Locke & Key

By: Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez

Narrated by: Haley Joel Osment, Tatiana Maslany, Kate Mulgrew, full cast

Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's Summary

Audie Award Finalist, Original Work, 2016

Based on the best-selling, award-winning graphic novel series Locke & Key - written by acclaimed suspense novelist Joe Hill (NOS4A2, Horns) and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez - this multicast, fully dramatized audio production brings the images and words to life.

A brutal and tragic event drives the Locke family from their home in California to the relative safety of their ancestral estate in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, an old house with powerful keys and fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. As siblings Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode Locke discover the secrets of the old house, they also find that it's home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all....

Featuring performances by Haley Joel Osment (Entourage, The Sixth Sense), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Kate Mulgrew (Orange Is the New Black, Star Trek: Voyager), Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez, and Stephen King (The Stand, 11-22-63), as well as a cast of more than 50 voice actors, this audio production preserves the heart-stopping impact of the graphic novel's astounding artwork through the use of richly imagined sound design and a powerful original score.

*Locke & Key contains explicit language and adult situations.

©2014 Joe Hill (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"The concepts in this production, based on a graphic novel, are perfectly executed by a full cast.... Kate Mulgrew leads the way with her perfect portrayal of an ancient grandmother with an evil streak." ( AudioFile)

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

This book was just a comic book that drags on and on and on. It is very difficult to follow because of all the different readers, some of which put me to sleep as soon as they started reading.

125 people found this helpful

Poor execution

I hate giving low reviews. I'm thinking the story might be good if done in a normal format where someone reads you the book. This is done as more of a live-play type production. It left me clueless as to who is who, what the heck is going on and what just happened. I got this free, which is about what it's worth in my opinion.

25 people found this helpful

It's a mess

Ihave a feeling I'd really like the graphic novel. But the audiobook is a mess. There's very little direction or narration of who is saying what. So it's just kind of a guess sometimes as to who is speaking and what is happening. There's lots of sound effects but I often couldn't tell by the sound effect what was happening. At one point a character changes gender and then I was completely lost as to who it was that was speaking. Overall I found the audiobook to be so confusing that I finally stopped listening. Maybe if I listened to it as I read along with the graphic novel I'd enjoy it more.

54 people found this helpful

don't waste your time/money

everything about this book/audiobook was horrible. story was just an edge feast trying to make each new situation worse than the last. I'd say nearly 10% of this audiobook is crying or screaming. Another 10% being music randomly played for 20 seconds to over a min straight transitioning between scenes. At times there will be a struggle situation and it isn't clear what happened until later when you find out one of the characters is still alive. just overall a horrible story and horrible production . It's like listening to a movie playing in the next room over.

61 people found this helpful

didn't like narration format

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get beyond ch 2 . This was more like a movie being played out without the visual picture. To many characters/voices & found it hard to identify who each character.

32 people found this helpful

I just couldn't. What a waste of time. I couldn't finish it.

The biggest mistake of this book is the total waste of time with all of the unnecessary music. Good grief. I actually went back to time one pass and it was approximately 4 minutes long. That is completely without any speaking. And I only listened to about 5 hours. I couldn't finish it. It was like a bad movie that you couldn't see. I gave it the stars I did because it felt like this was more of a production error than the book or performance.

32 people found this helpful

I hated this production

The story may be good. I cannot listen to enough of this to know how it turns out. This is the most juvenile sounding recording I have ever endured. The music adds nothing to it and the folks saying this is an old time radio production, which made me want to listen, must have never actually heard one. I listened for an hour and gave up.

Mind you, I like Joe Hill's writing, but this production reminds me of a high school project that pulled a D.

36 people found this helpful

gave up after chapter 3

This was terrible. We could barely understand what was going on in the story. I have listened to and loved the old radio dramas and thought this would be similar but it certainly wasn't. The characters were hard to understand when they were speaking. I got the gist of what was happening from the narrator but it just wasn't worth it to continue listening.

44 people found this helpful

Confusing

This is a terrible story that is made worse by a poor performance. I cannot recommend this book.

44 people found this helpful

Scattered and hard to follow

I am not a fan of flashbacks and this book contained so many it became hard to follow what was happening and to who. I have read other Hill books and enjoyed them.

The characters were not well developed and the storyline seemed pointless.

Full disclosure, after restarting the book many times to find a thread I could follow, I quit reading. I was about 3/4 of the way through. Even though I am retired and have a very open schedule, I felt I was wasting time that could be spent reading a book I enjoyed.

