Midnight Picnic

De: Nick Antosca

Narrado por: R.C. Bray

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: This audiobook contains material some listeners may find disturbing.

From Nick Antosca, creator of the Syfy Channel's Channel Zero.

In the morning, Bram finds the bones of a murdered child. At noon, the murdered child begs for his help. And by nightfall, they have killed a man together and set off into the afterlife, where nothing is what it was, and death is only the beginning of punishment. An eerie story about the nature of death and the self, Midnight Picnic inhabits an American landscape made strange and unfamiliar.

©2009 Nick Antosca (P)2016 Blue Heron Audio

An otherworldly adventure story

This book reminds me of a world like The Robin Williams film What Dreams May Come in the way it portrays the afterlife as a construct where we continue to live, but in a very different way, with rules that are always just a little bit out of reach.

The way the real world is thrust into the reader with a brief and detailed love scene is juxtaposed with the surreal and nebulous other world where anything might happen, and there's no telling if it will be good or bad.

Production quality is excellent, and the performer is exemplary.

Wow

What a wild story. Creepy, strange, and trippy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but feel the ending was a bit abrupt. Still highly recommended

Great read!!

I loved this book so much I have gone back re-listened twice. It is atmospheric and gets you right into the place and time. Antosca has become a favorite author, wish he had more books.

Stephen King esq

Not all books need to make sense or satsify all the questions you might ask...Im not really sure what the story is about....I will listen to it again though

intriguing

A little bit of a different kind of story. Haunting and odd. Felt like a weird dream. This story takes quick peaks down dark alleys while stumbling confused down the main path. Well written and as always very well read.

highly emotional and unsettling, surreal road trip

When Midnight Picnic started with Bram accidentally running over a dog and trying but ultimately failing to aid the dying animal, I was convinced I would hate this. However, the engaging writing, the flow of the language coupled with the haunting atmosphere really pulled me into this dark and sad story.

Bram is basically a decent bloke living a mundane life with an on/off sexual relationship with the depressed girl living on the same floor as him above Moms bar. His accident is the start of a journey that leads Bram to the land of the dead where he follows six-year-old Adam who is consumed with the concepts of right, wrong and punish. Adam was murdered by Jacob Bunny and is seeking help from Bram to settle the score with Jacob. Author Nick Antosca provides heartbreaking vignettes of the tragic lives of these well-drawn characters and portrays a dim and eerie afterlife.

Not so much a scary ghost story, but a highly emotional and unsettling, surreal road trip, Midnight Picnic was utterly spellbinding exploring issues such as loneliness, evil, and redemption. Only four and a half hours long, I listened to this in one sitting. I'm still not sure what to make of the ending, though.

With regards to the narration, it was performed by R. C. Bray. Need I say more? As always, outstanding. His tone matched the tension and eeriness of the story perfectly. Quite often, if a young child is a major part of the story, I find the narration suffers. In this case, I was in awe how authentic six-year-old Adam sounded. There were no issues with the production.

If you enjoy unique surreal stories this is for you.

Audiobook was provided for review by the publisher.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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Like a 5 Hour fever dream, but in a good way!

What made the experience of listening to Midnight Picnic the most enjoyable?

It had crazy, nuts stuff happening, but never seemed to "jump the shark"

Who was your favorite character and why?

The little kid! He was funny and conflicted. Great job of showing his age.

What does R.C. Bray bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He's great at making subtle voice changes for each character to differentiate, but not be annoying or distracting

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

Naw, that aint me, but I bet some people would.

Any additional comments?

Great listen, only detract points on the story because I am not into supernatural so much, but this was not so focused on that, mostly it just was a contemplation on life, loneliness, death, etc.

Head trip

Would you listen to Midnight Picnic again? Why?

Yes, I'm definitely planning on a second listen and possibly a third. There's a lot going on in this story.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

The story just needs to be a little bit longer to spread out the details

What about R.C. Bray’s performance did you like?

Excellent performance by RC

Any additional comments?

I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Best spent credit in a long long time

Even though this is only a 4 hour listen, it has been one of the best author/story/narration combos I've experienced. For starters, Antosca writes with such depth that its hard for me to believe there aren't more if his works out there. I was immediately drawn into the strange little world not only through his vivid descriptions, but by the superb narration of RC Bray. His ability to transport the audience from written word to audio perfection always blows me away. It's amazing how seemlessly he is able to switch from character to character, so that you almost believe that you're listening to multiple narrators.

The story itself is deeper than your average "ghost" story and ends up turning into more of a life lesson. It's long enough to tell a complete story but short enough so that it doesn't drag on with a bunch of pointless filler that so many authors tend to add. Personally, I get bored easily and usually start to lose interest halfway through most single narration audiobooks. Full cast productions are mainly my cup of tea. This however, held my attention from start to finish.

My only complaint is that there aren't more works from this author. I'd listen to them in a heartbeat. And I highly recommend giving this a try.

Close but no cigar

Midnight Picnic is a carefully crafted novella which Audible oh-so-helpfully lists as genre fiction (a category that seems to mean, we're too illiterate to actual figure out where this goes), but I would label as Eerie Horror (as opposed to Bloody Horror). There are some horrific events in Midnight, but very little true pulverizing fear and almost no graphic detail. Mostly this is a story that "creeps" - the people (living and dead are creepy), the settings are creepy, and even the dogs in this novel are creepy; the story evokes more of a nauseous dread than actual fright. From my perspective, I find "Eerie Horror" much more entertaining to read than "Bloody Horror" and some of my favorite authors (Darryl Gregory, Luke Smitherd, Jeff Strand) are absolutely brilliant in this genre. And while I admire Nick Antosca's effort, Midnight Picnic did not quite hit my sweet spot. Most of the story is relayed from Bram's POV, but Bram is just about the most passive person in both life and afterlife that you could want to meet and I hate that type of protagonist. Maybe it's the barely caged control freak in me, but I can't root for someone who takes no responsibility and claims no agency. I also kind of hated the use of both dogs and little children to represent levels of evil. In my experience, both dogs and little kids are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of evil. I suppose that's the reason some horror authors like Stephen King love using the innocent as evil, but it is really unappealing to me. However, the fact that this story ended on mostly on a fade to black - no twisty wrapup, no real challenge to my world view to ponder on, and no character to live on in my head - is the ultimate reason I will not re-read this book and I can't really recommend it. It is well written, but unsatisfying.