The X-Files: Stolen Lives

A way better continuation of the conspiracy mythology than what they went with for the season 10 event series of the show.

Horrible

This definitely wasn't as good as Cold Cases, and I probably would've rated this two stars if it wasn't for the last chapter. Most of the chapters were quite hard to follow in audio format, and a lot of them were very short and didn't have much of a plot.

Just like the last audiobook in this series, this is pretty much like a season of the tv show, taking place between seasons 9 and 10. Each chapter plays and sounds like an all new episode with stunningly produced sound effects and the original cast voicing their characters. I'm going to share a couple of thoughts on each chapter.

Chapter 1 - Immaculate: First things first, the plot for Immaculate was very, very... strange. It involved a girl possessed by the devil blowing up an abortion clinic and recruiting people for a suicide cult, which was quite messed-up, even for X-Files. I found the whole chapter hard to follow in audio format and very dark and depressing. Probably my least favourite of the bunch.

Chapter 2 - Chitter: A classic monster-of-the-week episode! This one I enjoyed but it was only about 20 minutes long and didn't have too much of an actual story. It did have a unique monster and classic Scully-in-peril moments though so it won me over.

Chapter 3 - Monica & John: This chapter was alright as well, but just like a lot of the others, it suffered by being short and not having a proper plot. It also kind of sucked to not have the actual actors of Doggett & Reyes reprising their roles because the two voice actors that did do it really didn't do the characters justice.

Chapter 4 - G-23: Another chapter with a strange concept that was hard to follow in audio format. Basically, Mulder and Langly hear about a conspiracy involving a government-created hallucinogenic drug called G-23, they start to investigate it and then end up accidentally taking it. From then on, the rest of the episode is basically just one big trip, with both Mulder and Langly seeing a whole ton of random hallucinations, hence why it was hard to follow, what they were hallucinating didn't transition into audio well and the descriptions didn't come across clearly.

Chapter 5 - Elders: The conclusive mythology episode and the best of the book. Brings back a few surprising characters from the original show and actually has a really thrilling storyline. This chapter by itself was over an hour and a half which was pretty much more than triple the length of each of the others, making it feel almost cinematic in scope.

Just like the last audiobook in this series, I was blown away by the production quality of the whole thing, and the voice acting from the returning cast was great. I found myself laughing at Mulder's quips and sighing at Scully's scullyisms.

Unfortunately though, this was quite a big step down from the last one, and the pacing and clarity of majority of the book was a big letdown. Still worth listening to just for further adventures with the gang, but definitely not essential listening like the last one was.