Title: Ravensong
Series: Green Creek: Book Two
Author: TJ Klune
Narrator: Kirt Graves
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Run Time: 20 hours and 18 minutes
Category: Fantasy
At a Glance: Kirt Graves is like a comforting cuppa mixed with a warm blanket on a rainy afternoon. He builds tension with his pacing, he creates atmosphere with the rich timbre of his voice, and he melts your heart with the rich emotions he invests in his narration. For me, there is no other narrator suited to these stories.
Reviewed By: Sammy
Blurb: Gordo Livingstone never forgot the lessons carved into his skin. Hardened by the betrayal of a pack who left him behind, he sought solace in the garage in his tiny mountain town, vowing never again to involve himself in the affairs of wolves.
It should have been enough.
And it was, until the wolves came back, and with them, Mark Bennett. In the end, they faced the beast together as a pack… and won.
Now, a year later, Gordo has found himself once again the witch of the Bennett pack. Green Creek has settled after the death of Richard Collins, and Gordo constantly struggles to ignore Mark and the song that howls between them.
But time is running out. Something is coming. And this time, it’s crawling from within.
Some bonds, no matter how strong, were made to be broken.
Review: Ravensong, the second in the Green Creek series, focuses on Gordo and Mark and spans their almost-thirty-year past. It’s vital that you read the first in this series, Wolfsong, before venturing in on to this one, or you will be hopelessly lost. In fact, I wished I had reread Wolfsong, for it would have made the first few chapters if this novel less intimidating and easier to put into perspective. Make no mistake, this is angst with a capital A ,and your heart will just ache for Gordo, over and over, while also wishing he would get his head out of his proverbial you-know-what and get on with it already. Rather than try and encapsulate the gist of this lengthy audiobook, I will give you just a few thoughts regarding the story element before focusing on Kirt Graves’ narration style.
Gordo and Mark have a troubled and layered past rife with hurt and betrayal and duty to the pack. These guys were mates that shoulda, woulda, coulda, if fate hadn’t intervened and ripped them apart. I still can’t figure out how Gordo reconciled the past and got beyond it, but suffice it to say that the romance, while very slow moving, is present, and there is reconciliation. But, the pack is on the cusp of danger once again, and there is something really bad coming—hence, a third book to yet be released. There was a lot of detail regarding Gordo’s past, and be forewarned that both men have other lovers in the intervening years, so if that is something you can’t abide, tread carefully with this story. All in all, this book was necessary. Gordo would not have been my first choice to get his own story, but in retrospect it was pretty critical to see what had shaped his and Mark’s past in order to deal with the present and future battle to come.
Now to Kirt Graves and what I must note is his brilliant ability to tell a good story. Granted, he had great material to work with, but that voice, that incredible mastering of the effective pause, the lyrical tone, the mesmerizing cadence that lulls you into fully engaging with the story. Kirt Graves may not always differentiate voices of various characters, often bleeding one into another, but oh my, the way this guy reads; it is nothing short of stunning.
I love, love, love listening to Mr. Graves read aloud. He takes words and makes them into mental pictures just by the way in which he gives life to the prose put before him. There is a hypnotic effect that goes hand-in-hand with his ability to infuse life into the written word. He is like a comforting cuppa mixed with a warm blanket on a rainy afternoon. He builds tension with his pacing, he creates atmosphere with the rich timbre of his voice, and he melts your heart with the rich emotions he invests in his narration. For me, there is no other narrator suited to these stories. He is the perfect partner to Klune’s wolf stories, and I sincerely hope he narrates all others in this series.
You can buy Ravensong here:
[zilla_button url=”https://www.audible.com/pd/Ravensong-Audiobook/B07L4C5QJS?qid=1547738789&sr=sr_1_1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=HYNXEQC70PRZF79V285Q&” style=”blue” size=”medium” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Audible [/zilla_button][zilla_button url=”https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/ravensong-green-creek-book-2-unabridged/id1445616697?mt=11″ style=”blue” size=”medium” type=”round” target=”_blank”] iTunes [/zilla_button][zilla_button url=”http://authl.it/B07L4T61RZ?d” style=”blue” size=”medium” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon [/zilla_button]