Elegy Beach

By: Steven R. Boyett

Narrated by: J. D. Jackson

Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's Summary

A publishing event 25 years in the making: the long awaited sequel to the unforgettable post-apocalyptic fantasy, Ariel.

Thirty years ago the lights went out, the airplanes fell, the cars went still, the cities all went dark. The laws humanity had always known were replaced by new laws that could only be called magic. The world has changed forever.

Or has it? In a small community on the California coast are Fred Garey and his friend Yan, both born after the Change. Yan dreams of doing something so big his name will live on forever. He thinks he's found it - a way to reverse the Change. But Fred fears the repercussions of such drastic, irreversible steps.

©2009 Steven R. Boyett; (P)2009 Penguin

Enjoyable story, good narration and production

This is the follow up to Ariel, a story I also enjoyed. Although the overarching storyline follows the same rough outline as Ariel, and most fantasy books for that matter, the details make the book engaging and worth reading. I had plenty of "driveway moments" with this audiobook, which I consider a good measure of my interest in a book.

The narration was done well. I liked J. D. Jackson's voice and interpretation style. It took me at least 1/4 of the book to hear a clear difference in some of the characters' voices. I don't know if that is because the differences were subtle or if they became more differentiated as Mr. Jackson read more. Either way, I appreciated the character voices later on in the book. Although I realize rhythm is important to the author and the book, there were a few parts were I felt Mr. Jackson overemphasized the rhythm to the point that it annoyed me. It was like a poor poetry reading. Luckily those sections were few and far between. Other rhythmic sections were performed more subtly and appropriately.

The production of Elegy Beach was spot on. It had none of the production problems that Ariel suffered from. I enjoyed Steven Boyett's discussion of the book that was included at the end.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Uggh.. I wanted it so much.

I really wanted to like this book. Got Ariel previous month and was looking forward to it. The story had a lot of promise but a two things disturbed me about the story. First continuity... referencing IPOD's and modern tech, but mostly the 'Lit' diarrhea... I love descriptive text (usually my favorite part of storytelling) but throwing in what seemed like really bad poetry really put me off. And the way the narrator read such passages made me cringe... I couldn't get the image of a parody beatnik smoking a cigarette in a San Francisco loft during those readings.
The story could have been so much more, the right elements we're there and I WANTED the story... Just don't know if I'll want it more than once.

3 of 5 people found this review helpful

Fairly good.

Good story except for weird random parts where it turned into some kinda of spoken word poem. Not sure if it was part of the audible performance or if it was really written that way. Just weird to plug that in at random.

Loved loved loved

I fell in love with Ariel a book of the change in high school, and didn't realize there was a sort of sequel to it. It was if no time had passed between books.

Great story, amazing narrator

I have to say J. D. Jackson is one of my new favorite narrators and this story was really brought to life by his performance.

The story itself is beautiful and unique in a way that I haven't experienced before from a book.

Great Book!!!

Would you listen to Elegy Beach again? Why?

Yes, Great story.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

In a world,lost to the laws of normal phyisics, a hero is born.