Night Shift by Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Lisa Shearin, & Milla Vane

nightshiftNarrated by Angela Dawe

I was very excited when given the opportunity to listen to Night Shift as one of my first reviews. Not only was it a paranormal romance, one of my favorite romance genres, but it also featured two of the best Paranormal/Urban Fantasy authors out there – Nalini Singh and Ilona Andrews. The audio versions of both their series are so highly rated; they have been listed on the first two AudioGals Guides to Romance Audio. So knowing how popular these two authors are, I was very curious to see why this title hadn’t already been snapped up by some eager reviewer.

Night Shift was a collection of four stories set around the theme of shape shifters, beasts, or other creatures that go bump in the night. Nalini Singh’s contribution, Secrets at Midnight, featured Dark River member Bastien and the lengths he went through to finally claim the woman destined to be his. Ilona Andrews’ Magic Steals offered another Jim and Dali mystery, this time involving attempted murder by using a person’s worst nightmares. Lisa Shearin’s prequel to her SPI Files series, Lucky Charms, took rookie agent Makenna Fraser and threw her into her first case…hunting down a group of missing drunken leprechauns. And finally, author Milla Vane (aka Meljean Brook) introduced a new fantasy series filled with dark magic and a tortured barbarian out to save his kingdom and his woman in The Beast of Blackmoor.

Having finished this book, I can see clearly why this title had yet to be picked. It was very hard to give this an overall grade. You have two very entertaining stories – Secrets at Midnight and Magic Steals respectively – that were well-developed and engaging from the opening scenes, which was no surprise as these authors are known for consistently writing original and highly rated books. (Of course I’m not biased in any way!)

Then you have the latter two stories which were interesting but filled with too much information and world-building for my liking. Lucky Charms wasn’t too bad since I was vaguely familiar with the SPI world but it had too much going on at one time for me to keep up with heroine Makenna’s actions. The Beast of Blackmoor was a trial to get through though. Not only was it the darkest to listen to, it was also the most complicated storyline. There were so many names of names of gods and goddess and mythologies that I kept getting lost. A couple of times I had to stop my phone and rewind to process some new piece of information or name.

Angela Dawe was not unknown to me as a narrator but she’s not one I’ve had much exposure to. I listened to her performance of Jennifer Ashley’s The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie and enjoyed it well enough but wasn’t impressed. I think that had more to do with the fact that I had already read the book. However, I saw no major faults with her performance here. She gave a solid narration of each story, clearly giving each male and female a distinctive sound. If I had any issue, it would be that her voices for the lead characters of each novella sounded exactly the same. There may have been slight differences but that was difficult to determine since I listened to the anthology straight through. I imagine I would have done better to wait a day or so between each to give my ears a chance to forget the previous one.

I do feel that longtime fans of Renee Raudman’s performances of the Kate Daniels’ books may not enjoy Dawe’s performance of Magic Steals. She did an okay job but you could tell she was unfamiliar with Andrews’ world, mispronouncing a few words, saying “boo-da” instead of “bow-da” for bouda and making Dali two syllables instead of one.

For performance, Lucky Charms was my favorite and I felt the best demonstration of Dawe’s talents. Makenna was from North Carolina and Dawe gave her what I felt was an overly exaggerated southern accent. Although I can’t say if it was authentic, I did come to enjoy it. This one had the widest range of ages, characterizations, and accents (she performs everything from a female British accent to that of a Eastern European male). I was very impressed with how Dawe brought the characters to life.

There were a few weird pauses between sentences that made me think Dawe was starting a new scene only to realize she was still on the same one. It occurred in all stories throughout the anthology so I’m unsure if this was a narrator or a technical issue.

Overall, I think Dawe represented the majority of these stories very well. While I may not have agreed with her portrayal of each character, it was more a case of how I felt the characters should have been played.

Diana

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Narration:  B-

Content: Secrets at Midnight – B+), Magic Steals – B-, Lucky Charms – C+, The Beast of Blackmoor – C

Steam factor:  For your burning ears only

Violence:  Escalated fighting/Graphic

Genre:  Paranormal Romance

Publisher:  Tantor Audio

 

Night Shift was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for review.

3 thoughts on “Night Shift by Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Lisa Shearin, & Milla Vane

  1. I really missed Renee Raudman doing Dali and Jim’s story. She is just the voice for all of Ilona Andrews characters for me. I don’t think Dawe did a bad job with that story, I just don’t like the change in narrator. I know that many times for anthologies like this, they have different narrators for each story. Since really only two series are done on audio, you could have had each do two stories.

  2. I struggle with short stories in general, but especially paranormal short stories. I want there to be lots of time for plot and character development, and short stories can’t give that to me. I’ve liked a number of this narrator’s performances, but, when she’s off, she’s really off.

    Excellent first review. I look forward to reading more from you.

    1. I think it helped that most of these stories were built on established series. The characters were introduced previously, as was the worlds, so a reader was able to fill in gaps left out. Of course this is excluding the Vane story, it suffered from the novella weakness.

      Dawe didn’t bother me so much here because I wasn’t emotionally tied these characters. I could maintain a distance and just enjoy the book for what it was: a good set of stories set in a set of interesting worlds.

      Thanks for the welcome! :D

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