15 people found this helpful

Absolutely incredible

I was unsure how this would work (being a graphic novel) and haven't listened to a book with so many voice actors for years but it worked amazing well. Occasionally, clearly, extra dialogue had been added as this would not usually be needed in the original format but it was never forced. Really interesting story and loveable characters, it worked really well as an audio book. Good pace and a little different. The reason it lost a star was there is a character who has Downs Syndrome and is both impacted by his condition as expected but is also very insightful to it (in a negative way) and a little extra sensory which I dislike in books, I like to see such people normalised as everyone else is and I didn't like this combination. That said it was really good to see such a character included as there is a real lack of 'different' characters existing in books I just would have liked him to just be.

11 people found this helpful

Like Listening to a High Budget Film

I enjoyed listening to this audiobook but there was little in way of actual storytelling, more of characters speaking with high drama and lots of special effects. The result was dramatic and engrossing. I'm not sure I would always go for this type of audiobook, as it lacks the intimacy of a one narrator tell. But it certainly gave me an idea of what can be done with sound.

8 people found this helpful

Amazing!

A great twisted tale. Enjoyed this brilliant story from story from start to finish. Highly recommended to anyone who likes graphic comic audio books.

5 people found this helpful

Good stuff

Very well put together . great story line and would recommend to anyone . will be listening to more of Joe hills books .

3 people found this helpful

OH MY GOSH! Amazing! Just BRILLIANT! I LOVE IT!

What made the experience of listening to FREE: Locke & Key the most enjoyable?

The full cast. The audio book lifted audio experience to a new level.

What was one of the most memorable moments of FREE: Locke & Key?

Can't say...a few great memorable moments playing in my head.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Audio drama performed by full cast, only thing I will say is that I'm going to listen to it AGAIN!

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Emotional rollercoaster indeed! I really feel for the Mother as much as the other main characters.

Any additional comments?

A great fantasy horror thrill for me.

3 people found this helpful

An emotional rollercoaster.

Locke and Key is bought to life by a superb cast and there's also ambient noise to really put you as a fly on the wall as your mind constructs the image.

I thoroughly enjoyed the listen, it was a turbulent rollercoaster of emotions all the way through. Picture this, I'm a 6'4, 33 year old, gym loving male, I'm also foreman where I work and after 10 clock tea break, most of my delegation and other duties are pretty much done. So its around this time I pop my head phones on and work preying I won't get disturbed ( fat chance).

Now, three times this audio comic has had me fighting back tears. Its not exactly the look you wanna go for when you've 9 men to look after.

Our hero, Tyler, is a level headed young man for an 18 year old, looking after his mum and siblings in the abscense of his father, as past events spiral their life out of control in the magical Locke household that belongs to their Uncle Duncan.

The story twists and turns and comes to a conclusion you find yourself asking how you never saw it coming.

10/10. Now to treat my lovely lady to a new graphic novel I know she is gonna love.

7 people found this helpful

Excellent, amazing and original!!

Loved the plot with twists and turns and incredibly absorbing. There are some books which have captivated me and meant I would read and read and read as desperate to reach the end of it. This is the first audio book that is equally compelling! Loved the cast and dramatic presentation. The only negative found was that sometimes I struggled to understand who was who mainly because it packs so much in and jumps a little plot wise. STILL AMAZING!

3 people found this helpful

what a FANTASTIC book !

why can't we have more fully dramatised books like that? I work on site most of the time...this book brought me to tears at the end...not a good look on site :)

7 people found this helpful

A Masterpiece

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I will recommend this to friends as it takes audio fiction to a new level. Narrated audio books are great, but dramatised stories offer so much more, and this one was executed brilliantly. From the writing and acting, through to the music, soundscape, and production - everything is first class.

What was one of the most memorable moments of FREE: Locke & Key?

The acting in some of the intense scenes is brilliant, the cast worked extremely well together and did a fantastic job.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

As Joe Hill himself said, you can't get scared reading a comic. I think he said that anyway...

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The tension building and suspense has been done very well, it's an emotional rollercoaster for sure.

Any additional comments?

Amazing job all round, and can't believe this is being given away for free. I'd have paid about £25 for it.

6 people found this helpful

Wow!

This was my first experience of a graphic novel of this type/genre and also the first time I'd tried an audio book that wasn't read by one person. I struggled at first and wondered if this was for me but after around 45 mins I was hooked. superb story, interesting characters and the score/actors really brought it to life. Thoroughly enjoyed it and am now hunting for something similar. ....would definitely recommend it :-)

5 people found this helpful