Face the Music (A Space Opera Noir Novella)

Xeno City Blues, Book 1

By: Todd C. Wilson

Narrated by: Nicholas Vespia

Xeno City, a cross roads in a sprawling multi-species galaxy, is also a city brimming with greed, corruption and murder.

Wading through this murky cesspool is J. Azize "Jazz" Singer. A private detective pursuing an honest, or not so honest, buck.

When Jazz is told of the death of his childhood friend, Erta L’Hotzuma, a death the local law fails to investigate, he sets out to find out who is responsible and why.

His investigation, however, soon meets strong and violent resistance and he begins to suspect he has stumbled onto something bigger than just the death of a friend.

Face the Music is the first of the four part novella series Xeno City Blues.

©2020 Castrum Press (P)2020 Castrum Press

Great Introduction

I'm a bit new to the hardboiled detective noir kind of genre, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this book. I was pleasantly surprised when this book took me somewhere so unfamiliar as Xeno City. In such a short span of time, Todd C. Wilson puts us in Jazz's shoes and takes us on s fast paced adventure full of suspense with a satisfying conclusion. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would reccomend it if you enjoy things like The Dresden Files, The Fetch Phillips Archives or the show "Cowboy Bebop."

Right length for the plot

I received a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

This is a 3.5 star book, but stupid rating system doesn't allow me to rate it that.

This is an unusual type of story. This story combines a personal revenge story with a detective story. Both are very common their own, but don't usually show up together, in my experience.

The settings are familiar, with an alien twist. The bulk of the story takes place in an alien city. The city feels very much like an earth city, with a little differences thrown in to make it different. However, it all feels natural and nothing feels out of place.

The secondary characters are mostly all 1 note shadows of people. Henchman #1, generic reporter, Bad Guy boss, etc. The books length prohibits too much development of these unimportant characters, but it would have been nice for some complexity to the supporting characters.

The main character is more than that. He is semi complex and has more depth than the people around him. We receive an extensive back story on him and character motivations. However, his motivations are fairly shallow. There is little self doubt, or self reflection on his motivations or actions. The plot basically follows the main characters gut reactions to stimulus and just flows from there without being examined. It makes for a fast paced story, which can be good, but also makes for underdeveloped characters.

The plot itself is fine but not overly complicated. It's a semi mystery, in that the main character is trying to find out who he is looking for, but ultimately is more procedural than a detective figuring something out. Again, it's fine for a 4 hour book, but it would have to be much more complex to be adapted into something longer. It's fast paced and fun enough to maintain my interest, but not complex enough to really engage me.

The voice narration, by Nicholas Vespia, is fairly well done. He does some voice differentiation and has enough voices to cover the characters in the book. There was little opportunity for him to do female voices, as most all the characters were male, so I can't really speak to his ability to do that. However, he seemed to be having fun with the book and that came through in his reading, making it more enjoyable.

Ultimately, it's not a bad book. It has the right length for the complexity and pace of the story. Any longer, and it would feel empty. The fast paced story and hollow characters lend themselves to this type of book. The voice narration is well done and feels fun.

I'm not sure I would go looking for a sequel, but I would definitely pick it up if I came across it.

Great Story; Smooth narrator

Narrator had a smooth voice that helped give characters unique personalities, the story has alot of potential with an expanding universe

If you like Sci-Fi and Noir this puppy is for you

This book is really good, It has a nice mix of smart comedy with gritty detective themes; it is slow to start but really picks up speed and becomes a fantastic read.
I highly recommend listening to the audio book version because the Narrator really brings all these characters to life. Its not often when I'm listening to an audio book that I forget that one person is doing all these different characters voices. Jazz is a really well written character and I hope to hear more of the narrator preforming him in the future.

A potent mixture of gravity and comedy.

A leisurely narrative with an interesting premise and changes in tonality that were not unwelcome and overall very enjoyable. Much like a awesome score can make a good movie great, the narrators articulation was instrumental in changing a casual listening into an active experience that flew by before I could realize it.