Off the Bookshelf: DISPATCHER, by John Scalzi

An Audible Original

My only other experience with John Scalzi's work is the Star Trek parody REDSHIRTS.

This one takes place in a near-future Earth, where something has happened -- no one knows how or why or even has all the rules figured out -- and now nearly everyone who is murdered ... comes back. A few seconds after death, the body just vanishes, and the dead person is "reset" to several hours before death, in his or her own bed at home.

So now there are Dispatchers: people trained and working for the government, required by insurance companies and working with disaster crews and sometimes the shady side of society. Dispatchers essentially kill someone who has been horribly injured and is near death, to "reset" the victim and erase the damage. You can imagine how that puts a crimp in the activities of murderers and muggers and organized crime ...

This audiobook is narrated by Zachary Quinto (new Spock!). With just slight shifts of voice, he portrays all the characters in the story of a Dispatcher with a really tricky, possibly dangerous problem: a fellow Dispatcher has vanished, after a failed dispatch. Meaning the dead person didn't come back. Why? And where is the other Dispatcher, if he hasn't been killed?

I don't usually go in for dark, but ... whew! I recommend it, even with the rough language. Yeah, you'd cuss for a while after you got thrown down an elevator shaft, just to get you out of a building without being seen.

Off the Bookshelf: WISHES AND WELLINGTONS, by Julie Berry

An Audible Original

Fun!!
And a thoroughly logical response to the story-generating question: What if .....

This time, the question is what would YOU do if you managed to get hold of a genii and were granted 3 wishes.

And you were stuck in a stodgy, repressive boarding school in the Victorian era and you were the ultimate tomboy and the rich, spoiled brats were the headmistress' pets and you were constantly getting in trouble for sticking up for yourself? And an orphan boy in the horrible government school next door knew you found a genii, and he was trying to steal it for himself? And the genii was an arrogant, misogynistic jerk who insulted you every time he opened his mouth? And to make matters worse, his feelings were hurt because his current "lamp" was a sardine tin -- and he smelled of rotten sardines every time he appeared?

Whew!

Maeve Merritt has her work cut out for her, but she is up for the challenge. Every time she turns around, an obstacle gets thrown in her path -- or at her head. She has a few terrifying setbacks. And then the biggest snot at the school finds out about the genii and tells her robber baron father, who will stop at nothing to get the genii for himself.

I truly hope that there are more adventures of Maeve and Tommy and Alice after this one, because I want to hear more! Especially if the same narrator reads the next ones. Fun!