After Hours in Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik
Narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith, Frankie Corzo, Imani Jade Powers, Simon Vance, Elizabeth Knowelden, Saskia Maarleveld, Lauren Fortgang, Billie Fulford-Brown, Ell Potter, Steve West, Lisa Flanagan, Anisha Dadia, and Bronwen Price
Genre: fantasy
Format: ebook & audiobook
Narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith, Frankie Corzo, Imani Jade Powers, Simon Vance, Elizabeth Knowelden, Saskia Maarleveld, Lauren Fortgang, Billie Fulford-Brown, Ell Potter, Steve West, Lisa Flanagan, Anisha Dadia, and Bronwen Price
Genre: fantasy
Format: ebook & audiobook
About After Hours:
After Hours is a short story in the Buried Deep and Other Stories collection of short stories by Naomi Novik.
Based in the world of The Scholomance series after the events in The Golden Enclaves.
This is a snippet of Beata's story. Beata is a mushroom witch.
Source: Info in the "About After Hours" is provided by me.
Buy Link(s):
My Thoughts:
This is a short story about Beata, a mushroom witch who is not an enclaver in the Scholomance. If you are familiar with the Scholomance series, then you would know that being a non-enclaver in the Scholomance is a disadvantage.
Anyway, Beata is trying to bump up her chances of surviving by doing something advised by the school handbook that students should not do. And of course they go into trouble.
Being a short story, it really does not have a real plot. No clear beginning nor an ending. Despite that, this short story managed to tell a tiny story and entertain. Kudos to the author!
I do not advise to read this snippet before The Scholomance trilogy because the world building was done in those books. The snippet also alludes to the events in The Golden Enclaves which a reader will not understand if he/she hadn't read the Scholomance books yet.
I am not sure who the narrator is. It sounded kinda like Anisha Dadia. However, I am not 100% sure. Very good narration though!
Quantitative Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Writing Style = 4
Ending = 4
World building = 5
Cover art = 2
Pace = N/A
Plot = N/A
Narration = 5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Writing Style = 4
Ending = 4
World building = 5
Cover art = 2
Pace = N/A
Plot = N/A
Narration = 5
Books In The Scholomance Series:
Meet The Author
An avid reader of fantasy literature since age six, when she first made her way through The Lord of the Rings, Naomi Novik is also a history buff with a particular interest in the Napoleonic era and a fondness for the work of Patrick O’Brian and Jane Austen. She studied English literature at Brown University, and did graduate work in computer science at Columbia University before leaving to participate in the design and development of the computer game Neverwinter Nights: Shadow of Undrentide. Over the course of a brief winter sojourn spent working on the game in Edmonton, Canada (accompanied by a truly alarming coat that now lives brooding in the depths of her closet), she realized she preferred writing to programming, and on returning to New York, decided to try her hand at novels.
Naomi lives in New York City with her husband and six computers.
The Narrators
About Nicholas Guy Smith:
Nicholas Guy Smith is an award-winning audiobook narrator and a much sought-after voice actor for film trailers, commercials, and documentaries. He has voiced characters for Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, and the Cartoon Network. A postgraduate of Cambridge University, he resides in Los Angeles.
About Frankie Corzo:
Actor. Narrator. Cubanita. Daughter of immigrants, mother of dogs, enthusiast of caffeine, fan of stuff.
About Imani Jade Powers:
Audiobook narrator. Voice-over artist. Actress.
Simon Vance is a stage, TV, and film actor who has narrated more than 200 audiobooks for which he has won multiple AudioFile Earphone Awards and Audie nominations. He has also been selected as an AudioFile Golden Voice. Formerly a BBC Radio newsreader in London, he now resides in Northern California.
About Elizabeth Knowelden:
Elizabeth is an actress, singer, director, creative artist and New York Times Bestselling audiobook storyteller.
VOICE ARTIST
Elizabeth is a New York Times Bestselling audiobook narrator and multi award winning voice artist — an Audie Award and Voice Arts Award Finalist for solo audiobook narration and is a multi Audie Award and Multi AudioFile Earphones Award winning actor. Elizabeth also works in film as a voice match artist in ADR, alongside BBC radio drama, looping, video game, audio books, audio drama, radio plays, animation and commercials. Clients include Disney, Warner Bros, BBC, Marvel.
As an audiobook narrator she works across the board in genres, but is most known for creating worlds with a plethora of characters... with a special delight towards the sinister, magical and historical. With clear diction and connected performances, she immerses the listener into the world of the author with a true, emotionally engaged portrayal. With a passion for the spoken word and a selection of accents from around the world, Elizabeth is rapidly making a name for herself in this much loved art form.
About Saskia Maarleveld:
Saskia Maarleveld comes from a large family where audiobooks were the only way to get though car rides without fighting. She attributes this to her love and understanding of reading books aloud. With a full, warm, strong and expressive voice, Saskia is the perfect fit for a variety of audio book genres. Raised in New Zealand and France, her ability with accents and dialects is excellent, with many of her books being narrated entirely in accents other than her own (which is tough!). Based in New York City, Saskia spends her time narrating and trying to stay out of the restaurant business. In addition to this she creates video snacks called ‘Kevin and Phebe’ — very funny for a slow day at the office.
About Lauren Fortgang:
Lauren Fortgang lives in NYC where she currently works as an actor and voiceover artist. Born in Wilmington, DE she spent her early years in rural towns throughout northern California. Following training at A.C.T.’s Young Conservatory in San Francisco, she attended Fordham University: College at Lincoln Center, where she majored in theater. Her curiosity for tapping into varied niches of the industry has afforded her a broad career spectrum, both in and out of the 'spotlight' as actor, singer, spokesperson, audiobook narrator, producer, and, on the odd occasion, costume designer.
