The House of Daniel: A Novel of Wild Magic, the Great Depression, and Semipro Ball
Written by Harry Turtledove
Narrated by Joey Collins
3/5
()
About this audiobook
Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove (he/him) is an American fantasy and science fiction writer who Publishers Weekly has called the "Master of Alternate History." He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Hugo Award for Best Novella, the HOMer Award for Short story, and the John Esthen Cook Award for Southern Fiction. Turtledove’s works include the Crosstime Traffic, Worldwar, Darkness, and Opening of the World series; the standalone novels The House of Daniel, Fort Pillow, and Give Me Back My Legions!; and over a dozen short stories available on Tor.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Laura Frankos, and their four daughters.
More audiobooks from Harry Turtledove
The Guns of the South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If The South Had Won The Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alpha and Omega Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agent of Byzantium Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Presence of Mine Enemies Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Give Me Back My Legions!: A Novel of Ancient Rome Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Different Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wages of Sin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Three Miles Down Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homeward Bound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fort Pillow: A Novel of the Civil War Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Or Even Eagle Flew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man with the Iron Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ruled Britannia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joe Steele Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The House of Daniel
Related audiobooks
Cherry Drop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEquations of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inherit the Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Miles Down Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wake of War: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnswer, Please Answer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSungrazer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mitwa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTime Gap Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World Breakers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrawler Trash: A Humorous Space Opera Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBurn-In Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poor Man's Fight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jillian Vs. Parasite Planet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFreehold: Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTheater of Spies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eternity Road Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Parallax: A Space Opera Adventure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmpire City: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5FORTRESS: A Military Action-Horror Thriller Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Private Little War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stars Are Also Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Return (Librovox) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All Fall Down Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Operation: Outer Space Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDRUDEN [Dramatized Adaptation] Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Science Fiction For You
The Three-Body Problem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dune Audio Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/520,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Systems Red Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose The Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Rising (1 of 2) [Dramatized Adaptation]: Red Rising 1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dune Messiah: Book Two in the Dune Chronicles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gideon the Ninth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before the Coffee Gets Cold: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Rising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dune: House Atreides Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens: A Full Cast Production Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coraline Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52001: A Space Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Golden Son Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Morning Star Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Severance: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cell Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man in the High Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Live in Concert Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5House 23: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The House of Daniel
10 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Harry Turtledove is one of the masters of the alternate history genre, no doubt about it. Among his alternate history titles are two long-running series known as The World War Saga and The Colonization Series, plus stand-alone titles like The Guns of the South, a weird rewriting of American Civil War history. All have been highly successful for Mr. Turtledove. This time around the author turns his attention to 1929, shortly after the “Big Bubble popped,” a time when jobs are so scarce that men find it difficult to feed their families, much less provide for any of life’s little extras. Times are so tough that some men are voluntarily becoming vampires or zombie-workers in an attempt to leave the harsh reality of their old lives behind forever. Jack Spivey, the narrator of The House of Daniel, is the only son of Enid, Oklahoma’s, town drunk and, while he is not desperate enough yet to become a zombie or a vampire, he is not above taking jobs as an enforcer for Big Stu, the thug who pretty much runs Enid as his own little kingdom. Jack also picks up a few extra dollars playing semipro baseball for the Enid Eagles, a team that plays against similar teams located within a hundred or so miles of Enid. On one road trip to Ponca City Jack’s life would change forever.When Jack knocks on the Ponca City boardinghouse door he’s been directed to, he expects a man called Mitch Carstairs to open it. Unfortunately for Mitch, his brother refuses to pay Big Stu the money he owes – and Big Stu believes that pounding on Mitch might encourage his brother to pay up. But when the door opens, Jack is looking into the eyes of one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen - and her name is Mitch Carstairs. Even though he knows that Big Stu will want his hide for not beating her, Jack warns the beautiful Mitch to flee Ponca City first thing in the morning. But now there is no way he can return to his life in Enid.Jack’s luck, though, is soon to change. He stays behind when the rest of the Enid Eagles leave for home and decides to take in an afternoon baseball game between the barnstorming House of Daniel team and a local nine. By the end of the game, the House of Daniel is in desperate need of a centerfielder to take the place of the one severely injured during the game. The next thing Jack knows he is on the House of Daniel bus, the centerfield job is his, and Big Stu is in the bus’s rearview mirror. Of course, Big Stu is not going to give up that easily, and the chase is on. All of this happens within the book’s first forty pages. The rest of the book is a baseball barnstorming tour of Oklahoma, Texas, and the American West of the Depression Era. And it’s fun – until it becomes so repetitive that it’s not fun and the reader begins to have as much trouble remembering which game was which as Jack says those on the team have in keeping games straight in their own minds. The House of Daniel, while it is based upon a fun premise, would probably have been more effective if held to a novella-length book, but it’s still an enjoyable journey into one of Harry Turtledove’s strange worlds.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The subtitle (A novel of wild magic, the Great Depression, and semipro ball) may be a trifle misleading, and would be more accurate if the items were reversed. The House of Daniel is first and foremost a baseball novel, set during an alternate-history version of the Great Depression, with the magical elements mostly serving to emphasize the otherness of this version of history. Other than a single incident which could easily have been rewritten, they're only incidental to the plot, and while they're interesting and add a good deal of color to the novel (zombies contributing to unemployment by working for far less than living people, sasquatches in the Pacific Northwest) they could easily have been left out.Most of the fun of The House of Daniel lies in spotting the references to real baseball players and teams of the era, most obviously to the House of David, a real barnstorming team that, like the novel's House of Daniel, really did wear long beards as a gimmick. If you can't pick Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson out of a crowd with slightly disguised names ("Carpetbag Booker" and "Job Gregson"), or don't get a chuckle out of the Titans playing at the Cricket Grounds rather the Giants at the Polo Grounds, you may want to give this one a pass. I had a lot of fun with it, but it has no more plot than a baseball season (arguably less of one, since as a traveling team there's no postseason for the House of Daniel to aspire to) and only one really well-realized character in the narrator Jack Spivey himself. (Two if you count Carpetbag, but since much of his characterization relies on the reader recognizing his real-world analogue that may be less clear.) I happened to be in the target audience for this one, and enjoyed it quite a bit.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This was the first book I have read that was written by Harry Turtledove. I was unaware of his reputation as "The Master of Alternate History" so I was expecting your average Great Depression baseball book. Imagine my surprise when the zombies, vampires and werewolves made appearances. It started out ok but got rather boring and repetitive. I continued reading because I was waiting for the big sci-fi twist that never happened. Ho-hum!