Book 30 of the In Death series
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Genre: SciFi murder mystery, police investigation, crime fiction
Format: (unabridged) audiobook
About Fantasy In Death:
In the latest novel from #1 New York Times-bestselling author J.D. Robb, it is game over for the criminals pursued by NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas.Source: Info in the About Fantasy In Death was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6542645-fantasy-in-death on 04/08/2012.
Bart Minnock, founder of the computer- gaming giant U-Play, enters his private playroom, and eagerly can't wait to lose himself in an imaginary world, to play the role of a sword-wielding warrior king, in his company's latest top-secret project, Fantastical.
The next morning, he is found in the same locked room, in a pool of blood, his head separated from his body. It is the most puzzling case Eve Dallas has ever faced, and it is not a game. . . .
NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas is having as much trouble figuring out how Bart Minnock was murdered as who did the murdering. The victim's girlfriend seems sincerely grief-stricken, and his quirky-but-brilliant partners at U-Play appear equally shocked. No one seemed to have a problem with the enthusiastic, high-spirited millionaire. Of course, success can attract jealousy, and gaming, like any business, has its fierce rivalries and dirty tricks-as Eve's husband, Roarke, one of U- Play's competitors, knows well. But Minnock was not naive, and quite capable of fighting back in the real world as well as the virtual one.
Eve and her team are about to enter the next level of police work, in a world where fantasy is the ultimate seduction-and the price of defeat is death. . . .
In this futuristic world, they have holo games so realistic that if you die in the game, you die in reality. Ultra mag!! So the murder weapon? A game console! Wow!! But how the heck do you arrest a game villain??! A nice twist in a long running series as the In Death series. It stops it feeling like same old, same old. I count that a real feat in a long-running series, indeed! That is the upside. The downside is that I didn't really like the ending. Somehow it was a bit of a downer for me... Oh, the bad guys were caught and the good guys won... it just didn't feel like an "upper" for me...
On another upside, I really like the way Susan Ericksen reads. The way she changes her voice to suit the character. I especially like the gravely voice she affects for Whitney! The filters she uses to indicate that the sound was supposedly generated by a machine as opposed to a human character talking. Real professional! That I wish that a lot of the narrators reads like she does. Or maybe I am just really used to her by now... And like I said in previous books in this series, the In Death books is like wine, it taste better as it matures. It grows on you. And by now I am a well-entrenched fan!
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 2
Pace = N/A (12 hrs and 23 mins audiobook)
Plot = 4.5
Narrator = 5
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries
So many books!
ReplyDeleteI've listened to every JD Robb Susan has narrated, most more than once. I actually hear her in my head when I read the books. I love her Peabody (which changed a couple of books into the series, it's the later voice which is so distinctive that I love) and Roarke (best female doing male voices ever).
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