Tom Mock

*AI Narrators | Moon Bitten | Evil’s Unlikely Assassin | 

I wanted to read more of two urban fantasies with women MCs, one featuring werewolves in a *the monsters are real* revelation opening, the other starring an evil-hunting vampire with celestial handlers and sizzlingly, comic-book-colorful narration.
(From Covers with Cassidy)

Book 169: AI Narration

I am saddened by the use of Virtual Voice for audiobooks through Amazon, which this author has used. I am against the use of generative AI for all of the reasons artists are against it, but primarily for the ethical reasons.

There are no laws currently in the US to curtail how these models have been built to fairly compensate the talented voice artists whose voices (without their consent) have made them possible. Were there such laws, the programs would not be affordable.

Many authors do not realize this. They simply see a cheap option to get their books in front of more readers. They tell themselves it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t okay. This is willfully naïve.

It doesn’t mean you should just because you can.

Audiobook narrators are expensive, but they are expensive because their work is valuable.

Some authors argue their books don’t make any money anyway, and so, because their publications can’t pay for an actual narrator, it’s okay if they use Virtual Voice.

This is a deflection, not an argument. Your failure to be a profitable author (which is very difficult) does not justify the use of AI, even if it is just a click away.

Some authors argue it isn’t about the money for them, they just want to get their work in front of as many people as possible. This argument falls apart the instant we realize their books are not available for free.

For those authors who do make their work available for free, the problem of unethically trained AI voices remains.

Many potential readers are reading or seeing impaired. I want them to have equal access to all possible texts, but this is a separate issue, and user-side programs for narration exist. This is not the reason authors use Virtual Voice.

All of these arguments also apply to AI generated covers and AI generated texts.

For these reasons, I don’t want to read or review books by authors who have used AI in any form.

The use of generative AI in one form of the creative process is an implicit support for its use in all forms of that process. Solidarity is not conditional.

If this is the only thing that will move some authors not to use AI, so be it, but I am not doing this as some form of punishment. I do not wish for authors to fail, even when they succumb to the temptation of cheap, corporate AI. I do wish they would choose better.

I do not want to associate with artists who do not love art or the people who make it.

Support the people who make our lives more beautiful.

170) CS Churton, Moon Bitten

This seems like a fun, 1st person fantasy. The opening pages very effectively introduce our MC and her circumstances to the reader. The narration is conversational, but descriptive.

The dilapidated home she returns to is filthy, grimy, almost a ruin. But when you haven’t got enough money to go to school and live, you’ll take what you can get.

Can she really take living like this? Maybe after a few weeks to clean the place up. She’ll have to see. Living in the city has changed her standards, but she can get used to it.

The opening doesn’t waste any time getting our MC into danger as a beast stalks up on her after dark and attacks.

Her being dragged by the beast is a bit dragged out. I found all the establishing writing of the first half of ch1 much more compelling then the sudden monstrous attack and equally sudden salvation of the 2nd half.

There’s little build up to the surprise of the attack. No eeriness or sense of unease – or almost none. But I don’t think this is that kind of story. This is a story where things happen.

Our MC has no sooner arrived than she has been thrust/dragged into the story. If you’re interested in a fun, campy, werewolf read with a good narrative voice, this may be just the thing.

It’s done just enough to make me want to know how the story will develop in chapter 2. What’s the lore gonna be about these wolf-dog-things and who saved our MC? I’m in.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56440219-moon-bitten

171) Jenn Windrow, Evil’s Unlikely Assassin

This voice-heavy, 1st person urban fantasy is off to a sleazy, gloriously over-written start. It’s a lot. Too much even, but in a good way.

The text is intentional in its overbearing style. The colors are bold. The sleaze is very sleazy. The stink is caked on. The creeps do be creeping. And then a vampire Don Juan walks in and our MC feels it through her whole body. It’s fun.

This is a great example of an over-the-top style that doesn’t sacrifice anything in terms of clarity or focus. We learn a lot of small details about the world we’re in within the first few pages.

Nothing is explained at length, but we get a very good sense of our MCs situation. She’s being used by some kind of organization with celestial backing. She has a handler. She’s here to take out a vampire.

She’s signed on to do this to eventually be freed from this vampiric curse she’s under. This creates a perfect, overarching character motive straight away. Shes doubly a prisoner.

A prisoner of her vampiric curse – which manifests itself as a kind of second-self she can hear in her head and has named, delightfully, Eddie. And now a prisoner of this monster hunting organization.

If only she’d known what it would be like to serve them, she’d have staked her own heart and been done with it. Great stuff.

Dripping with noiry, urban fantasy style turned up to 11, our powerful female protagonist (who could as easily rip a creeps heart out as tell him to get lost) has a job to do, and she might as well get on with it.

It’s active, creative, focused, and fun to read. It’s melodramatic. It reads fast. It has a sense of flair, and I’m interested to see how the character of our MC develops.

I feel like she has surprising depth that the narrative hints at through things she doesn’t do. She’s in a bad situation and she’s making the best of it with a grimace and pretend indifference. I like that. The more I read the more impressed I am. I’m in!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54761493-evil-s-unlikely-assassin

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