The Missing Boatman

Publisher's Summary

Miracles are happening. Pray to God they stop.

In the dead of winter, on a highway in Quebec, a man crashes his car and survives. In New York, a homeless person is run over by a bus and lives. In Tokyo, a teenager jumps off a high rise building and fails in taking her own life. All over the world, miracles like these transpire, and people breathe a sigh of relief.

But for the next week, some people will begin to suspect a terrible truth. A handful will even search for it. One man will find it.

And in seven days, all hell will break loose.

Note: Graphic violence and language.

©2013 Keith C. Blackmore (P)2018 Podium Publishing

I guess RC Bray was busy...

Interesting plot premise and, of course, Keith C. Blackmore delivers the goods with his writing skill but the narrator is, um... not good. As noted in another review, the narration significantly detracts from the enjoyment of listening to this book.

I suppose I'm a bit spoiled as the last few series I listened to, including Mountain Man, were narrated by RC Bray, who is arguably the best in the business.

33 of 33 people found this review helpful

I love this story! Love It!!!!

I love audible... Being disabled I have difficult time actually reading. Digital books are so much cheaper with my limited income. I just find it hard to read from my tablet. I had a first generation Kindle and I literally burned up the battery playing audiobook non stop when I found the text to speech option! I now have a Samsung tablet and it has text to speech but it nothing like my old Kindle! So I joined audible. This story was so good because it didn't come right out and tell you which carracters were entities and I had to make a lot of notes and re-read it to fully understand it. So when it became available in audible I didn't hesitate to buy it. The narrator just doesn't fit.... I was disappointed big time! I went back and read it myself! The text to speech on my Kindle was better than the professional narrator! I'm not going to return it.... maybe I will give it another try! But if I had not already heard the book on my Kindle I would not have been able to listen to the narrator ruin s such a good book!!!! To anyone else who bought this book and didn't like it, try reading it without the narration! You might like it as much as I did.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

I wish the Boatman would come for the Narrator

This absolutely breaks my heart. This narrator is horrible. I LOVED Mountain Man, i listened to every book in that series including the short stories and the prequel and they are tremendous and R.C. Bray is the man. This guy is horrible, maybe this is just the audio equivalent to drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth- going from R.C. Bray to this clown.

It has been a struggle trying to pay attention to the story cause I'm so annoyed and distracted by the reader. I'm still trying to fight through it but its just not an enjoyable experience. I was so excited to have something new from this author (cause he is amazing) only to have the wind sucked out of my sails. Another reviewer says that the narrators voice eventually grows on you, well, I'm ten chapters in and i'm still grinding my teeth the whole way through. He sounds like a male version of Siri- emotionless and robotic. I think I may have to return this audio book and just read this one for myself.

Potentially great book ruined by a crappy narrator, what a shame.

15 of 17 people found this review helpful

Enough already with the testicles

Seriously, no man should be so obsessed with his scrotum that it seems to be mentioned in almost every chapter. A good editor, a dozen more rewrites and better narrator and you might be on to something, but this was twenty hours of annoyance and regret.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Don't pass this up!

If you enjoyed Breeds or The Maintain Man, then give this one a listen. I've never heard of P.J. Ochlan before, but he really grew on me after the first 2 chapters. Dont pass on this book!

18 of 21 people found this review helpful

Can I get a refund?

I'm a big fan of Keith Blackmore. This may well be a good book, however, the narrator is absolutely atrocious. I gave it a few chapters thinking maybe he would grow on me. Nope. It's like listening to a book read by the Microsoft robot voice. Skip the Audible version and get this one on Kindle.

17 of 20 people found this review helpful

Horrible narrator

Prob a good book but can’t get past 5 minutes. The narrators voice is the most annoying I’ve ever heard

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Maybe mountain man set the bar too high for me.

I don't know if maybe I need more time to reflect on it and maybe it will grow on me. But starting out with the mountain man series and prequel, then this being my next Keith C. Blackmore book, I must say that the mountain man series was a bit of a masterpiece and this one is a unique intriguing enough story but it felt like it's kind of Canada's version of Kevin Smith's Dogma or something. The humor was great and the characters were interesting enough. still very much worth the purchase!

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Has potential, none realized

This has potential, a lot of it. The ideas are fairly original, some of the plot lines are alright. But even though the idea is an intriguing one, as well as the motifs and talking points that accompany it, the execution is very unfortunate, I’m afraid.

There’s continuity errors everywhere, the rules change to suit the scene (death is touched once, and it nearly freezes Tony’s hands off, then it’s never an issue for Death to be touched again), and there’s swearing... Everywhere. Now. I’m not a prude. I don’t mind swearing. But there is a limit. And this book, including the narrative, will use curse words like a comma. And not coherent or effective curse words, either. Very immature and silly curse words. The ‘swearing for the sake of swearing’ curse words.

