Skeletons

By: Al Sarrantonio

Narrated by: Peter Jude Ricciardi

Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

In Moscow, the sound of bones echoes across Red Square. In America, skeletons patrol the streets of Manhattan and blood stains the cornfields of the Midwest. While in Washington, D. C., Abraham Lincoln is heading for his third term in the White House.

The best-and worst-of humanity are back with a vengenace, a skeletal army hell-bent on conquering the living and uniting the world under the banner of the dead.

Against this bloody backdrop of global horror, a small group of refugees find themselves drawn together by a single vision and a shared fate: to determine whether the last two humans on earth will survive or join the ranks of the newly risen.

Terrifying and outrageous, Skeletons is a roller coaster ride into the fibrillating heart of darkness by one of horror's scariest writers.

©1992 Al Sarrantonio (P)2012 David N. Wilson

Good story read by horrible narrator.

What disappointed you about Skeletons?

The performance of the narrator was horrendous unless you are fond of lisps and stammering during a reading. There was no production value as the narrator would repeat sentences and phrases and they would not be edited out.

Would you be willing to try another one of Peter Jude Ricciardi’s performances?

Never again

Not your standard Zombie Fare

I loved the idea of this book. The concept was brilliant, and the execution was even better. What happens when everything and everyone that ever died comes back, but as skeletons? These undead don't want to eat the living, they just want to kill them, but they also want to tolerate them if possible, at least Abraham Lincoln does.

The book is an end of the world saga with the hope of getting a restart on humanity, and it centers around a cosmic cloud that hit Earth about the time Dino's died off. The book has amazing characters and some brutal scenes, one that sticks in my head is one in which a woman is killed for not wanting to pleasure a Skellie and is killed, twice. I don't know why but it lives in my head rent free and it was a toss away scene.

One of the best early zombie styled genre books out there. There's a reason its still around.

Audible.com needs to install some quality control

I really like Al Sarrantonio.
He is a vastly accomplished novelist.

WHY I HEART SARRANTONIO
He does the same thing most horror writers do, but a whole lot better.
He brings all the character & atmosphere required to this genre with an economy of verbiage.
This allows him tight & rapid story pacing. Action/horror speed.
His ideas are unique. He never goes down the same path of most others.
Al Sarrantonio doesn't seem worried if he's talking above his audience & this is refreshing in a genre that has hundreds of identical potted "Zombie Apocalypse" books written toward a 7th grade reading skill set.

WHY I CRY FOR SARRANTONIO
I dunno why the narrators of Al Sarrantonio's audio-books seem to be chosen not from the "A" list, but from the "B" and perhaps even more likely from the "C" list.
Is his audio-book producer cutting cost on talent?
They have an "A" list writer - a man who's won more writing awards than 90% of Audible - and yet we get readers so amateurish they make his words sound bad.
…And that's saying something significant folks!
This guy writes rings around most of King's later/recent work ...so I think.

READER MADE ME CRINGE
OKAY - One, I'm a gay man. So, you know I have no problem with listening to a gay brother read, where appropriate.
That being said, I don't know why the producer of this particular audio-book that has nothing to do with the LGBTQ thing chose a gay sounding man to read it. The REAL problem is, of course, he's a gay sounding man who's just not very good… no… sorry… he's a gay sounding man who's just not good AT ALL at narrating, let alone this particular book.

Well.
It’s certainly not the choice I would have made.

I was so distracted by the unprofessional reading I couldn’t focus on, and enjoy, this good book.
In audio-books the half the book is the narrator.
A good book needs a good narrator.
A bad book with a really good narrator… can actually fool you long enough to get through the whole book before you realize how bad it is!
The flip of that is, sadly, a bad narrator can destroy a literary masterpiece.
This is why listening to Audio-books can be so terribly frustrating - we are at the mercy of these audio-book production companies half seem to be hacks.

Bring back the libraries!
If anything will, it'll be wastelands like Audible.com
Perhaps Audible.com needs to install some quality controls over which audio-books they will carry?
Some customer help instead of this unending crap-shoot?

This may just be a review going out into the nowhere of audible, but at least I can try to help steer readers away from this unpleasant experience.
Sorry Al Sarrantonio.
Please do your fans a favor and go kick some butt at your audio-book production house.

just horrible...

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I decided to buy this because I remember reading it in high school and wanted to see how it held up and if I would enjoy it as much now as I did then.

well...I have no idea how it holds up because I couldn't finish listening to it because of just how awful the reading was. I'm having trouble putting into words just how bad it was.

I'll give an example..."he said dreamily" makes no difference at all to the narrator, who reads it just like every other line, practically at a yell. I honestly feel like he was trying to get through this as fast as possible so he could get his paycheck. no timing, no pauses at all between sentences. just the exact same tone, no matter what is being said.

and don't even get on the narrator deciding Abe Lincoln(from Illinois) needed a southern accent.

What didn’t you like about Peter Jude Ricciardi’s performance?

better question, what did I like about it?

nothing. I hope you have changed careers by now you hack.