Brother Bones

City of Lost Souls

By: Ron Fortier

Narrated by: J. Scott Bennett

A City of Lost Souls

For decades, Cape Noire had existed on the Northwest coast, a bustling metropolis of international commerce. Over time, it became a nexus for all manner of evil and corruption, fed by a dark, insidious spirit of darkness that seemed to infuse itself into the city’s very foundations. Then one night, the strangest creature of them all was born in the midst of thunder, lighting, and murder. He wears a torn black trench-coat, wide-brim fedora, and a bone-white skull mask while wielding twin silver-plated automatics. He is Cape Noire’s supernatural protector: Brother Bones, the undead avenger.

At his hands, none find mercy, only cold unforgiving justice. He now returns in five macabre, horror-filled adventures pitting him against both real and imaginary monsters. Among these, a notorious fiend garbed in blood red and known as Doctor Satan, Master of the Occult Arts.

Once again, award-winning pulp scribe Ron Fortier offers up a collection of new Brother Bones exploits from his feverish imagination. In Cape Noire, the fun is only getting started.

©2018 Ron Fortier (P)2018 RadioArchives.com

Very interesting strange tale!

Brother Bones is one scary dude! One gun in each hand ready to blast anyone away.

Undeath, Noir, and Super Science

This collection of shorts is the third installment of the stories of Brother Bones. In the classic style of undead avengers such as "The Crow" this hero with a tortured soul just keeps coming. However as with all such stories the villains must either be aware of one of the hero's fatal weaknesses or otherwise be supernaturally empower themselves. Most of the beginning of the collected shorts is short stories concerning many of the characters which appear in the culmination. Therefore listeners who are new to the series can probably piece together the interconnected histories of these characters from the short stories they appear in within this book.

As always the narrator can go from kick butt hero to whiny victim, grow for outraged villain to thankful damsel. His vocal cast is quite extensive and very distinct, and is therefore easy for audiences to pick out the different characters even during action scenes or rapid or multi person conversations. Furthermore, the narrator's own accent can easily switch from narrating noir to explaining tragedy to explaining the punchline of a character's joke very rapidly.

Given the past life of the "undead avenger" as well as his current actions and style, it is difficult to classify him as either heroic or anti-heroic but better to view him as a man paying penance with the skills that he already had in life, simply continuing to do what he did best. The book itself makes me hungry for more of the stories about him and the supporting cast as they to are thoroughly explained in the stories within the collected shorts.

Pulp Noir With Supernatural Villains and Heroes

This story was very much a comic book collection delivered in a novel form. It almost had an old time Sin City feel as it was a bunch of stories intermingled in the same place with different heroes and villains abound. Many of them I don’t feel were given the length they needed. I have to say that the brother bones story was less exciting than some of the other ones. I hate to say it, but I would have probably preferred this book broken up with some of the shorter stories extended to full length novels. Just as I was getting into a story, it ended. For example, Beast’s story was by far my favorite and was a totally disappointed how short it was. The voice Bennett had for him was awesome and I really want a book of just him.
This was my first book of Brother Bones and my first book by Ron Fortier. Have to say I really enjoyed both his writing and storytelling. Cape Noir has a dark gritty feel to it that is the perfect setting for all the different characters. The noir feel this book has mixed with supernatural elements was done quite well. These stories have a little bit of many different genres of supernatural and again I would really like to see them expanded upon. I’ll definitely have to go back to the previous three and see if there is more about some of the characters I enjoyed.
J. Scott Bennett’s voice is great for stories like these and I don’t feel this would have come across as well without him. His character voices are phenomenal and really adds to the comic book feel this has. I usually exclusively listen to horror stories, but the more I listen to Bennett, the more I want to expand my listening repertoire.
I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.

This was a different cup of tea.

I asked for a free copy of this audiobook when I saw who would be narrating, Scott Bennett. I'm a big fan of his! I love his voice. The best way for me to describe it...is soothing. He sounds like he'd be a really nice guy in person, one of those that types that rarely gets mad, know what I mean?

Anyway, overall, I enjoyed this audiobook. While I struggled to 'get into' the first third, the rest of the story made up for it. I'm not sure what the problem was. Maybe it was how the side stories connected with each other and, to me, there was too much going on? Who knows?! All I know is I had a hard time following along with the characters and staying focused.

The idea/character of Brother Bones was interesting. Did the author write a book or other short stories involving him? The guy stuck in the gorilla body...yeah, I wasn't so sure about him. IDK. It's like his character didn't really fit in all that well with the other ones. Could have just been me though. I loved the synthetic man side story. That poor guy wasn't having much luck at all. One area that stood out to me was when the scientist and Dr. Satan transferred his brain into the synthetic body. The author wrote it as though it was totally easy to do--transfer a brain into a new body and get everything hooked up. Yes, I know this isn't a science fiction book or medical text, but still.

Perhaps I missed the part of how the one lady became a vampire, but I felt like there wasn't much of her in these stories even though she was also an interesting one. Either way, I could see her written into further stories.

In the end, this was a different kind of listen for me.

WOW, AWESOME!

This is my first Bones tale, and holy crap! Very interesting - well written, and well narrated. This is a collection of shorter stories rather than a continuous full length novel, but I still loved it just the same. I'm not one to nit-pick about this aspect and that, I don't require that a story be a certain way or say a certain thing. I just go with it, and if I like it I like it. You can over-analyze everything to death and waste time instead of just "enjoying" the story.
With that said, I'm digging Bones. This is my first, and now I have to have em all, of course! One of my favorite narrators, J. Scott Bennett, is telling this one, and I have only praise for him - as usual, job well done. First heard him with Black Box Inc
by Jake Bible, and he's kept me smiling ever since!
This is a cool story. I loved it. And now I need more. You created it, now you deal with it :)
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.