The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Anchor, 1998, 311 pages 

Original Copyright 1985

ISBN: 9780385490818

Read: September 2025, age 47

 

Beautiful, haunting, terrifying, and boring as all get-out.  It was a good book to have read, but doesn't make me want to go find more like it.

 

Rating: 4 

More Than a Little Warped - Annette Marie & Rob Jacobsen (Audiobook)

Tantor Audio, 2023, 2.6 hours

Read by Iggy Toma

Listened to: August 2025, age 47

 

The Guild Codex: Warped book 3.5 

 

I liked this one better than the last Demonized book, but it was similar - I already knew how it all worked out, so there wasn't the suspense that there could have been.  I still think that a super-group trilogy would have worked better.

 

Rating: 4
 

Delivering Evil for Experts - Annette Marie

Tantor Audio, 2021,  9.6 hours

Read by: Cris Dukehart and Teddy Hamilton

Listened to: September 2025, age 47 

 

The Guild Codex: Demonized book 4 

 

This was a real let-down after the fantastic end to the Spellbound thread.  Most of the book was playing catch-up, showing the same events of  Damned Souls and a Sangria through different eyes.  From here, it seems like Damned Souls, Delivering Evil, and the next Kit Morris book should have been wrapped together in an 'Avengers'-style trilogy, interweaving all three threads within one narrative.  Basically by here, none of it would make that much sense without the other threads anyway - might as well lean into it.  It would have smoothed out some of the redundancy as well.

 

I was happy when this book was over - enough flogging the horse, it died last book.  Not that this one was bad, but the structure made it anticlimactic.

 

Rating: 3 

Damned Souls and a Sangria - Annette Marie (Audiobook)

Tantor Audio, 2020, 8.6 hours

Read by Cris Dukehart

Listened to: August 2025, age 47 

 

The Guild Codex: Spellbound book 8 

 

Well, here's the big payoff for the series so far.  It was worth it.  Another great book, and now I'm sad, because we're done with Tori and her mages.

 

This series, especially the Spellbound thread, was fantastic.  It stayed strong all the way through to the end. 

 

Rating: 5 

Space Team - Barry Hutchinson

Zertex Audio, 2025, 7.9 hours

Read by Phil Tron

Listened to: August 2025, age 47

 

Space Team book 1

 

Humour is hard.  I'm sure there are people who resonate with this style of farce, but I just found it too much.  The characters - all of them - were just so incredibly stupid through the whole book, and I didn't find that funny.  As a result, I didn't much like the book. 

 

Rating: 3- 

Lost Talismans and a Tequila - Annette Marie (Audiobook)

Tantor Audio, 2020, 7.9 hours

Read by Cris Dukehart

Listened to: July 2025, age 47

 

Guild Codex: Spellbound book 7 

 

More of the same, which is fantastic.  Great series. 

 

Rating: 5
 

Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold (Audiobook)

Blackstone Audio, 2009, 8.6 hours

Original copyright 1986

Read by Grover Gardner 

Listened to: July 2025, age 47 

 

Miles Vorkosigan, book 2 

 

Or, how Miles' parents met.  Solid space opera & love story.  

 

Rating: 3+