The Trials of King Sparrow

By: Bill Meeks

Narrated by: James Romick

Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

While leading his queen and faithful subjects to their winter home, King Sparrow is betrayed, then abandoned in the woods. He battles foul beasts, psychotic eagles, and the oncoming winter on his quest to find his true love.

With twists throughout, The Trials of King Sparrow celebrates his strength, compassion, and perseverance as he seeks his revenge. It's a magical adventure set against the brutal backdrop of the natural world.

©2015 Bill Meeks (P)2015 Bill Meeks

Watership Down meets Ovid

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely. It's like very few other reads on the market today.

Who was your favorite character and why?

King Sparrow. He's humble yet authoritative, wise yet flawed.

Which character – as performed by James Romick – was your favorite?

He did a great job on every character, giving them each unique, recognizable, and fitting vocal features.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

In a world where bird betrays bird, anything can happen... Literally anything.

Any additional comments?

Take equal parts Watership Down and traditional fairy tales, and add a strong dash of Ovid, and what you get is pretty close to Bill Meeks' The Trials of King Sparrow. Another way to describe the story — or the first half, at any rate — is to imagine a BBC nature documentary, but told from the first person perspective of the animals themselves. The story begins with King Sparrow, the monarch of a small flock of birds flying south for the winter, is the victim of betrayal, almost losing his life to a conspiracy of wolves and one of his own people. Injured and almost certain to die, he begins a long journey toward vengeance, helped or hindered by other animals along the way. This first segment, to me, has a lot in common with Richard Adams' epic of rabbits plagued by a continuous series of dangers both without and within their own kind. Like Adams, Meeks gives his animal characters a definite ans pleasurable sense of their own animality. Though they have reason and speech, they're not merely human characters in animal clothing. This, to me, is the best part of the story.

About two-thirds into the book, the story takes an unexpected turn, as mysterious forces begin to intervene in King Sparrow's quest, and he is forced to turn aside, for a while, from the road to vengeance. This section is surprising and dreamlike, and for a while I felt unsure whether enjoyment or unease was the better response.

In a way this is appropriate, as this is often the feeling one gets when reading certain old myths, especially the kind one finds in The Metamorphoses. What is more surprising is that, as firmly rooted as the story begins in animality and a naturalist (in the more common sense of the word) aesthetic, it ends in sheer supernaturalism (also in the common sense). Again, this is approapriate to the fairy tail tradition, which in some ways King Sparrow falls firmly into.

The difference is that these characters, being written so well and so strongly as animals, do not belong as squarely in that setting of enchantment and happy endings. There is a brutality in King Sparrow that is both very appropriate given its setting in the animal world, and also very disturbing given the human territory the story wanders into later on. And that dissonance contributes very much to the overall sense of awe, mystery, and inscrutability the reader is left with at the end of the book.

King sparrow

Was a little different then the usual books I read. But a good and interesting story.

The Trials of King Sparrow

Any additional comments?

This was a terrific 'read'!The story is of King Sparrow and his flock.There is love, betrayal and magic, all told from King Sparrows viewpoint.I believe that this would be aimed towards YA boys,but I would have loved it as a girl.James Romick was fine as King Sparrows voice.He was commanding yet compassionate where he needed to be.
"I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author in exchange for an unbiased review via AudiobookBlast dot com."

I Liked It

The Trials of King Sparrow was not the type of book I normally read/listen too. But I have to say I enjoyed this audio book, it had good characters and story line and the narration was pretty good....Recommended

Like a fairytale

Bill Meeks' The trials of King Sparrow reads like a fairytale. I really loved reading this novella. There is at least one gruesome scene in this story, but it wouldn't be a Bill Meeks story without it.
If you want to relive your Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen days I would recommend you to read this one.

Clever story

I enjoyed this story much more than I thought I would. The action begins almost immediately, and keeps up a good pace throughout. I also thought the narrator had a perfect voice to carry the gravitas of King Sparrow.

The use of magic, betrayal, revenge, and love in the story made it like a regular fairy tale, but with birds instead of people. I look forward to reading/listening to more books by Bill Meeks.