Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

Narrated by Renee Raudman

Dina Demille runs the Gertrude Hunt Bed and Breakfast, located in an older but beautiful suburb in Texas. However, Gertrude Hunt is no ordinary B&B and Dina isn’t a regular manager; she’s an Innkeeper. Innkeepers are magical people who offer places of sanctuary and rest for travelers of all worlds and universes. It is Dina’s job to see to their comfort and protection while they are in residence.

It is while seeing to the needs of a guest that Dina comes across a problem. Something is mauling the neighborhood’s pets. She’s tried to ignore the incidents, hoping that local werewolf Sean Evans would take care of things, but this is the third such incident. She can no longer ignore whatever creature is causing this trouble. As an Innkeeper, Dina is supposed to remain neutral but this is her community and she cannot sit back and do nothing. What if this creature were to hurt a child in the neighborhood?

When Dina goes on a hunt for one of the creatures, she catches sight of it and is stunned. Something much bigger is going on in the neighborhood, something more than a rabid beast killing people’s pets. It’s going to take more than her trusty broom to fix this problem.

Clean Sweep was such a complex and intriguing book and my description doesn’t do it justice. It was like all of my favorite science fiction and fantasy movies rolled into one book. There were so many layers to the book; one minute it’s a simple telling of a woman struggling to find her parents, another time it’s a man discovering a history he didn’t know he had. Each word and fact was deliberately placed so as not to overwhelm the reader but tantalize instead. The book was so clever in its delivery of pertinent facts that I didn’t know I had learned something of importance until several scenes later! Who else but Andrews could put an innkeeper, a vampire, a werewolf, and a Shit-Tzu together and create a new world that seemed all too plausible!

Renee Raudman was first introduced to me with the Andrews’ Kate Daniels series. And while I couldn’t grow accustomed to Raudman as Kate (her voice didn’t match the one I heard in my head), I think this was the perfect alternative for me. Raudman was a joy to listen to! Her performance was skilled with no loud breaths or mispronounced words and the Texas accents seemed genuine. I was able to distinguish each character without having to strain my ears. You could tell she was quite familiar with Andrews’ writing, capturing the tone of the book and it’s pacing very well.

Raudman made the listener believe they were right in Dina’s head as events unfolded. When Dina got anxious and afraid, the narration sped up and was delivered in staccato bursts. When Dina was ill and her senses started fading out, she slowed down her pacing and paused an extra minute between words. I found my heart pounding at certain parts with no understanding why. Then I realized it was because the narration had pulled me so deep into the story that I had forgotten I wasn’t really there with Dina.

There was one issue I found irritating in regards to the narration (production?) and that was the unusually long pauses between chapters. They were so long that a few times I thought my iPhone had stopped working. It was a small concern and not one I want to presume was the narrator’s fault since it seems more of a production issue.

Diana

Narration:  A-

Book Content:  A-

Steam Factor:  You can play it out loud

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Urban Fantasy

Publisher:  Ilona Andrews