The Silence

De: Tim Lebbon

Narrado por: Marisa Calin, Ralph Lister

In the darkness of a vast cave system, cut off from the world for millennia, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed. Swarming from their prison, they multiply and thrive. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death.

Deaf for many years, Ally knows how to live in silence. Now, it is her family's only chance of survival. They must leave their home, shun others, and find a remote haven where they can sit out the plague. But will it ever end? And what kind of world will be left?

©2015 Tim Lebbon (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Unfortunately, Less Than What You Expect....

INITIAL THOUGHTS:

Alright friends, Audible and Goodreads friends,
I will try to remain as civil and non-harsh as I can for this. I was so excited for this book, because it is the exact kind of story that I LOVE. Post-apocalyptic. Scary Creatures. Horror. All the rest. I wanted to like this book so bad, and the beginning held so much promise.

SYNOPSIS:

The story goes back and forth between two different characters: Ally and Hugh. I can't remember if it says how old Ally is, but I would guess she's between the ages of 15 and 17. Huge is her father and is merely a middle aged man trying to protect his family. The story starts out with Ally watching a Discovery Channel documentary about a caving expedition happening in Moldova. Ally, from an accident when she was younger that killed her paternal grandparents, is now deaf in both ears, although she can speak. The channel is explaining how covers are going down into a cafe systems that has never ben gone into before this day. After dinner, Ally comes back up and, with utter horror, realizes that there are creatures flying out of the cave; these creatures, soon discovered, are blind, hunt only by sound, have some sort of radar that lets them fly without running into things, and are able to communicate when food is available.

Hugh, who is on a business trip, sees the same thing on television and believes that it is nothing more than a prank. After seeing a few people at breakfast the next day, acting as though this is something to be taken seriously, Hugh packs up that day and heads back to join his family.

After careful thinking and planning, Hugh decides that the best course of action is to go to his parents old house in Scotland, which is a remote and sparsely populated area. The rest of the book follows their journey to this area and what becomes one of the most nerve-racking the troublesome times of the family's life.

REVIEW:

POSITIVES: Tim Lebbon is a brilliant writer and I found him to be engaging and wonderful. His characters were drawn very well and I believed all of them to be dynamic and real. Ally, especially, was one of the most well-developed I saw in the entire book.
(There are more positives, but I want to get to what this book needs in the change department)

NEGATIVES: I found the storyline after they lost the vehicles to drag on so slowly that I wasn't very interested. Also, the Hushed, who follow The Reverend, could've been such a great tool to use to instill fear int he reader. Honestly, I found these characters to be "eh. There should've been more happening with them. And, Mr. Lebbon, come on--you know there was room for another one hundred pages AT LEAST! It ended so abruptly that I was like, "Wait, what? What happened? There could've been so much more--there was SO MUCH more story to tell and I'm so sad it didn't get done.

RATING:

The book will receive a solid B rating from me, because of how good the writing was. If the writing was sub-par or even just okay, it would probably get a C+ from me.

As far as Narration, Marisa Calin is a straight of A for me (5 Stars). She is such a gifted narrator and I will definitely be looking for other books she's participated in. With Ralph Lister, it's not that I hated him, but I didn't find him to be as engaging as Ms. Calin. He just didn't have the exact skill that I like in a narrator; For Mr. Lister, he will receive a B- from me, because he did a decent job, but it could've been better.

I guess read the book if you've read Lebbon before and like his style. I, personally, haven't gotten too much into him, but I think I might try to read on of his novelization of film books. Those can always be a fun read!

Frustrating that the book doesn't have an end.

Listened to on Audible as it was included in with the Audible Plus catalog.

This was an fun, easy, 'bag of chips' listen and a somewhat different approach on an apocalyptic event. This was an apocalypse that happens within days and catches everyone off guard and unprepared.

Usually with these sort of books you get to experience the slow decline of society and the transition happening spread across weeks or months until everything ends. This was so quick that it really just jumps straight into the experience of what it would be like for a small middle class family trying their best to make smart decisions to survive this situation.

Although the apocalyptic event was obviously very fiction, the families handling of the situation felt very realistic and not needlessly dramatized. They all felt very human with their responses and their interactions with their world and with eachother. This made it really easy to relate to as you could easily picture this being a generic family you'd recognize.

My only complaint really has nothing to do with the quality of writing. The writing quality was fantastic with vivid descriptions and a nice flow to the plot.

My issue was the smallness in scope and the oh most too generic of a family. The family speaks sign language which made this much better but I felt like that was more of a excuse to insert dialog in a situation that would not have allowed it. Other then the families ability to sign, they are all kinda boring. None of them had distinct characteristics or personality traits to differentiate them from any other generic person in a family. This made it easy to identify with because of how generic they were but didn't make me very excited about any of them.

The small scope also made it nice to focus in on one percpective, but it would have been nice to maybe have a few other expanded on percpectives to shine light in the situation from different areas. I got kinda bored with the generic family going through the generic role you'd expect from any disaster movie family escaping any generic disaster.

The disaster itself felt like the main star of the show but the small scope didn't really get me to experience as much as i wish I could.

There also is no ending. The book just stops. Nothing wrapped up, nothing concluded, no story or character arcs met, it just stops. That was frustrating. It would have been nice to see where things led with the disaster as it was the only thing interesting enough to keep me going, instead the book just stops with no conclusions to anything.

Cut short

Ended just when it was getting good
why is that? some times it was hard to tell one character voice from another.

Solid horror but kind of silly premise

A lot of people on here complain about the ending, which is nonsense if you ask me. The story has closure and leaves you with everything you need to know. The story is appropriately tense and the pacing good but the monsters themselves, while interesting, push the suspension of disbelief a bit too far for me.

Quiet horror

Tim Lebbon’s horror tale involves creatures that are a cross between piranhas and bats that emerge from an underground cave. They are blind, but sensitive to sound, attack anything that moves and makes a noise, and reproduce fast. The story follows a family with a child who is deaf due to an auto accident. Thus, she can speak, but the family has learned sign language which is useful. A trek across England to colder climes follows the family as they encounter problems along the way.

Lebbon crafts a classic horror tale with sound and lack thereof as the central features. There’s all the usual Armageddon craziness from everyone, including religious zealots who cut out their tongue after interpreting that God sent the demon birds to demand silence.

The narration is well done with decent character distinction and brisk pacing.