Narrated by John Michael Morgan

Raven Wood is walking home from a party late one night when she observes three drunks attacking a homeless man on the street. Raven, limping and walking with a cane, is usually not the type to get involved in violent interactions. After the incident that damaged her leg, she prefers to remain in the background. However, it’s not a stranger being abused but her friend – a developmentally challenged and harmless old man. As soon as the drunks begin urinating on her friend, she yells at them to stop. Unfortunately, not in time to save the man’s life.

Even worse, the men turn their attention, and anger, upon Raven. She tries to run but is quickly cornered and her cane thrown out of her reach. The men encircle her, taunting and making lewd gestures. Finally, one punches Raven in the face, knocking her down. They then drag her into an alley, tearing at her clothes and she begins to fear for her life. When she struggles, they start beating her, causing her to fall to the hard stone alley. Before totally blanking out, she swears she hears a strange voice whispering to her in Italian and the sound of bodies falling to the ground beside her.

Reynard is not a name unfamiliar to me. I enjoyed the Gabriel’s Inferno series and was curious to see how this book would differ. The Raven, Book 1 in the Florentine series, is a completely different kettle of fish and an attention-grabbing read. Most of the characters are original (for all that it contains vampires) – intelligent, dark, and well-plotted. All of them except for Raven, that is. Raven, as my dear departed Granny would have said, didn’t have the sense God gave a turnip! I actually laughed out loud a few times at her cluelessness. For instance, she wakes up and notices her limp is gone and that her face has changed – dramatically. She barely recognizes herself in the mirror or the newer slimmer body she’s sporting. And she has no memory of what happened after she left her friends’ party. Neither does she recall walking home or getting into bed and now her face is smoothed and her body can move without pain. So what does she do? She rushes off to work because she doesn’t want to be late! (Wait, what?!) At work, the police are there and she tries to hide but gets called on her absence and altered appearance for which she still has no explanation! Then later, she sets out to visit a supposed thief’s house in the city, hoping to see if she could find the missing artwork the police are looking for. Mind you, she has no experience in situations like this and makes no attempts to research the place before hand. However, it doesn’t occur to her the cops might be following her (the day after she was interviewed about the theft) or that the thief might be dangerous. She has to know as someone who has been missing for over a week (who suddenly reappears with a radically altered appearance and claims of missing memories) that the police would be watching her. Nope, she goes blithely on her way and doesn’t think twice about it. This doesn’t work for me; I like my main characters to demonstrate some smarts.

Let’s talk about what really made The Raven a spectacular book: the narration! The impressive sounds of John Michael Morgan elevated this book to another level. In him, I have a new favorite male narrator! The long hours of my road trip flew by under his smooth baritone. He is simply fabulous. The best way to describe him is as the love child of Phil Gigante and Laurence Fishburne. His narration is almost hypnotizing, immediately transporting the reader deep into the story. His performance here is the one audiobook fans rave about to all their friends. I have no problem recommending his performance as one for newbies to try – he is that good.

With Morgan speaking, I forget this is a book and instead see the words as images flowing through my mind. He even made the bad guys sound sexy! He is very talented when it comes to accents, performing the gauntlet of Italian, Russian, Irish, and American very well and clearly. His female vocalizations are just as pleasant, going up slightly in tone and with the appropriate accent. I will say his Prussian (Russian? the author uses both terms) sounds exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even finished with the book, I am not sure if that works for me, although come to think of it, Arnold is from Austria so maybe this is genuinely how men from there sound.

The downside to a voice as mesmerizingly seductive as Morgan’s is that such a deep register can get really deep – so deep you can’t hear it. At times I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I would have to stop, turn up the sound (even with headphones on!) and rewind. It didn’t happen often but enough that I wanted to mention it. Still, his is such an enthralling voice, he could curse me through the headphones and I wouldn’t care!

Something else I want to mention – my review copy had one instance of repeated phrases. I believe around the 3:50:00 mark. I’m not sure if this is the case in the final copy or not (please someone let me know) but I wanted to note it just in case.

Diana

Narration:  A

Book Content:  B-

Steam Factor:  For your burning ears only

Violence:  Escalated fighting

Genre:  Paranormal Romance

Publisher:  Penguin Random House Audio

The Raven was provided to AudioGals by Penguin Random House Audio for review.