly sane, some wrongly convinced they are crazy, some charmingly odd, some dangerously unstable. Which of these is Ambrose Weller, the war-haunted Confederate soldier whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue, but whose gentleness and dark eyes beckon to Iris?

The institution calls itself modern, but Iris is skeptical of its methods, particularly the dreaded "water treatment." She must escape, but she has found new hope and love with Ambrose. Can she take him with her? If they make it out, will the war have left anything for them to make a life from, back home?

Blue Asylum is a vibrant, beautifully-imagined, absorbing story of the lines we all cross between sanity and madness. It is also the tale of a spirited woman, a wounded soldier, their impossible love, and the undeniable call of freedom.

First Sentence: "When Iris dreamed of that morning, the taste of blood was gone, and so was the odor of gunsmoke, but her other senses stayed alive."

Review:
Nothing makes me more feminist smashy than reading historical fiction where women who dare to be themselves and not the obedient pet society wanted them to be are thanked for their strength by being sent to an insane asylum. Iris isn't even that radical (by modern standards); she does want a man to take care of her, but not her evil, slave-owning husband. Even though later in the story, I don't necessarily agree with all of Iris' decisions, I can't help sympathizing with her because I can see what she's been through.

Just the other day, Heather of Coffee-Stained Pages and I were discussing historical fiction that dealt with the topic of slavery. Basically, we agreed that most of the books on slavery have the exact same viewpoint and narrative, whereas other historical fiction (like that of WWI or WWII, for example) is much more creative. Well, here comes Hepinstall with an exception to that. Although slavery is a central topic, along with the treatment of women, this story is nothing like any that I've read before. I love the comparison she draws between women's issues and slavery.

The writing was beautiful, and I had a lot of lovely quotes from which to choose. Ultimately, I went with the one that speaks to my life most. I love that phrase 'ecstatic loneliness,' because, as an introvert, it really describes how I feel most of the time. No wonder reading is my favorite pastime. Plus, who can't sympathize with a person who wants more out of life? Don't we all?

The way that Hepinstall also focused on the other residents of the mental hospital was fascinating. All of the 'lunatics' made a certain amount of sense, and yet there's just no way they can hope to function. Most of them were actually lucky to be there. For a mental hospital, this one was really nice, definitely not Nurse Ratched material.

Blue Asylum is a beautifully-written book that explores insanity and slavery, both of women and African Americans. Hepinstall walks familiar territory but weaves something new (I know I'm mixing my metaphors but I don't care!). Her book will likely appeal to those who enjoy Jessica Maria Tuccelli's Glow, especially those who don't like dialect much, or The Yellow Wallpaper.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: "Her childhood had been magical, hours spent in ecstatic loneliness in the apple orchard, dreaming of foreign lands and wild adventures.. Everything was new, down to bird song and grass blades. By the time she had reached adulthood, the town around her was like a grandmother who had used up all her stories and now simply rocked on the porch. The same flowers, the same streets, year after year. She longed for someone more exotic. A prince. A pirate."

"Through this world I've stumbled
So many times betrayed,
Trying to find an honest word,
To find the truth enslaved,
Oh you speak to me in riddles and
You speak to me in rhymes
My body aches to breathe your breath,
Your words keep me alive"

Requiem for the Masses - The Association

Drum-Taps and Memoranda During the War

Author: Walt Whitman
Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
Duration: 6 hrs, 50 mins
Publisher: AudioGo

Story:
Okay, I know that neither of these are exactly possessed of a story, but I couldn't devise a better term and I like consistency. So. Memoranda During the War consists of Walt Whitman's experiences in the hospitals of the Union during the Civil War. Drum-Taps (which I humorously initially mistyped as Dum-Taps) is a collection of his war poems. Despite the title, Memoranda During the War comes first on the audiobook, which I think is stupid.

Memoranda During the War is interesting, assuming you are curious about the conditions of the Civil War. My one history course that spent a time focusing on that conflict would have benefited from these reminiscences perhaps more than from some of the books we did read (or were supposed to read). However, given its construction, which is just a series of short vignettes, it's a bit awkward to listen to. In audiobook form, it was hard to pick up on what exactly was going on. Instead, a sense of the blood, the guts, the pain and the terrible things that constantly happened just sort of washed over me. Maybe that's good, but I'm not sure. Certainly, I got an idea of the mood and the conditions, if not specific instances.

