Posted by Lauren in Audiobook Reviews, Dystopian | 6 Comments
Audiobook Review: Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
Publisher: Macmillan Audio / St. Martin’s Griffin
Release date: September 13, 2011
Pages: 307
Summary: Waverly has lived on the Empyrean her whole life. The giant spaceship has been on its way to a new earth for years, and all has been well, until now. People from the Empyrean’s sister ship, the New Horizon, storm the Empyrean and take all the young females captive. Waverly is suspicious of the people on the New Horizon, who seem kind on the surface, but may be more evil than they appear. She makes it her mission to uncover the truth about the New Horizon and get the girls back to the Empyrean.
The book: Amy Kathleen Ryan is great at manipulating emotions. You’ll find yourself warming to a certain character, and all of a sudden you’ll feel completely opposite. Antagonists, particularly, seem to evoke different feelings—they’re so bad (Ryan creates great bad guys), but at the same time, you can see where they’re coming from. This lets us examine what it really means to be evil: is it all a matter of perspective?
Glow features a dual narration, which is great at first, but towards the middle of the book, it fades away. We only see Waverly’s perspective for the majority of the book, and as a fan of Kieran, I was a bit disappointed. Still, the events happening in Waverly’s life were far more exciting than those happening in Kieran’s—I’m not sure I would’ve been able to handle the suspense of leaving Waverly’s perspective at chapter breaks.
The story is, overall, quite interesting and very engrossing. Though the plot seems to take priority over character, Glow is still a good read. The only oddity that I found in the book was the late introduction of a religious theme. It seemed a bit out of place; though it made sense, it seemed a little bit like the author was pushing it towards her audience.
The audio: The audio was read by Ilyana Kadushin and Matthew Brown. Like I mentioned earlier, Waverly gets the most face time in the story, so Ilyana dominated the audiobook. I liked her soft voice—I listened to the audio right before bed, and Ilyana’s narration was perfect for unwinding. (Warning to commuters who listen to audiobooks: if you have a noisy car, be sure to crank up the volume!) Another thing to note is that Ilyana does a great Evil Condescending Matriarch voice. I was seething at the main villain because of how well she voiced the character! Matthew Brown did a great job, too, and I actually preferred his narration because of his versatility (he was able to do a wider variety of voices for different characters).
3.5/5 stars (story)
For those who like: truly evil bad guys, escape plans, sci-fi
Source: publisher; thank you!
I’ve been translating (professionally) it into Portuguese, and reading Glow as I translate it (sometimes I do that, for the sake of the thrill, and when the book needs harder work, I read it before translating it ;]) and since I am a little in the beginning (10% of the book), I cannot comment on some stuff u mentioned, at least not yet, but I am a fan of Seth so far… hope it does not change! Thrill in my spine now!
I do not like Kieran. He seems so boring and so “golden boy” like Seth said… and he follows orders like more a robot than a soldier, which scares the hell out of me…
The religious theme kind of make me lift an eyebrow too, but I do remember Battlestar Galactica (have u watched it?) and they kind of dealt also with religion – which seems to be important for (some, if not the majority of human beings) – since I dunno how she deals with that either, cannot comment on that, but at least I wanted to write here my first impressions of this dystopian soap opera. =]
Have seen loads of your In my mailbox videos, and even said something to u @ Twitter, but I think it is the first time I am making a real comment here @ your blog that I like so much #shameonme
xoxo
Ana Death Duarte (aka @anaeileendeath)
Hmmm. I think if I had gotten all attached to Kieran and grown used to his POV it definitely would be disappointing to have that taper off in the second half of the book. Still sounds like an interesting story overall though:)
Oooooh! I have this on audiobook, too. I didn’t know it had duel narrators. Very cool, now I can’t wait to listen to it. It’s been sitting on my pile for way too long.
I have heard a lot of mixed reviews for this book. I do love audio books though and it sounds like this is a really good one. I may have to give it a try. Thanks for the great review.
Ohhhh this one sounds good! I like the manipulating emotions part. I like when books do that. I’ve never tried an audiobook but this seems like a good place to start. Thx!
This one sounds pretty good, I have a copy but I haven’t got around to read it quite yet. It seems weird to me that the switching of POVs just tapers off. It sounds like the audio was great! Thanks for the review, Lauren!