I love these old pulp stories and Galaxy Audio has produced a series that is well worth your attention. The stories are formulaic, of course, because that's what they were. The production values in this series – the performances and sound – are excellent.

I received a review copy of "Orders is Orders" by L. Ron Hubbard with performances by Brooke Bloom, R. F. Daley, Mr. Corey Burton, Jim Meskimen, and Michael Yurchak through LibraryThing.com. ( )

The plot for Orders is Orders was merely OK, but the exceedingly heavy use of dialects and [what is now considered] archaic turn of phrase was distracting to the point of frustration. While I understand that at the time it was written, this might well have been status quo, I cannot help but to consider that doing our best to ensure a timeless quality without sacrificing a flavorful story is part of the responsibility of the author. For me, the language went beyond evocation and stepped over the borders of parody. I does occur to me that this balance would probably shift to the positive the closer to the original publication date I might have read it. ( )

Long before Kindles, Nooks and the Tablets, people relied on paperbacks, newspapers and magazines for their reading entertainment. In the 1930s and 1940s, cheap-made magazines, dubbed Pulp Magazines, flew off the newsstands, featuring adventure stores of every genre by well-established writers, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Elmore Leonard and Ray Bradbury. The great science-fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard, published over one-hundred-fifty short stories during this era, known to most as the Golden Age. Galaxy Press has been releasing Hubbard's titles on audiobooks, with a talented voice-cast and amazing sound effects.

Each and every month, I participate in the Earlier Reviewers program on LibraryThing, in which a reader gets a chance to win a copy of a book in exchange for a review. Over the last four years, I have won a handful of titles, several eBooks, a few paperbacks and a couple of audiobooks. Back in November 2013, I won a copy of Orders Is Orders, which I received a few weeks later in December. I was busy around the holidays, so I kept pushing the audiobook aside, well that is until last month when I finally got around to listening to it.

Orders Is Orders first appeared in the December 1937 issue of Argosy and is set in the worn-torn Chinese city of Shunkien, The US has a small consulate that is filled with frightened and starving refugees in the city. To make matters worse, some are suffering from the Asiatic cholera. Their only hope is the USS Miami, which is located two hundred miles away, but the US can't take any sort of military action, including bringing supplies to the consulate, without causing an 'act of war' with the Japanese.

The only option is to send Marine Gunnery Sergeant James Mitchell and Private First Class "Toughey" Spivits into enemy territory on a supply mission. Outnumbered and outgunned, they must face impossible odds in the effort to save the Americans trapped in the consulate.

I'm not the biggest "war" fan, as many movies and books in this era tend to be a bit boring to me. Orders Is Orders audiobook is a long war tale, lasting just over two and half hours. The plot follows a similar format that other tales by the author goes by, with a flawed war hero being thrown into a dangerous situation and there just happens to be a beautiful woman around. In this particular story, it has happens to be a fan dancer, Goldie Brown. Though the plot is a little cliched, there are plenty of twists and turns that keep the story interesting. The great voice-cast and sound effects give the story an added boost. Overall, Orders Is Orders a thrilling war adventure from start to finish. ( )

I like Hubbards pulp books. It is a nice change of pace book before you go back intoanother lengthy novel and this one is no different. Very beginning WW2 Pacific book about two men to take supplies to a consulate besieged by the japanese. Not many twists but it is still a fun ride.

A surprisingly enjoyable story from Hubbard’s Golden Age pulp collection. Certainly nothing to rave over, but nevertheless a pleasant diversion for a couple of hours. With a simple point A to point B story line, some effective dialogue that never gets in the way of the storytelling, and the ever-so-slightly-more-than-cardboard characters playing off each other nicely, the narrative zips along quite pleasurably right up to an anything but unexpected but still satisfying ending. ( )