Echo

By: Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Narrated by: David Wayman, Greg Lockett, Lauryn Allman

Length: 18 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Nature is calling - but they shouldn't have answered.

“A compulsive page-turner mixing supernatural survival horror and...pulp adventure” (Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers' Club)

Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick’s own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying. His face wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, Nick claims amnesia - but he remembers everything.

He remembers how he and Augustin were mysteriously drawn to the Maudit, a remote and scarcely documented peak in the Swiss Alps.

He remembers how the slopes of Maudit were eerily quiet, and how, when they entered its valley, they got the ominous sense that they were not alone.

He remembers: Something was waiting for them....

But it isn’t just the memory of the accident that haunts Nick. Something has awakened inside of him, something that endangers the lives of everyone around him....

It’s one thing to lose your life. It’s another to lose your soul.

From the international best-selling sensation Thomas Olde Heuvelt comes a thrilling descent into madness and obsession as one man confronts nature - and something even more ancient and evil answers back.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Nightfire.

©2021 Thomas Olde Heuvelt (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

Locus Awards - Nominee: Short-listed

Great listening

Don’t fall for the bad reviews it’s a good listen and great book … truly enjoyed

Modern Classic Horror

This is the second book by Heuvelt I have listened to. The first book, Hex, was OK.
This one was great! It references classic horror themes in an updated context.
The characters are well developed, and the story is interesting, and has a nice ending.
This, like much of classic horror, is almost agonizingly slow to start.
(This might explain the many poor Audible reviews? Oh maybe it is because the protagonist is gay?)

The narration was excellent, with great characterization and emoting.

Beware the Echo

Story 3/5
Narration 5/5

I really liked < b>Hex</b>, so I was looking forward to <b>Echo</b> (I actually <I>pre-ordered</i> it), but this long novel was a fail in my opinion.

The underlying story of the cursed mountain is intriguing, but there always seemed to be too much blah-blah about things that don't matter, while still leaving the reader wondering WTF is going on.

Recommendation - not really

Always the best books by Heuvelt. if your looking

if your looking for a listen that is too strange and scary to put down . No not just advertised as such; This book was a cold glass of terrifying water in drought. I haven't read a book from this Author that doesn't surprise me and leave me thinking about the story for weeks or months. Try you won't regret it. 🧟🧞🦹

Definitely not as good as Hex

Half way through and so far blah blah blah. No horror or suspense so far. Very boring. I loved Hex and had high hopes. But a book should hook you from the beginning. This hasn't at all.

Insane and haunting

Dang, that was great. Mesmerizing and inventive. Heartbreaking. I could not have guessed where any of this book would take me.

I really loved it!

I really loved it! It was such a great book and I was so happy to see it featured LGBTQ+ characters! I am a queer woman and it was refreshing to see our community represented in a way that did not make our gayness the plot. With this all too rare aspect paired with a truly moving romance and deeply horrifying and fascinating plot had me spending hours at our local tea shop completely absorbed.
Great read!

Just get to the point already

If you looked up, slow burn in the dictionary. An image of this book would be pasted there. Echo is labeled as a horror novel. However, there’s very little horror within the book itself. The first few pages draw you in only to let you fall and fall and fall in a slow burn of obscurity. To be honest, it should be titled a romance novel instead. I wasn’t a fan of it and I don’t recommend it.

Echo dies.

The concept (the tainted spirit of a mountain possesses a climber) and the characters (a gay couple, one who lives to climb and the other who is terrified of heights and falling) in Echo are great. Sadly the author really overwrote this book, to the point it was hard to figure out what was going on at times. Add to that the problem that very little actually happens in the book. Everything is either flashbacks, or takes place "off camera" and the characters find out about the event after the fact. It's hard to be concerned if a character is going to live or die when you already know he or she lived. (Or died, as the case may be.) Too many parts just kept repeating (Echo, get it???) and many of those things barely even mattered. The ending was a confusing mess. I was hoping for a book that was as unsettling and creepy as Hex, but Echo is barely in the same genre. I was entertained enough to keep listening to the end, and i might reread it someday, but I never stopped wishing an editor had cut out about a third of the book and rearranged the text so that the action happened before the reader found out the results instead of after. All of the narrators were absolutely great and brought some much needed life to this book!

Why all the bad reviews?? I LOVED it

For all the reviews saying “It wasn’t as good as Hex” “It was slow” blah blah blah — look, this is a different story from Hex, obvi, and if you’re paying attention and read more about the author himself, you’ll find the metaphors in this haunting book to really blow your mind. I loved it. I can see where sometimes it may have slightly dragged here or there for a MOMENT - but it was actually really cohesive I felt as a whole. I loved the imagery and the metaphor for loss and grief the themes in this book presents. I recommend!