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Alex Picard

Narrator

alexpicard.com

As of today I am already on the second book of this wonderful series and I will be starting a “Daily React” page for it shortly.

I wasn’t originally going to write about my experience with this first book because I read it while updating and redesigning my blog which took months and by the time I was ready to post again, I’d finished it and was starting the second book. But even after all that time, Empire of Shadows is still lingering in my mind and I’m constantly recommending it to people.

To be perfectly honest, I like the second book LESS right now, so I wanted to take the time today to write about how much I love this first book.

I love this genre; the historical adventure type stuff; books that evoke the feelings of Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone, or The Mummy. I especially like the “strong, progressive female leads” in stories like this. Women like Deanna Raybourn’s Victoria Speedwell and Susan Dennard’s brilliant Eleanor Fitt.

I don’t want to read about swashbuckling men … I want swashbuckling women. I want stories written by women that focus on women. I want to read about women shooting guns, putting men in their place, being the smartest person in the room, and who aren’t always thinking about getting the girl (or guy). I know romance is popular, but it’s really not my thing at all. I like the adventure, the relationships between the people on the adventure, and just great banter and characters … them hooking up usually really turns me off, especially the hardcore stuff. I have discovered a few of wonderful books with these characteristics in the past few years and Jacquelyn’s Raiders of the Arcana series is an absolutely epic discovery because it ticks every single box for me.

What makes this series even better than a lot of others is that Jacquelyn really knows her shit. She’s got the education, the experience, and the expertise to create worlds that are exciting and you’re LEARNING about – and gaining informed and enlightened exposure to – new things. Reading Jacquelyn Bensn’s bio on her website made me fall in love with her immediately and it only added to my deep respect for the love she obviously has for the cultural histories she’s researching and writing about. Her passion comes through very clearly and I am able to really get such a great sense of things, despite my aphantasia, when I’m listening to her words.

The other great thing about this series is Alex Picard. Alex truly is a gift from the universe like Emily Ellet, Angele Masters, Moira Quirk, and Saskia Maarleveld. Her voice and style are absolutely ON POINT and she knows how to give so much vibrancy and life to the characters. Everything – from cadence, to accents, to how she shifts from the different male characters – is so great and so skilled. Many women narrators can only do one style of male voice (like Abby Craden for example) and if there is more than one man in the book it’s hell listening to them try to pitch around and slide down to make them all sound different. Alex Picard and Clare Corbett are two wonderful magicians with their voice work and I marvel at what they bring to the story as narrators, especially with the variety of male characters they can effortless move through.

As you know, from reading my experiences with audiobooks, I rarely choose a book based on the plot. I look at the title and listen to the audio sample before anything else. If I like the narrator then I don’t care what the book is about, I will buy it based on whether I like the way the narrator is reading. I have found great books this way and, even better, discovered so many amazing narrators. Alex Picard is a wonderful find and I cannot wait to find more of her work to enjoy. I love even more that she reads all the books in the series. I have found some series I have enjoyed that switched narrators at some point and sometimes the new narrator ruins the series for me. Even worse, sometimes they add a male narrator in to do all the male parts and they just suck and it makes the series worse. Alex reads all 3 books.

I said earlier that the Raiders of the Arcana series ticks every box for me and I meant that.

Ellie Mallory is the kind of character I adore reading and she doesn’t grow into someone that shifts focus to the wrong things like what sometimes happens in stories with a lead woman. The book doesn’t devolve her into some romantic, nonsensical character who stops caring about what’s truly of value and only starts focusing on her libido and love interest. That’s not to say there is no chemistry or romance or slow burning sexual tension. There is plenty and it’s wonderful and playful and not overpowering. Ellie has a very healthy relationship with her sexuality and her desires as a woman. She’s not some sexless academic who doesn’t know how to feel passion, it just doesn’t rule over everything she does and doesn’t influence her decisions. Ellie’s goal isn’t to get the guy, it’s to save the world from bad people. If the guy comes along, great. If she gets the guy too, bonus.

I love that Ellie has strong feelings about the institution of marriage, her role as a woman in society, and how men make things harder and worse. She deeply values her education and how hard she had to fight for the right to be an academic professional (even though men won’t give her the chance), and she properly hates colonialism. Her pure joy and excitement in sharing knowledge are equal only to how much she loves gaining new knowledge. She wants to teach, she wants to raise people up, she wants to impart her enchantment with everything to everyone around her. She frequently bursts into explanations of history and culture with so much fervor that I can’t help but pay attention and want to learn more. Her passion, and the passion that Alex Picard gives the performance, is addicting and infectious in the best kind of way.

Most importantly, at the time in history that these books take place in, Ellie is all about teaching men how they’re the problem and how they need to be more aware, more understanding, and just BETTER if the future is going to be more inclusive for women. In 2025 we all know that men are literally doing everything possible to destroy women and to push women back to even BEFORE where Ellie is existing, so it’s especially nice to read a character who puts powerful truths and ideas into words and vehement action. It’s equally surprising to read male characters who not only learn from her but also grow into BETTER men. This isn’t about cutting the balls off men, it’s about empowering them to be better men and be better members of a society that works to strip women of power, opportunity, and independence.

If you like 1999’s The Mummy with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz then you will positively LOVE Empire of Shadows even more because unlike Stephen Sommers – who created a “strong female character” through an ENTIRELY male fetishy gaze and didn’t allow her to be as epic as she could have been – Jacquelyn gives us what Evelyn Carnahan could have been if a brilliant woman had created her. If you like Evelyn, then Ellie Mallory will absolutely become your favorite character. Ellie says and does the things that Evelyn could have said and done if a man didn’t want her to just be “a brainy object for the hero to GET at the end” even though she could do so much better than him.

No shade to The Mummy because I will always love that movie for a variety of reasons. It’s exactly what it says it is on the tin. It’s a perfect movie to watch to get the perfect kind of feels. What I don’t like is how limited Evelyn is because of Hollywood white men and their lack of vision and bravery when it comes to writing real women with real voices.

Adam Bates, is about 1000 times more useful, reliable, and funny than Rick O’Connell. Adam is the sidekick in Ellie’s adventure, not the other way around. By the end though, they are truly partners in everything that happens. I love Adam as a character, but I always prefer to have no men in the story to ruin it and make it all about heteroeroticism. As of writing this I can tell you that book two, Tomb of the Sun King, is already heading that direction … it feels like the majority of the focus is now on the romance and sexual tension between Ellie and Adam. It’s no longer kind of cute, sweet, and empowering and more “I wanna fuck you every second but we’re not married so we can’t” every chapter – first from Ellie’s perspective and then switching to Adam’s. It’s … unfortunate and really takes away from everything I love about Empire of Shadows.

Ellie Mallory and her dearest friend Constance Tyrrell are two of my favorite characters in fiction right now, even in book 2. They are truly ready for any adventure and they embrace life in the best ways despite how hard the world tries to hold them down, push them back, and limit them.

I believe there is a prequel novella, The Stolen Apocalypse, that focuses on just them having an adventure together and if that’s true I can’t wait to read it. You can actually get it free just by signing up to Jacquelyn Benson’s mailing list.

Charlotte English, author of the House of Werth series, calls Empire of Shadow “A feminist, anti-colonialist tour-de-force, a pulse-pounding adventure tale, and a compelling, spirited romance all in one.” and that pretty much hits the mark.