To be totally honest, I wasn’t as excited about listening to this story as I expected to be. It isn’t a bad story at all, it just didn’t grab me by my ears and force me to listen. It has a little bit of everything including pirates, sea monsters, treasure hunters and more. Honestly that list is exactly what I like, so I am surprised that it didn’t quite pull me in as I would have expected it to. I felt it took too long to get to the action since it really spent way too much time developing the characters, which in the end, didn’t really seem to push the story into my five start rating. This book, in my opinion, was totally about the characters rather than the plot itself, which to me seemed a bit long winded for what it actually was.
I thought the characters were great, especially if you like strong female heroines. There were a few characters that were in the story and didn’t really seem to have any purpose at all. I didn’t understand the zombie lady on the beach. I don’t know why the coral diver, who served no purpose other than to be the first fatality from the creature, had so much development to die right away. The only thing that seemed a bit unbelievable about the characters is when everything is said and done, those who were left standing. With the final words of the book, we may see more adventures.
The plot was decent and unfolded as it should have. I felt there were lots of pieces to the story that either were unnecessary or just went away without explanation. I felt there was a bit too much to it, but in general it was a good story that any action adventure fan will be happy to listen to. I personally wanted a bit more fright surrounding the creature. I was hoping for a much darker story and that is on me, not the author, even though it is “A Novel of Deep Sea Horror”. Jaws had more horror than this. Overall, I think it was a solid story despite my issues with I would recommend.
Every now and then it struck me odd the author’s need to give additional detail around specific things. Like when he mentions the AK rounds, 7.62×39. I don’t think that the measurement of the bullet added anything to the story. Another example is when he talked about sea cumbers and called them echinoderms. Just didn’t make a lot of sense to me and made me wonder if he just happened to know that or if he was doing research to make it sound like he knew what he was talking about. Not anything too big, just each time I heard that type of thing I had a brain pause for a moment.
I liked Sean’s narration and I liked his character voices. Didn’t care for his Holloway voice, although, that is just personal preference. I felt like he did a great job bringing the story to life and gave all the characters personality that made everything work great. Having listened to quite a few of Sean’s narrations I can tell he is definitely bringing his A game to each new story he tells.
I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.