Ashes

By: Philip Hemplow

Narrated by: Diana Croft

Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Patricia's life has fallen apart. Her son, Noah, is in a Russian prison, framed for a crime that he didn't commit. Her husband has abandoned her, and mounting legal costs have left her broke. In desperate need of funds to pursue Noah's appeal, she takes a job supervising the renovation of Gaunt House, an Elizabethan ruin on the North York Moors. When a corpse and a diary are discovered in the rubble, she begins to investigate the house's tragic history - and finds that the past, and the dead, are closer than they seem.

©2014 Philip Hemplow (P)2016 Philip Hemplow

Spooky house and those bloody Russians!

I love a good scare and although I didn't get that...it's hard to come by as we are mostly shock proof these days...I thoroughly enjoyed this tale. The only reason the overall was 4 not 5 stars was the ending. A bit too abrupt with no real conclusion. I even listened to it again thinking I had missed something. However with that aside, it had a storyline that kept me actively listening and loving the back story of her son and the Russians and the to and fro issues with her clingy ex-husband. Philip wrote a good little complex story and Diana was very easy to listen to. Very happy with this book.

Slow starting book but good overall.

The story was slow to start but soon picked up pace. It was an overall good story but the ending was a bit confusing. Narrator did well and I liked the various character development.



(This book was given to me free for an honest and unbiased review. )

Terrifically cosmic and intensely personal horror. Why isnt there more Hemplow???

I've read two other stories by Hemplow, "Innsmouth Syndrome" and "Sarcophagus." They both had a terrific sense of desolation and bleakness on a scale that crushes hope with inevitable certainty. Not out of malice, but because hope in Hemplow's stories is a delusion resulting from our species' many limitations of perspective.
Why do I mention two stories that are not this one? So you know this is not a fluke, and more people need to read or listen to Hemplow.
If that sounds appealing, listen to this right now. Right now.
It absolutely needs to be said that Diana Croft is a spectacular reader and performer. Long story short, just as I would listen to anything by Hemplow no matter who read it, I would now listen to anything performed by Croft, no matter who wrote it.
She has a splendid breadth of performance and puts a powerful emotive life into the story as she reads it.

Ashes

If you could sum up Ashes in three words, what would they be?

This book is truly an horror book from beginning to end. It was hard for me to pause and do other things. If your genre is horror, this audiobook is for you.

Chilling and unsettling, superbly performed

One of those audiobooks I actively looked for opportunities to listen to, instead of just having it on while I do other things that don’t require concentration. I have to admit my bias here, in that the pitch of “ghost story with a steady IV drip of cosmic horror during the renovation of a ruined Elizabethan house” is *extremely* my thing. Some readers may have less tolerance for the details of the renovation, but for me it was a good, ah, foundation for the uncanny to steadily erode. Haunted house stories have a long tradition of also being stories about finances: people who are tied to something horrible not by being trapped in a dungeon with it, but because their hopes and dreams depend on this place somehow, against increasingly slim odds, working out for the better. Ashes continues in that tradition from a fresh perspective, as the renovation uncovers fresh horrors that seem to warn Patricia to turn back before it’s too late, even as genre-savvy readers know that she’s in it ‘til the bitter end.

Speaking of the end, it is, as other reviewers have pointed out, a bit abrupt, which seems to happen in a lot of horror fiction. I would have gladly taken Ashes in the form of a full-length novel rather than novella, to give that ending a bit more room to breathe, but novel-length horror has its own troubles to deal with. That said, the ending is perfectly comprehensible, and I disagree entirely on the “no closure” comment in an earlier review. We know very much what happened after the final sentence of Ashes, but that’s all I can say on the subject. As an aside, it’s all too common to find reviews of perfectly-crafted short horror fiction which read something to the effect of, “a bunch of chapters cut out from larger stories, one star.” Frankly, I suspect there are folks here who are looking for a tidier wrap-up than short horror fiction as a genre likes to provide.

Seconding those reviews that praise Diana Croft’s reading. Audio is an unforgiving medium for horror, where the narrator needs to impart an emotional state to the listener in addition to conveying the personalities of the characters and having a voice that’s a good match for the subject matter. Croft nailed Patricia’s mounting frustration, distress, denial, and horror, and managed to pull off tricky Elizabethan passages in the journal which plays such a prominent role in Ashes without sounding like a bad stereotype. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out in case she reads more horror, or, really, anything.

not what I expected

I was expecting more of a ghost story. this is NOT what this one was about. more than half of the book was flashbacks from an old diary and renovation talk. also I hated that we were kept in the dark about why her son was in jail until the end of the book. the book really didn't get interesting for me till there was 36 minutes left
then it got sorta.... hmm.. messy. but still confusing. ending was left hanging... no closure.

this just wasn't my cup of tea.