Do not feel sorry for your rage...Shape it, mold it.

This Audiobook is such a disappointment.
Firstly, the format is not so much a novel as a screenplay, divided into play!ist video clips rather than chapters, not in itself off putting except some to ish unexpectedly only to do things in the next clip. Yet it is not a conventional screenplay, either, seemingly merging script and novel, directions, conversation and action. The reason this device was used is obvious: one of the main protagonist is filming everything she sees throughout; and it might have worked had some of the action recorded in the story not been seen by the camera.

There is confusion, too, in the similarity of names of the (mostly female) characters, not helped by the narrator also apparently sometimes fudging the pronunciations, leaving this reader unsure of who was being mentioned. Several attempted starts were aborted because of a personal inability to absorb what was being said of done by or to one of the protagonists.

Set some time in the not too distant future, the story centres around a mid teenage girl, Aura, daughter of a popular singer who is herself being groomed to be famous. Surrounded by wea!th and celebrity when so many were impoverished, she falls in love with the idea of leaving it, and her parents, to join a band of female gun toting motor cyclists known as the Amazons, affiliated to a mega corporation which is a rival to that in which she has grown up and been pampered. Intertwined with her personal romance is a mission undertaken by the Amazon's which is 'straight out of a Greek tragedy.'

Had the story been more accessible, it could have been both touching and thought provoking. Perhaps, in print rather than as an audio production, it is more compelling. But the choice of the narrator was also wrong. John York has a clear, well articulated presentation but his occasional mis pronunciations and only slight differentiating voices of the numerous protagonists failed to convey a story dependent on a flatter text reading combined with animated conversation.I

I have read several of the short stories by George Saoulidis and been impressed by his versatility and good writing - a especial favourite being the insightful and scary, You Have Too Many Friends. So I was delighted to receive a complimentary copy of The Girl Who Twisted Fate's Arm, at my request, from the rights holder, via Audiobook Boom. I was expecting something intriguing, radical, thought provoking and well written. It was all of these except the last.

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