Stephanie K. SmithBesprekingen

Only If You Need More Carnival Row

If you are desperate for more from the world of Carnival Row and some backstory then give this a go, otherwise... I really wouldn't bother. It's not awful, and largely isn't bad, but it does lack the weight and quality that makes the show work. It does suffer from the ultimate self-sabotage of deciding to include a Fey poet and her works of love and lust that earn her acclaim and accolades, which are rather painful and trite in places.

Ultimately, this committed the worst sin of fiction in being boring and unengaging. The performance is decent, but can't save the story.

Judging by other reviews, your mileage may vary.

This was an interesting and overall enjoyable book about basically broken people finding their way back with a little help from divine intervention- somewhat fantastical but where you want to believe in the possibility and hope that it could actually happen

This was a free Audible book which is apparently a prequel to some series I've never encountered before, involving faeries and a war. I'm really not the intended audience, and had a hard time finishing it (I literally fell asleep listening to it for 8 nights in a row, unable to stay awake long enough to complete the last 30 minutes). There were a few pages/minutes which were interesting, but overall it makes no sense if you're not familiar with the canon, and I can't tell if the source material is very worthwhile anyway. Ah, the perils of goodreads challenges, I should really be more selective, even for short free audiobooks.

This is a prequel to the series on Amazon Prime. It tells about a fairy (the kind with wings) and her interactions. I found it prurient, full of drinking, drugs, sex and very little else. I only finished it because it's a very short (about 3 hours) audio book.

Carnival Row: Tangle in the Dark
By: Stephanie K. Smith
Narrated by: Karla Crome
This story starts telling how the main characters, in the season premiere on NetFlix, meet. Then it goes into more details. Some that wasn't on screen at all! Surprising and interesting.
Narration was very good!

This was okay. I got this as an Audible Original and the audiobook quality was good. The story is set in the world of Carnival Row (an Amazon Prime original TV series) and it was mainly a love story between two characters. This is an interesting world but I wasn't that engaged with the characters or the story.

I actually watched the first Amazon Prime episode of Carnival Row before I listened to this story, I was really hoping for something similar in tone to Penny Dreadful. However, I had the same issues with the TV series as I did with this story and just couldn’t get past the strange emphasis on weird fairy sex.

At times this story felt a bit like an HBO special with lots of unnecessary language, crudeness, and sex. Normally this doesn't bother me much, but it felt excessive and out of place here. The timeline was also a bit confusing, it seems like the story starts in the present, goes back into the past and then comes back to the present, but this isn’t clearly stated at any point.

Overall this was okay but not great. It provides some backstory on Tourmaline for those who are loving the Amazon Prime series. If you didn’t like the Amazon Prime series you won’t like this audiobook either. I personally think I am done with Carnival Row in all forms of media.

Ok, so I haven't seen Carnival Row yet, but I caught a glimpse, and it looks intriguing, so when this came up on audible as a freebie, I didn't hesitate to snag it.

It was an enjoyable little story, and well performed. eager to dive into the show now!

Tourmaline Larou is a student, an aspiring poet, and moderately well-connected. Her future looks promising, if not exactly brilliant, and she lives a pleasant life of studying by day and partying by night.

Then Vignette Stonemoss arrives, her new roommate. She's from a completely different background from Tourmaline and her friends--from the provinces, not the capital. The provincials are normally figures of fun to the elite that Tourmaline is at least on the fringes of.

Vignette upends both her emotional and her intellectual life. Both love and her creative juices are unleashed. Yet while love and poetry blossom, the world is darkening. War, crisis, and occupation arrive. The world of the fae is suddenly occupied by human soldiers.

Tourmaline is now juggling love, a rising career as a poet--which is far more politically significant among the fae than one might suspect at first glance--and growing political tension and the dangers of the occupation. It strains her relationship with Vignette, her relationships with her friends, and ultimately her understanding of herself.

This is an engrossing novella, connected to the Carnival Row Amazon Prime series, but I didn't find that unfamiliarity with the Amazon Prime series made it difficult to follow. There is adult content--straight and gay sex, prostitution, and rape--that some listeners might prefer to avoid.

Recommended.

I received this audiobook as an Audible Original free offering, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

SteamFaeMagicPunk Prequel
Review of the Audible Audio audiobook edition (2019.
NOTE: Explicit adult language and sexual scenes involved.

This is primarily for fans of the Amazon Prime web TV series Carnival Row and is a prequel story about faeries Vignette ("Vini") Stonemoss (played by actress Cara Delevingne in the series) and Tourmaline Larou (played by actress Karla Crome in the series). In this novella length (3+ hours) prequel Karla Crome narrates the story from her character Tourmaline Larou's point of view.

Fantasy is not really my genre so what I know about the series is based on checking a few Wikipedia and Wiki articles. This seemed a reasonable prequel in keeping with the world-building of the story. In it, Stonemoss and Larou are still in the Fae kingdom/lands of Tirnanoc before they are forced out as refugees who end up in the world of Carnival Row. This is more of a romantic story in the 'girl meets girl / girl loses girl' vein. There isn't much magic or fae action except for a short flight scene in the middle and in the refugees escape towards the end. I see some commentators label this show as steampunk, but aside from being set in an alternative universe equivalent to our 19th Century, I didn't really get any technological edge to it, it is more of a mythical creatures mash-up with our Victorian era.

Karla Crome's narration was excellent.

Carnival Row: Tangle in the Dark was one of the Audible Original free gifts to members for the month of October 2019.

Trivia and Link
I was impressed that a recent TV-series such as Carnival Row has already built up quite an elaborate Wiki fanbase at https://carnival-row.fandom.com/wiki/Carnival_Row_Wiki