Dead Rat Walking

About This Audiobook

Michael La Ronn’s *Dead Rat Walking* pitches a hero who’s basically the underfed, over-caffeinated younger cousin of Wolverine—except this guy’s mutt form is a garbage-scented Norway rat and his power set peaks at dumpster diving. Cyrus Grant is a rat shifter scraping by in Detroit’s underground, dodging exterminators and omega wolves until a rogue fae prince mistakes him for a long-lost prince of the sewers and decides to turn him into a crown. It’s urban fantasy served with a side of grime and an attitude that never once polishes its boots.

The book’s real triumph is its world-building: the rusted arteries of the city become a living dungeon where magic leaks through corroded pipes and every storm drain hums with danger. La Ronn keeps the stakes high but the tone snappy; you’re never more than a paragraph away from a wisecrack or a chase scene. Narrator David Lee Garver nails the contrast—his gravelly Cyrus sounds like he’s been sleeping in a Burger King fryer, while the villainous fae and lab-coated psychopaths ooze aristocratic menace. The result is an audiobook that feels less like a fantasy epic and more like eavesdropping on a drunk, half-human rodent rapping about his terrible luck in love.