Dead Crow

By: David Haynes

Narrated by: Jeff Harding

Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

Under dirty black skies, the town of Dead Crow is deluged by days of rain, flooding the streets and cutting it off from the outside world. Chief Andy Curran already has his hands full, getting residents to safety and battling a greedy mayor. But now people are going missing in the endless rain. 

Curran soon discovers that there are things living in the overspilling river that threatens to drown Dead Crow. Their eerie clicking sounds drift across the frightened town as they emerge from its toxic waters. The rain isn't stopping. The clicking is getting louder. And the screams are only just beginning.

©2018 David Haynes (P)2020 W. F. Howes

Poorly written and badly read

Dead Crow
by David Haynes

I don't like leaving bad reviews, but I feel I should leave a warning to others.
I wanted to like it. Was looking forward to it. Sadly I didn't like it.

Bad book overview:
Unfortunately, I didn’t like this audio-book. A terrible tale written with every tired cliche, awkward looking monsters, little realistic character development or unlikable characters, no building of suspense, and low levels on the fright scale.

Horror stores with monsters in them don’t have to be poorly written. As evidence I point you to H.P. Lovecraft.

Not cleaver::
This audio book is written with no wit or cleverness. It plods from one death to another with little atmosphere. There’s hardly a breath of character development, and when he does take time to make the people dimensional Mr. Haynes makes them ridicules or unlikable. Sometimes the people are less likable then the odd monsters.

Monsters:
The monsters are odd manticores; pieces of different beasts stuck together... but not smartly done, and not scary. Just awkward looking. They have the head of a turtle, with yellow teeth, on a harry body like a big dog, thin fingers and claws, and they are amphibious. I could only imagine a platypus, or a beaver, maybe a raccoon… with a toothy turtle head. Not described in a frightening way, just… odd. Theres some gore, but gore alone doesn't make a book scary.

Bad narration:
The reader is bad. He’s hard on the ears. The reader has a strange way of reading many of the sentences with an upward tone at the end, making you wonder if he just asked a question, or read a sentence. That keeps pulling you out of the flow of the story. Plus, he does silly hill-billy voices and embarrassing sound effects.

I couldn’t get through it and I apologize to Mr. Haynes for the harsh review. I wrote it in hopes that perhaps the author might read it and learn from some notes. Mr. Haynes, I bow to your skill in writing several novels. I know I cannot. I like the subject matter of all your novels. I urge you, and everyone, to learn and become better, myself included. Don't ever stop writing.

Good horror story

I enjoyed this audio book and found this to be a good horror story. It kept my interest. Good story line and believable characters.

Pretty good story but kinda bad narrating

I liked the story. Good plot, plenty of monster violence. But man, the narrator. He kept this cadence like he was reciting poetry almost. It was so distracting.

Narrator

Narrator needs more practice. Ends all sentences in a question Pretty bad. I’m returning this book

Not bad, great book for those who love creatures

If you enjoy books that involve creatures of unusual make and gets right into the monsters I would recommend this one. It takes next to no Time to get into once you know what you’re getting into and honestly It’s one of the best books I’ve listened to during the COVID-19 lockdown. If you need to disappear into your own mind for a few hours I would recommend this one

Exactly what I needed

I have been looking for a good monster story without a deep budding romance, or a character looking to change their life. Just monsters that want to cause mayhem and eat who may get in their way.

Decent monster story

Unlike other reviewers, I surprisingly had no problem with the narrator. A couple words were mispronounced, female imitations were poor, but overall I thought he was fine and didn’t distract me from enjoying the story.
Mutant monsters are my favorite kind of gratuitous entertainment, and this book fit the bill! I’m going to look at other books by this author.

Read it instead.

the story it's self is pretty good but the narration is poor for, his voice has no peril in it, it's read in a kinda comical way, at times it was listening to the voice that was on the racoons cartoon.