A Little Blood and Dancing Audiobook By Tyler Parker cover art

A Little Blood and Dancing

A Novel

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A Little Blood and Dancing

By: Tyler Parker
Narrated by: Jenny Pudavick
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It’s a tale as old as time: doomed romance, bloody revenge, fast food, and the voice of God. Welcome to Tyler Parker’s Oklahoma, and one of the most anticipated debut novels of the year from one of our best, funniest new writers.

Check out Sylvia Table: he drives a seafoam-green 1968 Ranchero, owns a badass sword, and is one dead uncle away from an inheritance that should set him and the love of his life, Lady Sixkiller, on the road to easy living and the family she’s always wanted. Sure, he may not be cut out for any kind of conventional job, but as long as Lady can hold things down as a waitress until rich old Methuselah shuffles off this mortal coil, what’s the big deal? Yes, things are looking good for Sylvia Table, aka Big Noise, aka Grandest Poobah, aka Big Quiche.

But uncles don’t always die on schedule, maternal clocks keep ticking with increasing urgency, doing crimes beats working for a living, and the past refuses to stay buried. In this case, the past takes the form of Priscilla Blackwood, a woman locked in an eternal one-sided conversation with Jesus Christ Himself, and dead set on enacting vengeance for the murder of her father, which she witnessed as a little girl. Whether Table knows it or not, he’s on a collision course with an avenging angel who believes she’s got the Lord on her side.

Combining the linguistic punch of Elmore Leonard, the living landscapes of Cormac McCarthy, and the comic soul of Charles Portis, A Little Blood and Dancing announces Tyler Parker as one of our most extraordinary new voices. Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Revenge Crime Comedy Dark Humor Fiction Crime Fiction Suspense
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Well written with extraordinarily developed characters. Strong sense of voice. But a bit too adventitious for my liking, especially with a depressing and sanctimonious for me. But I’m not a great fan of Cormac McCarthy either…

Well done - but a bit too untethered for my taste.

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I enjoyed the readers presentation of a meandering tale of a fool who's life is a series of poor decisions.

Wild times of depravity and masculinity

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The bones of a good book are there. Written in a distinctive voice and captures what feels like an authentic, if hyper specific, slice of culture. But there is very little narrative propulsion - almost nothing happens other than the passing of time. And I found the main characters mostly insufferable, which detracted severely from any emotional payoff. The dialogue tete-a-tete was very grating, at least to me (lost track of how many times I rolled my eyes after a line of dialogue). At one point, Table says "my sarcasm is amazing" and that's a pretty emblematic of why I didn't like this book (it was not in fact, amazing). Theres another point where two characters say "Move" "No" back and forth for over a minute. With that said, the conclusion begins as a revenge climax and pivots interestingly toward generational trauma and leaves the reader in a thoughtful place. I wish this was the focus of the book. Curious what this author does next, just hope he remembers that we don't have to like all the characters, but it helps not to loathe them all too

Tedious

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This author definitely has talent. His imagery was fantastic. And maybe this was on purpose, but wow I couldn't get behind one character in this story. So unlikeable.

Wildly unlikeable characters

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the author should have been allowed to read his own book, but it was a great read/listen.

i would have preferred this book had been read by the author

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