Television credits include roles on Law and Order (NBC), Law and Order: SVU (NBC), and Important Things with Demetri Martin (Comedy Central). Her work in independent films has been showcased in a variety of festivals, including Queens World Film Festival, NYTVF, Breckenridge Festival of Film and NewFest, and she’s performed theatrically at the New York International Fringe Festival, LaMama (50th Anniversary Season), and The Flea.
Commercial credits consist of national on-camera and voiceover campaigns for Google, Ikea, NY Lottery, Walmart, TJ Maxx and Woolite. She’s given voice to a number of video game characters (MTG; Starfinder; GTA:Liberty City), educational materials, and long-form journalism for Apple News+. She performs regularly as an audiobook narrator.
As narrator, Lauren has worked with a vast roster of premier publishers featuring Audible Studios, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Blackstone Publishing, Hachette, Harper, Scholastic, and beyond. To date, she has voiced nearly 400 unabridged titles across multiple genres including works by Neil deGrasse Tyson, James Patterson, Joan Didion, Leigh Bardugo, Louisa May Alcott, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Candace Bushnell, Ann M. Martin, R.L. Stine and Brené Brown.
Lauren is both an Audie Award and multiple-Earphones Award winner whose work has been recognized by Audiofile Magazine, the Audio Publishers Association (APA), the American Library Association (ALA) and Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), School Library Journal, Library Journal, USA Today, Market Watch, Bustle, Forbes, Slate, Paste, and Publisher's Weekly.
An indiscriminate hobbyist, she’s often occupied with any number of crafty passions, runs in ragtag trivia circles, and makes every effort to outmaneuver regular attempts on her life, as part of a long-standing D&D campaign.
She lives in Brooklyn with her beau and one beefy resident cat.
Proud member of SAG-AFTRA
About Billie Fulford-Brown:
My passion for voice work started during my professional acting training at The Central School of Speech and Drama, The London Centre for Theatre Studies and with Frantic Assembly.
A degree in Human Geography combined with a love of travel (including time spent living abroad) have enabled me to study communities, cultures and people across the globe. These experiences have undoubtedly helped me to develop and perfect accents and characterisations; skills which I'm regularly hired for.
Before moving full time to acting and voice over, I spent time working in private banking. This experience of the corporate world has helped inform my professional performance and demeanour in explainers, corporates, e-learning and IVR. It also means I have a good handle on corporate lingo.
About Ell Potter:
Ell is an actor, writer, and award-winning narrator. While training at LAMDA, she was named Audible’s ‘Breakout Star’ and her debut audiobook was subsequently nominated for an Audie. She has since recorded extensively with numerous publishers, winning multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards in the process. Her narrator credits include Hamnet, the Winter series, Dark, Salt, Clear (BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week), In At The Deep End, and little scratch. She is also a comedian: her most recent show FITTER sold out its debut 5-week run at London’s Soho Theatre and was nominated for an Offie. Before training as an actor, Ell read English at the University of Oxford, where she graduated with first class honours and was the winner of the Nigel Smith Memorial Prize for English Literature. She’s therefore officially a Bookworm.
A London native, Steve began his career by winning the Stage & Television Today acting scholarship at the age of 17 (after ironically believing that he had bombed the audition!). What followed took him through one of London's top drama conservatories, onto the West End stage in ABBA's musical phenomenon Mamma Mia! and then to working opposite the likes of Chucky the killer doll and Don Draper in TV's Mad Men.
Having moved to the States in 2009 he earned a place as a highly respected and award winning voice over artist working across commercials, films, documentary, audiobooks and video games. He starred as Galahad in Sony's epic motion capture release The Order 1886 which took over 2 years to film and employed the most up-to-date filming and audio techniques in the field.
Versatile in a multitude of ways from acting to singing to dancing to dying 100's of different ways in a sound booth he continues to enjoy work both on stage, screen and behind a mic. Check out his latest news on the home page, join the conversation on Facebook and twitter and even head back to the 1800s and 'be' Steve/Galahad on the PS4!
About Lisa Flanagan:
Lisa Flanagan is an award-winning audiobook narrator, voice actor, director, improviser, and classical soprano based in New York City. Her voice-over work includes animation, video games, and commercials. Lisa has received multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and Voice Arts Awards, including Best Audiobook Narration, Children's for Disney-Pixar's WALL-E.
Actress. Writer. Voice Over Artiste. Comedienne and more.
About Bronwen Price:
Bronwen Price trained at the Oxford School of Drama and spent many years as a professional actor in theater, TV, and film, before finding her home in the world of audiobooks. She was recently nominated for Best Performance in Audiobooks at the 2022 One Voice Awards. She is based in London, and works mostly from her own professional home studio, a Kube isolation booth. Welsh by birth, though a natural RP, Bronwen can switch between many regional British and worldwide accents with ease. Her voice is warm, reassuring, and clear, making for a very smooth narrative read, and she specializes in authentic and truthful characterization. She has recorded over fifty audiobooks with a wide range of UK and US companies, including the BBC, Harper Collins, Strathmore Publishing, Dreamscape Media, Lantern Audio, Brilliance Publishing, and Deyan Audio.
FTC Disclosure:
The ebook and audiobook were bought with private funds.
No money received for this review.
The ebook and audiobook were bought with private funds.
No money received for this review.
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