The Curator

De: Owen King

Narrado por: Marin Ireland

From New York Times bestselling author Owen King, who “writes with witty verve” (Entertainment Weekly) comes a “richly imagined” (The New York Times) Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers are the most wonderful criminals you can imagine.

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”, it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability.

Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire—to understand the mystery of her brother's death, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, where citizens like Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, are now in positions of authority, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. Robert offers her one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be. Set against the backdrop of an oddly familiar and wondrous city on the verge of collapse, Dora’s search for the truth will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the edge of worlds.

©2023 Owen King. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

maybe it's me

I wanted so much to love this story. The characters and the premise seemed interesting at first but it was SO MUCH WORK trying to figure out what was going on. I think the relatively undefined place and point in time made it extremely unrelateable. I'm all for fantasy, revolution is an interesting subject, magic is wonderful, but my inability to understand the environment of the story just made everything feel mixed up and impossible to follow.
Maybe I'm just not that smart.

Shame

After reading sleeping beauties and enjoying it quite a lot. I had high hopes for The Curator. Sadly it was a downfall and chapter after chapter I had to force myself to get through it. Sleeping beauties was clearly held together by his father as this was to me a complete waste of my time. I begged for it to end as quickly as possible.

Boring

Got this book based on the many good reviews. I find it slow, boring, and poorly narrated. I kept thinking that maybe a narrator who didn’t treat it as if he were reading an inorganic chemistry text might have brought it alive, but… The main character was such a non-entity. The story that revolved around her had no drive. The author was laying down the rules of his world, but forgot there should be an interesting story to bind the ingredients together. Caveat: I did not finish it. I got within 1-1/2 hours and threw up my figurative hands, so maybe it all came together?

Confusing story unless you summarize it

I was about 40% into the book before I understood what the general idea about the book was. Overall it was unnecessarily wordy and jumped around.

Can’t figure it out

This book I wanted to like it I looked forward to listening to it, but didn’t never figured out exactly where it was going was all over the place with characters that really didn’t make any sense with a story that left me with? And many times I wanted to pause and just delete it from my phone, give it a try. Maybe you can figure it out more than I can.

Not just a story of supernatural revenge

it is also an insightful look at revolution--who really profits? Subtle, haunting. Miniseries material.

Enjoyable but not for everyone

If you like weird stories that don’t necessarily have a linear plot but manage to entertain you with rich, witty language and interesting characters, then give it a shot. Kind of David Fincher-esque. I think a second listen might bump the story up to 4/5.

Must have the patience

I saw Mr King speak about this book recently and he was definitely right when he said you needed to give it some time to develop. He stated that the first 30% of the book was set-up for the story. Knowing that, I stuck with it. I was intrigued. It didn't go in the direction I thought it would so it was a surprise. At times though I did find it difficult to follow. It could've just been me (as it is hard for me to get out of my head sometimes),but generally with stories like these you need to pay close attention.

*Potential spoiler alert*

I had high hopes for Ike and wanted to see him get a happy ending. He didn't get the one I wanted but at least he got one.

The narrator is a favorite, but…

It took me months to get through it after giving up on the hardcopy. Even listening on Audible, the story just did not engage me enough. I honestly had a hard time sticking with it until the end. This is definitely not one of my favorite books by the author. This would probably be one of those book to film situations where the film is actually better. If an adaptation is ever made.

Pedantic at every turn

Slow, pompous, way too many characters and not enough tie in or development. Even the reader seemed bored by it (which is saying something since she’s usually phenomenal). There are better books out there in this genre. Go listen to one of those. Sadly this missed the mark in about every way.