Ghost Road Blues: The Pine Deep Trilogy, Book 1

I'll admit the narrator is horrible. There I said it.

You can tell this is some of Maberry's early work because I feel he is spending way too much time on character developement and detail he doesn't need to be. Seems to be over doing a few things. However the story is awesome once you get into it. The series flows more like one book kinda like The Stand .. instead of three seperate books. It really starts coming together in the 2nd book. I suggest you stick with it. Im glad I did. No its not Joe Ledger.. or Tom Amora for that matter. Its still really good once you get over the narrator. It really is a great and brilliant story as a hole.

If you love the Joe Ledger novels and were excited to find something else by Jonathan Maberry, let me save you the trouble by warning you away from this absolute trainwreck. it's like what Maberry might have written when he was a college sophomore - overwritten, over-dramatic, and with some of the oddest use of adjectives ever. It's clumsy, ugly, and saddest of all - a complete bore of a listen.

This book was refreshingly different.The author has done an excellent job of developing the characters and only eluding to the underlying monsters that have plagued this town. Only thing I didnt like was having the book end before the story was finished I can only hope there is a second installment to find out how the hero(s) come out.

I prefer Maberry's Joe Ledger series, but this was fine. I will probably continue with this series. I'm not much for these "horror in a small town" stories made famous by Stephen King. A steady diet of them warps my thinking.

Larry Corriea is another good author in the Man v Zombie gendre.

I gave this four stars, so I do like the book. There are some really good parts to the book, and I will continue the series. There are plenty of evil characters to hate in this book and bad and good are black and white.

A NURSE CAME IN, WOKE HIM UP AND GAVE HIM A SEDATIVE.
This suffers greatly from what I like to call trilogyitis. That is when a author has a great idea for a great book, but his editor talks him into making a trilogy out of it, even though the writer only has enough story to fill one large book. Stephen King usually just writes one big book and it is usually a very good book. Lesser authors stretch out three books in order to sell more books, yet they don't really have that much material. This usually makes the middle of the book pretty boring. With this book you could start at chapter 21 and read to the end and you will have the entire story.

IT CONSTANTLY AMAZED HIM THAT PENNSYLVANIA WAS MORE REDNECK THEN PARTS OF THE SOUTH.
This was an interesting observation. I lived in rural Pa. in 1976, which is when this story starts. I came from the Ozarks, but there were as many rednecks as in the Ozarks. This goes back to the winner writes the history books. King pointed out in one of his books that Maine had a similar organization to the KKK, that was very active.

This is not as good as the Joe Ledger Novels, but it is still better then a lot that is available.

The Narrator was good in parts, but kind of phoned it in in other parts.

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I would recommend this book to fans of Stephen King, while it doesn't have the epic feel of a King novel it feels much the same. The characters quickly become recognisable

Responses to other criticisms of this book:

Poor narration: I guess that I must have a fairly high threshold for bad narration because this narrator did not give me any problems at all. I don't expect a narrator to provide a full cast of voices and honestly find it annoying when they attempt it but are inconsistent or each voice sounds like a variation of a 80 year old crone (I'm looking at you Game of Thrones). Weiner has a deep voice with excellent diction and enunciation, I have no problems with him.

Jumps around between too many characters: Again this isn't a problem for me, I have listened to books where there is no indication that the perspective or character being followed has changed but I didn't find this the case with this book. Thinking back I don't remember being lost at any point, the writing is fairly straight forward and the author uses numbered breaks in chapters to separate each scene... well I'm pretty sure he did though it is possible that he didn't break up every scene... anyway I had no problems with jumps in narration.

The book doesn't resolve anything: Considering this book is a trilogy and one with a grand plan that is obvious pretty early on I had no problem with the end of the book. There were some minor resolutions and there is a lot left unsaid but this makes me want to move on to the next book. To me the ending was logical and satisfactory.

Not Joe Ledger: Yep it definitely isn't... while there are horror aspects to the Joe Ledger novels this isn't a pulp action novel. There is action but it really is more like a standard horror novel. I don't have a problem with this fact it is what it is and the summary of the novel doesn't hide the fact as far as I'm concerned.

Boring: Again this is a personal opinion. I wasn't bored there are a couple of lulls in the action like with any novel and I did want to move on from a couple of scenes but nothing more than you would find in any 12hr+ audiobook.

Verdict:
I liked the book and will definitely be starting the next one tonight. This isn't a earth shattering piece of literature, it does borrow from lore and legend but the fact that I'm not sure what the villain is exactly, how the disparate horror tropes will all be tied into each other and finally who the book will end has me intrigued not put off. Give the book a go it is worth a credit and I like knowing there is a limited number in the series and I'm not looking at a huge investment with no end in sight like the Vampire Earth series.

The horror element of the story can be campy at times but it's actually very good. What surprised me though was how the book ended. It wasn't a cliff-hanger but many of the characters in the story, and there are a few, didn't have any real conclusion. The whole book felt like a setup for the sequel which is something that one usually feels while reading the second book.

It wasn't the story as much as the narration I found so disappointing.

This was my least favorite part of the book, and ultimately what put me off.

I really enjoyed this book. For me, it's MUCH better than the Joe Ledger novels. It reminded me of the best aspects of Stephen King and the narrator, while a bit annoying at first, really isn't that bad. I'm looking forward to the next 2 installments.

I'm listening to another Maberry book by a different author and am enjoying it. i simply can't make it past chapter 7 of this one. The narration sounds like a bad caricature. Weiner's attempts at women's voices is especially grating. Awful. I guess I'll have to start the trilogy the old fashioned way.