The Croning
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The Croning
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Narrated by:
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Emily Zeller
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By:
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Laird Barron
About this listen
Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us....
Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... of The Croning.
From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.
©2012 Laird Barron (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Editorial reviews
Laird Barron's debut novel plays to his strengths as a short story writer by fragmenting the chapters with a mind suffering from senile dementia. Flashbacks and forgetfulness build character of Don, a doomed man walking the edge of cosmic horror that the listener alone perceives, like a killer waiting in a closet.
The delicate-voiced Emily Zeller highlights how expertly and carefully Barron chooses his words, and also allows The Croning's horror to sneak up and stab the listener when it unexpectedly rears its hideous head. The quiet, exacting sweetness of Zeller's performance offsets the coldness of Barron's universe, its indifference to human suffering, and the sureness of its ultimate victory.
Critic Reviews
What listeners say about The Croning
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Tyler
- 03-06-2018
The most Lovecraft thing I have read in a while.
This book drew me in very fast as a horror fan, it creates a malevolence and corruption in the first few chapters equal to some of the genre's finest. I loved the atmosphere and unfolding terror of the first third of this book but as quickly as it starts, towards the middle it began to vanish into what I call Stephenkingitis.
This phenomenon is when I feel an author goes to a great deal of effort to building backdrop to events, but slows the story down to a crawl. I feel this dominates the mid third of the book, frustrating me a bit but Laird ends up playing his hand in the final act to sort of justify what I felt was disjointed unrelated memories. During this final act, I really enjoyed the character development and naked horror that returns to bring it all back together, dwarfing us with the staggering implications. I felt like this was one of the better horror novels I have read in recent years and I would recommend it heartily to fans of horror and Lovecraft.
Emily Zeller did a excellent job narrating and giving distinction to different characters in the novel. I know some other people did not enjoy her masculine or child characters but I didn't mind them, I felt chilled by some of her female character's voice.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 10-09-2021
Too much build up not enough pay off =(
This book has the common issue many other cosmic horror stories have. The pay off is disappointing.
The story jumps around in time with a old man as our main character. It's just a shame nothing really happens. Sure he is likeable... But when the only time things actually start getting a bit weird is well into the last hour of the book something is wrong. And what then? Do we get a climax? No. We get an old man dying in a bed.
Decent performance. Shame about the book
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Tezza
- 20-09-2021
Needs concentration
I found it a little convoluted at the beginning and thought of giving up.
I persevered and finally was able to follow the thread to an ending that made the book clearer. Ending was satisfying.
just an added note to say that mispronunciations by the narrator were mildly annoying.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- JT
- 12-01-2022
Should of been a short story.
A perfectly aged 250g cut of angus, boiled down into broth, filled out with gravy and turned into to a pie.
Just alot of flowery filling when the story could of been short and succinct and still got the point across.
The flowery descriptive prose never translates well to audiobook either, i find for myself its easier to read these kinds of books.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 16-10-2021
where are parental advisory warnings
I really do not need that kind of letter to playboy without warning, thank you.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 30-09-2021
This was bad
This is very odd. I would not recommend
Just awful writing that sounds extremely amateurish
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Koontz lover
- 14-01-2022
Could have been much better
I didn't finish bacause I lost the gist of the story. Jumped about so much, I didn't know what was going on.
I DID give it a good try.
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