Deathbeast

By: David Gerrold

Narrated by: Andy Caploe

Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Timebeam to danger

Six hunters and two official guides are going on the trip of their lifetime.Their destination? Earth as it was 100 million years ago, long before human dominion, when the great hot-blooded dinosaurs ruled supreme.

Each of the time travelers has a different motive. Some are on the strange safari for pay. Others are taking a psychological and sexual holiday from civilization. There are women who wanted to show themselves the equal of men - and men out to test and prove their manhood.

But whatever their drives and desires, their strengths and weaknesses, the ultimate horror awaits them...deathbeast.

©1978, 1999, 2014 David Gerrold (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Mix of Moby Dick and The sound of Thunder

This is a not so great variant of Moby Dick with The sound of Thunder time traveling Dino hunt.
Boring characters no so bad narration.
Almost to none characters development nothing to care about them
The most interesting one was the prehistoric mouse
The bad Dino was so stereotype even Jurassic park one were more scary and interesting
Not bad but there is an idea this will be a great syfy channel or The asylum movie full of cheap special effects
I will watch it

Disappointing

This book started out well, as an interesting story that involved action and what not. But after about the halfway point it got very wordy and devolved from the actual action into a lot of personal reflection by the characters that really felt like it dragged on way too long. Overall I was disappointed in what had potential to be a really good story.

Just sorta bland

Likes: future meets prehistoric past is a good concept
Dislike: little character development, even less of the actual “beast”. Lots of rabbit hole content that should have never made final print.

thumbs down

can't finish. story not engaging. narrator's voice is unpleasant. too much she said then he said then she said the he said

MOBY DEATHBEAST - or, 'The Great White Rex.'

DEATHBEAST - Poetic prehistoric pandemonium

This is “Moby Dick” and Ray Bradbury’s “A Distant Sound of Thunder” retold.

Ray Bradbury & Edgar Rice Burroughs fans may enjoy this.
That said, it's “Moby Dick” as a Jurassic version of the great white whale’s tale.

An obsessed great-white-hunter, a modernistic “Captain Ahab” ( named “E-fab” ) from the future hires a time travel safari to go on a prehistoric hunt to slay the king of predators, the great white Tyrannosaurus rex - the Death-Beast.

Extremely verbose purple prose & chaos ensues.
Purple prose?
Yep.
Purple - like throbbing, blazing, nearly on fire crimson it’s so purple, purple prose.
It’s Marvel comics doing ‘Moby Dick’ with lasers and an enormous monster T-rex - instead of harpoons and a huge white whale.

Every character has an epic inner struggle complete with outlandish lines of anguish, that matches the outer earth-shaking struggle of man-ape and Lizard-King.

Poetically written, and more thoughtful than expected, in a style that reminds me of Moby Dick, Bradbury & Lovecraft.
Lovecraft?
Really?
Yeah.
“Deathbeast” reveals humans beings encountering actual dinosaurs.
Enormous predators.
People become prey.
People get eaten.
Alive.
This proves to be even more intense than it sounds.
Folks tend to loose their minds when they’re exposed to such traumatic horror.
They go into shock. They get so scared they loose it. They become obsessed. They start acting …strange., like they are characters in "Moby Dick".

All that, while their one chance to get back home is coming up… soon.
Time's ticking away.
Exciting and very dramatic.

It’s awful

I started this book thinking it CANT be as bad as the title I mean deathbeast seriously and I was wrong it wasn’t as bad it was worse DONT WASTE YOUR TIME!

Rubbish

This was one of the Audible freebies and I still feel like I paid to much money for it. Absolute rubbish!

Worst book I’ve seen in my entire life as a book worm

I’m 56 and have been a voracious reader my entire life-reading 12th grade level by 3rd grade. So I’ve gone through thousands of printed books and hundreds of audible books during my life so far. I’m not a snob and read things in almost every genre out there, but this stinker is so bad I can’t finish it. I’ve started it three times and just can’t cheat myself out of good reading/listening time, life is too short. It’s like the author was trying to prove that he knew a lot of words and vomited a dictionary all over the pages. The wordiness completely interferes with the plotline. This storyline has been done much better by several other authors. There’s not much the narrator can do with it.

Worst audio book I've listened to, to date

I really struggled to finish this title, and wish I hadn't. The performance is ok until a character speaks. I struggled through the heavy use of onomatopoeia, but accept that I may have a personal hangup in that regard. However, each character devolves into whining that makes it hard to listen to. Even worse, each character is a hyperbolic caricature that is impossible to connect with. The plot is overused, and seems to only serve as a tribute to the author's thesaurus. The author also tends toward off-topic rambling that does nothing to advance the plot.

I will never choose another title written by this author, or read by this performer.

Narrator Voice Grates on Ears

Hated it. Two reasons. 1. Narration was horrible. 2. No plot development at all, none. NONE!