First let me stress that the LibriVox version of this audiobook is a piece of shit with both a lousy narrator and an appalling lack of proper production. Consider yourself warned. Oh and despite the claim that this work is in the public domain, it isn’t.
Ok now let’s deal with the legit audiobook which is quite excellent. Narrated by Suzanne Toren, this short (just under five hours) novel is set in a respite and medical aid station outside of time and space during the Change War with two sides called The Spiders and The Snakes. No one on either side has actually seen the actual beings so the names might be accurate or just descriptive.
The story is a first person narration by Greta Forzane, an entertainer who was resurrected after her death by being snatched up just as she dies her time line. Keep in mind that there is no fixed time line as the Change War constantly changes history over the billion years that the war has been going on. So billions of people who existed suddenly never existed, wars that went that way now go another way, and nothing is fixed. Leiber packs a lot of story in this short novel.
Toren gives the Greta character a word weary voice that fits the narrative quite well. She’s a bit week on male voices but it’s the rare narrator that handles voicing of the opposite gender well. There’s been a growing trend among audiobook producers to use two narrators, one of each gender to voice those genders.
Greta is an unreliable narrator, more so than the usual narrator as she admits her mind may not be accurate as the Change War creates false memories of what has happened, what didn’t happen, and so on over and and over again.
As usual, Audible Studios has done a perfect job of producing this work.
(Audible Studios, 2005)
