Summary

I knew how much I was missing Melissa Caruso's epic characters and unique world, but I didn't realize how much I really NEEDED these kinds of feels especially these days. Hearing Moira again as Kembral and Jaycel brought me so much joy as I settled under my covers.

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8.22.2025

These books are perfect!

Chapters 8 thru 17

It’s so impossible for me to explain how much I love these books. Melissa writes so beautifully and she is one of a handful of authors I have experienced whose words create the closest to “pictures” that an aphant like me could have in their mind. Moira though … I mean come on … she is SO, SO good at what she does. Her performance is incredible. The life she gives … it’s just unbeliveable. Every laugh, every sigh, every line read is amazing.

Something very few narrators do are those incidental reads that give indication of movement or mood or action, but Moira is such a master of them. Maybe this comes from her experience in video games which have a lot of those kinds of reqirements for voicework. I don’t know what the literal term is for what I’m talking about here, but what I mean is like when a character is, for example, taking a bite of a sandwich and the narrator reads the line as if their mouth is full even if it doesn’t say specifically in the text that that is happening. Another example is if a character is running or being chased and they’re speaking while running, the narrator is breathless while delivering the lines.

Many narrators, especially the ones who are not actors by trade, tend to just “read lines” – Oh that’s hilarious, Bob said chuckling – versus doing actual “line reads” which would require you to actually chuckle while saying Oh that’s hilarious. That is the difference between straight narration and narration with performance to me. Sounding strained while reading a line when the character is supposed to be picking up a heavy box or sounding sleepy or yawning when the character is just waking up … even though it doesn’t explicity say in the text – “she said while yawning”. The narrator is understanding the action and giving life to the lines in accordance to the action, not just reading what it says on the page. Actors narrating books is a whole different world sometimes from narrators who are just telling you what the words are.

I think the more experience the narrator has with performance – especially theater actors, those who have worked on videogames, and just those with a certain comfortability being on the mic and knowing how to create mood and feel with their voice – the better the audiobooks tend to be. It’s not always the case though … there are some actors who narrate terribly. They are great on screen but that does not translate to how they read books. They are terrible readers sometimes because it’s so different from acting and they just don’t know how to translate acting through the mic.

Moira brings the entire book to life; she makes you FEEL the words, not just HEAR them. She reads prose well – giving the scene mood, tension, excitement or whatever through how she reads – and also gives life to dialogue and action DURING dialogue. Audiobooks performed by Moira Quirk are an ENTIRE experience.

Melissa knows how to craft an amazing mystery too. I don’t usually enjoy mystery novels because either I’ve already figured out “who dun it” halfway through the book because it’s so obvious or the person who did it is some rando that was mentioned once and when it’s revealed I’m like “who even is that”? Melissa has you on the edge of your seat the entire time. There is no way to guess the outcome or predict “who dun it” or who is responsible. There is always something new being revealed and not in an annoying red herring kind of way – something I consider to be a really amateur way to misdirect the reader – but because there are so many complex and well plotted out layers to the mystery that she has created.

The Last Hour Between Worlds was a locked room mystery + Groundhog Day book of absolute brilliance. The Last Soul Among Wolves is similar as far as some mechanisms, but it feels like a completely new experience.

Story this session: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0
Narration: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0

8.20.2025

Oh How I Have Missed You!

Chapters 1 thru 7

When I put on my sleep headphones last night and hit the play button I was so excited for what I would be hearing. I don’t normally get excited about books, well, I never did before discovering audiobooks anyway.

Hearing Moira again as Kembral and Jaycel was just such a wonderful moment. I had a huge smile on my face as I settled beneath my covers and that is such a tremendous difference between how things were in 2020 when I first started listening to audiobooks due to major anxiety and racing thoughts as soon as I closed my eyes. Audiobooks became a way for my mind to focus on something other than the pandemic and everything crumbling around me. It allowed me to be wisked away into fascinating worlds and meet amazing characters that weren’t suffering the way myself and everyone around me was. Audiobooks became a great escape, especially at bedtime when my anxiety was at it’s worst. Discovering authors I’d never heard of like Melissa Caruso and talented narrators like Moira Quirk has made a huge difference in my quality of life; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The start of The Last Soul Among Wolves was absolutely spectacular and I was laughing through the first few chapters as Moira launched into voicing Melissa’s whip-smart and hilarious dialogue from some of my favorite characters in fiction right now. It has been 10 weeks since the events in The Last Hour Between Worlds and we’re picking up with Kembral, Jaycel, and Rika as they walk right into their next mystery … thanks to Jaycel of course. The first line of the book was pretty much: “It was Jaycel’s fault.” LOL and now that I think of it, wasn’t it Jaycel who invited Rai to the New Years party in the last book as well? LOL. She’s the best kind of troublemaker; someone who will also be right by your side fighting with you when the trouble comes to a head.

Something I haven’t mentioned in either of my reviews of Melissa’s work – because generally I’m talking about the audiobook performances – is how beautifully she writes. Melissa has a wonderful way with words. The way she combines them together so beautifully to create a powerful sense of mood, sound, and emotion is something I value very highly. Having aphantasia means I cannot picture things in my mind’s eye. I need a lot of description to help me cobble together images and ideas from my existing memory to create a close-ish facsimilie of what I think the author is trying to get across. Melissa isn’t the first author to write in such a way where it is much easier for me to get a distinct feel for the scene despite my limitations, but her words also have the added bonus of being conveyed by Moira Quirk who imbues those phrases and lines of dialog with a powerful sense of life. I think Melissa’s works, read by talented people like Moira Quirk and Saskia Maarleveld – who reads her Sword and Fire series – become something entirely different and even more potent.

For me, as I’ve said many times, a good audiobook performance is the difference between reading just words on a page and watching a film bring those words to life. People who have working and active imaginations can picture the words they read as if they are movies happening in their minds … that must be incredible and must make reading much more enjoyable. For those of us with just a dark hole in our minds, words on a page can feel just empty and devoid of color and life without someone to infuse them with luminosity through the power and passion of their performance.

If you’re simply here wondering if The Last Soul Among Wolves is as good as The Last Hour Between Worlds, I would say, as of right now, it’s a perfect start but don’t take my word for it. My experience is not your experience and what I enjoy about books is not the same as what you enjoy. When I write about my experiences with media it is not a sales pitch, it is simply what media means to me and how I interact with it.

The first seven chapters were incredible and really set up the adventure and mystery right away. It sucked me in hard and fast and I’m wholly invested in whatever is going to happen. The same thing happened to me when I started the first book; by the second chapter I was completely hooked. Melissa doesn’t waste time building ideas, plot, characters … she builds AS she goes so you’re not waiting and waiting for something to happen or for the action to begin. You’re just IN IT and you’re along for the ride, learning and discovering as Kembral does. It’s a great technique in films too. You don’t want to lose your audience by spending so much time trying to develop intrigue; just tell the story, let us be a part of the emerging story and action. Show, don’t tell.

I can’t wait to dive back in tonight!

Story this session: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0
Narration: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0