The narrative is not just unpoetic. It’s downright sloppy and lazy. And could be some heavy subject matter, but it’s all for naught in this author’s hands who seems to see emotion like a disease he’s deathly afraid to catch. On top of that, the violence is also very ineffective because it’s so detached from the story. The battles are frivolous since we hardly see nefarious characters or villains win them. And they’re written with zero knowledge of how a human body actually moves.

Many characters are introduced for no reason, then done away with with no payoff: the speaker of the dead, for instance. Who is put under with one swing of a baseball bat before he does anything.

And I’ve only started. This thing... is a mess. A big, noisy, cursing, useless mess. It has zero aim and zero purpose. It’s written as if it were a cartoon. There’s nothing ‘horror’ about its atmosphere at all because it’s so mishandled and over the top. Favoring endless swearing over any real literary execution.

And what... is with... the testicles? Every third sentence is talking about scrotums, or balls, or groins, or characters are ripping at balls or testicles or scrotums... I’m no prude, again, but it’s invasive. It’s intrusive, the swearing and all the balls. And it makes the story comedic rather than serious, whether it intends to be or not. And why didn’t anyone call Time when they found Death? Especially when they had a phone specifically routed to call him? Then; Time places Pain in a time crawl in the final scene. If that was possible, why wasn’t Pain our in that loop from the start to minimize his threat? Every rule was made up or broken at will to serve whatever ridiculous thing was happening in the scene, rather than the scene playing out logically because of the rules set up. And when dealing with meta humans or entities, you have to follow the rules you put up. Otherwise; the story, and it’s rules; are pointless. And it was never, ever explained whether the metas are actually mortal when I’m human form. Or whether they do or do not possess powers that they can use at will to do whatever the hell they please.

This thing was a mess. Which is truly unfortunate, because some of the ideas are solid. And with proper telling and execution, with more skill, it could have been something very cool. But that wasn’t the case. And after reading all the reviews, I feel a bit badly about that. Because it seems that a lot of other readers didn’t read the same book I did. So; in the end; no one book or style is for everyone. And this one wasn’t for me. Because believe me, with all the things I mentioned, I still only scratched the surface of what a catastrophe this book turned out to be.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Disappointing

Disjointed, over-acted, maddening. Keeps you interested just long enough to disappoint, especially considering the premise is wholly original.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Atrocious narrator! Will irate you by the first chapter.

I really do like Mr Blackmore story’s, however this has been ruined by a nauseating narrator! I managed to get through one chapter of this guys irritating voice.
Audible please ask RC Bray to record this book as he is by far the best narrator.
People wait out till it’s been recorded by Mr Bray else be bitterly disappointed.

25 of 27 people found this review helpful

Oh my god, Pj Ochlan really !!!

Keith C Blackmore is a fantastic writer. ive listened to many of his novels but after only minutes of listening to this robotic narrator I had to switch off. I just cannot listen to this person, im sure the story is great but ill never know. Keith, if you are reading this please get this book re narrated by a professional such as R C Bray.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Poor narrator choice

As soon as I started listening to this I felt irritated and amazed that they had chosen this narrator. The way it is performed is so irritating that it beggars belief. I've managed to persevere up to chapter 8 but just cant take it anymore. The story itself seems to be quite interesting but I just cant continue listening Im afraid.

10 of 11 people found this review helpful

Funny and full of gore

I know a lot of the other reviewers are less than complimentary about the narrator and I know what they mean but give him a chance. I started listening to this straight after listening to mountain man and it's a bit of a shocker to go from RC Bray to PJ Ochlan. The thing is the longer you listen the more you get pulled in to this truely great story and Mr. Ochlan style of narration. He's very good at voices and has a great way of delivering the humour in this book; I actually laughted out loud a couple of times, which doesnt happen very often with action/horror books. Really give it a try

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Don’t be put off by the negative folk

Okay...I must admit the first few chapters of P J Ochlan’s narration had me worried...but he pulls it back brilliantly with all the different characters. KCB is the complete nuts as usual , a fantastic writer and has written another bloody great story....Keith can write no wrong, I’d happy read his shopping list!!!?? I just hope one day he visits England so I can buy him a pint !!!!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Not as bad as some reviews

The narration isn’t that bad really. Yes it’s a bit robotic and initially irritating until you get used to it. But the character voices are very good and make up for it. I’m a huge RC Bray fan but he wouldn’t have been any good for this story. Overall a good original story.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Another great story

The narration is a little of putting at first but stick with it and he comes into his own. Another great story from mr Blackmore

Brilliant

At the start of this i thought no way am I listening to this with very graphic violence but listened a while more..so glad I did ..it was one of the best books ever..brilliant !!!!

Not what i expected

enjoyed the story, not what i was expecting, did not want the story to finish

Different narrator but immensely enjoyable

The narrator was different to his previous books and initially I found it difficult to get into the story, however found this to be highly entertaining as it went on.