THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES (The Great Courses) (audiobook) by Philip Daileader

Published in 2013 by The Great Courses.
Lectures delivered by the author, Philip Daileader.

Duration: 12 hours, 32 minutes.

Unabridged.

The idea behind The Great Courses is that anybody can have access to high quality college instructors who are truly experts in their fields. In this course the focus is the Early Middle Ages (roughly 300 CE to 1000 CE). 

Daileader starts with the start of the decline of the Roman Empire, somewhere around the year 300 CE. He looks at the trends of the late Roman Empire and how they led to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Rome, not Constantinople) and how those trends led to the political and economic systems that typify the time period we know as the Middle Ages.

There is a heavy focus on what is now France, which is well-deserved since Charlemagne is one of the biggest historical figures of this era. But, other areas get a fair amount of attention, like Ireland, Spain, and the Islamic world. The sudden appearance of the Vikings contributed a lot as well. The Byzantine Empire

Church doctrine and politics play a prominent role throughout.

I found this series of half hour lectures to be interesting, but not riveting. The section on the political machinations that eventually led to the rise of Charlemagne's empire was slow - necessary but tedious until it finally pays off and you just sit and wonder how it all worked out the way it did. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Early Middle Ages (The Great Courses) by Philip Daileader.  

A MAN WITH ONE of THOSE FACES (Dublin trilogy #1)(audiobook) by Caimh McDonnnell

Published by McFori Ink Ltd in 2018.

Read by Morgan C. Jones.
Duration: 11 hours, 11 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This comic romp features Paul Mulchrone - an unmotivated ne'er do well who is forced to volunteer 6 hours per week (and stay out of trouble) to maintain the weekly payments he receives as an inheritance from a hated aunt. He works those hours at a local hospital for older people in the memory care wing. He visits the patients and pretends to be relatives or friends that they want to talk to. Between failing eyesight, confusion and wishful thinking it works.

The author, Caimh McDonnell

It also works because Mulchrone is pretty good at improv and because he has "one of those faces" and looks a whole lot like just about everybody.

One day, he is asked to visit an old man in the hospice who is clearly dying. The old man gets confused, thinks he is the son of an old partner in crime and stabs Mulchrone with a knife he had stashed away.

Mulchrone gets treated and heads home - unhappy and confused. When another man tries to kill him, Mulchrone knows that he has stumbled onto something really dangerous...

My review:

The mystery in this book is pretty good, but the non-stop comic romp of the book got a little old after a while. Also, the ending was jarring compared to the rest of the book and was really quite creepy. It just didn't feel like it belonged. 

Not a bad book, but I don't think I will be continuing on with this trilogy.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A MAN WITH ONE of THOSE FACES (Dublin trilogy #1)_by Caimh McDonnnell.

LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Sarah Davis-Goff

 

Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by Anne-Marie Gaillard,
Duration: 5 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

Set in a dystopian future in Ireland, Last Ones Left Alive is the story of Orpen, a teenage girl. The world is overrun by "skrakes".

The reader is never exactly told what skrakes are, but it is useful to just think of them as a sort of zombie. Skrakes hunt humans and when a human is bitten by a skrake, the human gets an infection and becomes a skrake. 

Orpen grew up on an island off of the coast of Ireland. There are three of them - Orpen, her mother and another woman named Maeve, The skrakes never come to the island, but from time to time her mother and Maeve must leave the island to scrounge for supplies and hunt.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between the present and flashbacks to Orpen's childhood. There are hints as to what Maeve and her mother did before they came to the island. It is clear is that they have extraordinary hand-to-hand combat skills, both individually and especially as a team. Orpen is trained in those skills as she gets older and has finally reached the point where she can head to the mainland as well....

This is a debut novel for the author and she did an extraordinary job of telling the story from the point of view of just one character. There is no all-knowing narrator that tells us what happened to unleash the skrakes and there is no change of perspective that lets the reader go "Oh! Now I see." Instead, we get the perspective of this one young lady and it's more than enough to build a compelling story.

The audiobook was read by Anne-Marie Gaillard. Her Irish accent was an amazing change of pace for this audiobook reader. Her tone was perfect, no matter the accent.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:

LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Sarah Davis-Goff.