John Scalzi
Audible (Run time: 2h 19m)
October 4th, 2016
Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher. It’s a strange job, straddling lines of morality. Years ago, murder victims started coming back. Upon dying, the bodies of the victims simply disappear, reappearing in their bedrooms, nude and the damage of the past hours undone. There’s now a new profession of Dispatcher–if someone is undertaking something they’re afraid will kill them–surgery, risky behavior, accidents–a Dispatcher will murder them before they die, returning them to life.
Tony gets approached by a detective–one of his old friends, another Dispatcher, is missing. They’re afraid there’s been foul play. Now he needs to work with the detective to find his old friend, or at least find out what happened to him.
The Dispatcher is an audio-only novella from John Scalzi, and it’s obviously written with the particulars of reading dialogue and story aloud in mind. It works so well, it had to be.
It’s read by Zachary Quinto. Quinto has a smooth voice, one interesting to listen to. He does several different accents and voices for each of the characters, lending his acting skills to the dialogue. He brings the colorful characters to life, and makes discussion between multiple characters easy to parse. Emotions are evident in each bit of written speech—Quinto sighs, warbles or shouts when needed, giving impact to each moment. It’s a real treat to listen to, and having been written by Scalzi, it’s also a great story with great dialogue. Scalzi and Quinto were well matched in this. It’s free on Audible for the month of October, so hurry up and go get it. It will also have a printed edition sometime in 2017 from Subterranean Press.
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.