Hidden City

By: Alan Baxter

Narrated by: Jonathan Waters

Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

When the city suffers, everyone suffers.

Steven Hines listened to the city, and the city spoke. Cleveport told him she was sick. With his unnatural connection to her, that meant Hines was sick, too. But when his friend Detective Abby Jones comes to him for help investigating a series of deaths with no discernible cause, Hines can’t say no. Then strange fungal growths begin to appear in the streets, affecting anyone who gets too close, turning them into violent lunatics.

As the mayhem escalates and officials start to seal Cleveport off from the rest of the world, Hines knows the trouble has only just begun.

©2018 Alan Baxter (P)2021 Gryphonwood Press

"All rivers have a source."

A P.I., linked magically to the city, a jealous city which had killed his beloved but is now in need of his help. The magic is steadily growing stronger, the techno mages waiting for their time to come. Strange deaths have started happening and a long-time cop friend asks for his help. Then thing really become bizarre as naked people start running through the streets chasing anyone else there. And all the time it keeps on raining...
All very noire.

An atmospheric story line where magic, not even recognised by most, sizzles below the surface until exploding into horror. Well written and with an excellent narration by Jonathan Waters whose well reading modulated reading brings everything to life: an excellent performance.

My thanks to the rights holder of The Hidden City who, at my request, freely gifted me with a complimentary copy via Audiobook Boom. It was fun, intriguing, exciting and with good character development. There's even a dog. I really enjoyed it.

Proof a good story doesn't need to be a trilogy

I really enjoyed this book. I found out about it from the narrators website, and being familiar with Alan Baxter's other work, decided to give it a go.

Its not a long series, but it fits a lot of character development and background in. Its quite impressive that you feel like you know the characters already even with only having one book.

I was sad it was over, but at the same time, its a great self contained story that paints a great little section of the world

Watch a world quickly unravel

I am not one for magic, or so I thought. This is a great variation on the hidden magical realm just beneath everyone’s nose. When the city starts falling apart because people are becoming fibrous killing machines that spread their sickness with just a touch then I’m all in.

Unique and unexpected!💜

I enjoyed this story but at times it felt like I was in the middle of 2 different books. There were some avenues I would like to have explored more on and other areas that didn’t seem to fit. Maybe it’s just me but either way I did enjoy it. The characters were feisty, sarcastic and strong. I loved all the magic and paranormal activity. The narration was fantastic. I absolutely loved listening to Jonathan Waters. His female voices were amazing. This was my first book with both this author and narrator and I’m looking forward to trying them again.
I recommend this book!

Sisters Spotlight 💜

Noir Urban Fantasy with Zombies!!!

Yeah, Baxter delivers and Waters jams it in the mailbox. This is a book full of not what I expected but I damn well loved it anyway. Zombies that infect with a touch, A Private Investigator bound to his city via magic, a city that is jealous of him but comes to him for help after it did something terrible; say wha-hut? Yeah, this is the basic gist of the book.

I loved this story, and Waters knocks it out of the park with his narration skills. Definitely delivers, great characters, thrills, chills, and a knockout of an ending!

Misery Magic

I have never read anything like this story before. I honestly didn’t know where it was going my fear was zombies and I hate stories about them. But this was awesome well written and easy to follow. The narrator did an awesome job on the multi different voices, and the author what can I say but fantastic story. I will be looking for more by this author and narrator.
I received this free from the author or narrator for an honest review.

Excellent story!

This is a very entertaining fantasy tale. The writing and narration are both extremely well done.

3.5* - felt like this was a mid-series novel

I enjoyed this story - as some other reviewers noted, the scent of noir fiction is strong in this urban fantasy. There is also enough gory death for me to think horror novel, too. There's no rule that says genre fiction has to fit squarely within boundaries, and I think this novel makes a good case for that. I thought that the story was very well written and by the time we get to the final part of the book, we understand what is causing the chaos.

I liked the characters and their relationships, with one exception. I couldn't wrap my mind and heart around the relationship between the protagonist and the city-entity. The protagonist-fiancee, protagonist-father, protagonist-best friend relationships didn't seem to make cohesive sense, given the nature of the relationship between the protagonist and the city-entity. Sounds very confusing, I'm sure, but to explain further would reveal spoilers, If you read the story and don't notice any disconnects among those relationships, that's okay and the ending of the story will provide closure. But I sensed a wispy disconnect about these relationships tickling the back of my mind and so the ending didn't resonate quite as well with me.

The other reason why I didn't give more stars for the story was that it felt like this book was the second or third book in a series. It's okay that we hear about love affairs and more than one key death before the story started - although one or both are intriguing and I'd be interested in a more complete story around each of them. But there are people who are prominent in various parts of the story who you just KNOW have important backstories and roles, and there are some who you just KNOW have important futurestories (is that a word?). Thus my review headline. I think I would have enjoyed the novel before this one, to help situate the one that I just finished. I think I would also enjoy the novel that would have come after this, because I sense that there is more to come with many of these characters. You could argue that this is life; we aren't omniscient. When we enter and leave people's lives spontaneously, we hear some selected backstories second-hand and we leave before seeing how the futurestories will turn out.

4.5* for narration. I enjoyed the narration tremendously. I've listened to hundreds of audiobooks and this narrator is definitely among the best I've heard regarding other-gender dialogue. (Aspiring audiobook narrators everywhere, my two cents: If you're going to do other-gender voices, you cannot 'fake it till you make it'. If you're not blessed with a natural gift of voice imitation/mimicry, then it's a skill that needs to be practised and developed. I've given many, many less than perfect narration reviews for this specific reason. Fake other-gender voices (especially falsetto female voices from male narrators and fake-sounding male bass voices from female narrators) are serious buzz-kills for readers like me.) The only reason I didn't give the extra half-star was because there were multiple female characters and I wasn't always able to distinguish the female characters based on voice alone. So, in my opinion, the narrator does a most excellent female voice but when there are *multiple* female voices, my ear isn't fully persuaded that there are three different-but-believable characters speaking.

On the other hand, the narrator had an absolutely charming way of saying 'yeah?' that was written at the end of sentences in the dialogue from time to time. I'm not from a region in the world where this is common, so it sounded like ear-candy to me. [Not advocating the insertion of candy into one's ears.].

I was provided this book upon my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Fungal Growths

I totally enjoyed this paranormal thriller. Loved the characters of Steven, Abby, Gina, Barkley and Jerry.
It has fungus, zombies and supernatural abilities with twists and turns with good narration. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. Thank you

Must listen or read!

Another great book from Alan Baxter! Nonstop action, excellent characters, engaging story! Narrated by one of the best!