Early Riser

A Novel

By: Jasper Fforde

Narrated by: Thomas Hunt

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “hilarious” (The Guardian), “blindingly inventive,” (The Seattle Times) and “wonderfully weird dystopian thriller” (Shelf Awareness) from the author of The Constant Rabbit and the Thursday Next series

“A cause for celebration . . . Fforde writes witty, chewy sentences, full of morsels, and delivers them deadpan. . . . [His] relentless imagination and his affection for his characters are contagious and irresistible.”—The New York Times Book Review

Every Winter, the human population hibernates.

During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, devoid of human activity.

Well, not quite.

Your name is Charlie Worthing and it’s your first season with the Winter consuls, the group responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams, which you dismiss as nothing more than an artefact born of the sleeping mind.

When the dreams start to kill people, it’s unsettling.

When you get the dreams too, it’s weird.

When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.

But teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping, and stamp collecting; ensure you aren’t eaten by Nightwalkers; and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical Wintervolk.

But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you’ll be fine.

Fforde through and through!

Another imaginative story/world from Jasper Fforde! A bit all-over-the-place at first, but rounds out into an interesting tale.
Thomas Hunt’s performance was excellent, hope to hear more from him soon!

Great Fun !

As always, Jasper Fforde takes readers on a wild and fascinating journey to an alternate world full of zany characters and complex plots. Yet he weaves in enough real life joys and struggles, and the undercurrent of political satire that keeps readers yearning for more.

The narrating is superb and masterful and the journey to this new place is crafted perfectly. Fforde does not disappoint ! You owe it to yourself to hear this work !

Intrigue, Quirkiness and Fun

Jasper Fforde's books tend to defy genre categorization, but there are some common elements in many of his books. This book is trademark Fforde with a familiar but alternate world, strange but lovable characters, quirky storylines, humor and a generous dose intrigue underlying it all. Charlie Worthing takes the reader on an engaging adventure as he bumbles through his first winter awake in a world where most people hibernate through the frigid winters. This story will keep you guessing and giggling all the way through. Narrator Thomas Hunt does a brilliant job of bringing the characters to life with his wonderful, lilting voice and fabulous narration.

Definitely different

I really enjoyed this book.It reminded me of Shades of Gray in some ways. Sometimes I get tired of the same plotlines over and over so it was nice to read something different

The atmosphere in the book is fantastic

I got sucked into the crazy world of Winter immediately after I started reading. This book has very similar vive of his earlier books, but much more engaging and deep. The performance is great! Read/listened it twice