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This audiobook was given to me as a Christmas present and I haven't read any other books by Jim Butcher so I wasn't sure what to expect - but I quickly discovered I was having trouble hitting pause, and consumed the entire audiobook in barely over a weekend. (The entire book is over 21 hours so ... that's a lotta listening.)

First, the narrator they chose was fantastic - so that may be colouring this review a bit as I didn't read the test. But great work, especially voicing the cats!

And onto the book itself - nothing too deep here but a rip-roaring steampunk-and-magic story of airships, kick ass female characters, and an airship Captain so grimly serious that he's even named Grimm and extremely closely resembling Horatio Hornblower. Also sapient talking cats, so well characterized that there's no doubt in my mind that the author has lived with and loved cats for a large portion of his life.

It started a little slowly - some exposition and description of the setting was definitely necessary to explain the world, although it was fairly painlessly done as the characters were introduced. By about halfway through though, Captain Grimm and the good airship Predator are sent on a mission and the pace becomes pretty much nonstop breakneck action from there on out, moving from one crisis to another, and all the characters given their chance to shine. I liked most of the characters (not the bad guy), I enjoyed the slightly cheesy retro-British-feel of the Integrity and Honour of the Captain being Paramount, and I found the setting interesting (and the cats charming and amusing). I was, however, quite annoyed to find the end a bit of a cliffhanger, clearly another book coming to continue the story!