Drum-Taps I did not like at all. I suppose I should inform you that I am not a fan of poetry. Obviously, some poetry I do like, Shakespeare's sonnets (some of them) for example, but, mostly, I find prose to be much more beautiful. Anyway, I especially do not care for Whitman, or at least not when read by this guy. And, in audio format, poems are worse it seems. Poetry needs to be chewed on a little more, and listening to someone plow through poem after poem does not give time for appreciation. One definite failing of Whitman in this format is that he is one of those poets who almost always titles his poem whatever happens to be the first line, meaning that you have to hear that line twice. Many times. Ugh.

Even worse, there was a message saying this portion was over, but it was just a tease, because there were many more poems. fml.

Performance:
I have already intimated that I did not care for this narrator. My problem with Pinchot is primarily his accent. I don't care for the sound of his voice either, but that could just be me, so I won't harp on that. However, his accent is really distracting. He has a bit of a Jersey or New York sound to him (I don't know which). This means that 'er' tends to be come 'ah,' as in the case of mothah. I just can't take that seriously. Any time he dropped some serious dialect, I would start laughing, even though the content is sad.

Also, I looked at the two books herein contained just a little bit, trying to figure out what the format was, because, as I mentioned, it was a bit confusing to listen to without preparation. In the short time I spent doing so, I found two words he swapped for different ones (i. e. 'these' instead of 'those'). They didn't really make a change in content, but I do know you're not supposed to do that as a narrator.

Rating: 1/5

"Red was the color of his blood flowing thin
Pallid white was the color of his lifeless skin
Blue was the color of the morning sky
He saw looking up from the ground where he died"

Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne

Dreadnought
The Clockwork Century, Book 3

Author: Cherie Priest
Genre: steampunk
Pages: 400
ARC Acquired From: Goodreads First Reads

Brief Summary:
Vinita Lynch, a nurse, called Mercy by her patients, works in a Reb hospital in Richmond. Her husband, born in Kentucky, fights for the Union. She gets word that her husband has passed on right about the time she hears that her father, who she has not seen since she was a child, is dying out in Washington state. Although not initially inclined to go see the man who deserted her and her mother, she ultimately decides to go, partly because she needs to do something. Well, she has lots of excitement to take her mind off of the death of her husband on her journey west. There are dirigible crashes, battles, war wounds, attacks on trains and zombies all trying to keep her from making it to Washington alive.

Review:
Cherie Priest's books are really interesting and her diction and syntax excellently crafted. I have now read three of her books and I still feel like there is something missing. Maybe it's that there is never a single bit of romance; there are not even any married couples still happily together. I do not think every book needs romance, but it does seem odd that in a series of three books there would not be a single instance of attraction or a relationship. The closest to a relationship is Mercy and her husband, who never makes an appearance except in death. The main characters do not even have to be the ones; how about a couple of side characters leaving together or hooking up or something? It just struck me as weird.

Or maybe what's missing, in this book for certain, is the overarching plot. Technically, there is one: Mercy journeying to her father's bedside. Except that the book does not feel like it is actually in any way about that. At all. When Mercy arrives at said bedside, the book ends promptly. And by promptly, I mean in a page and a half. All of the drama was supposed to be to bring these two characters back together, but obviously it wasn't. It makes it quite apparent that the frame was tacked on at the end as an excuse to make the character take this trip across country. Is that bad? I think so, because it lends the whole book a sense of unreality. What was the point?

Characters from Boneshaker make an appearance in this book, although I would say it's more of a cameo than even a supporting role. As with the previous books, the women are strong, the men are too, the zombies are hungry and the scientists are crazy. While I like these books, I cannot pretend that I don't wish they were just a little bit better.

Heirs of a cold war
That's what we've become
Inheriting troubles I'm mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
I'm living with something' that just isn't fair

Mental wounds not healing
Who and what's to blame
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train