Worthy of the Gasps it Creates
5 stars
McCammon never fails to satisfy, and he definitely brings the emotion in this one.
Curtis is a Listener. He can hear and mentally speak with other listeners. He has a very specific telepathy; he can’t simply read minds. As a child, his mother took him to different types of doctors until one finally explained that he wasn't sick or crazy, just different, maybe blessed.
Nila, a young girl of 10, finds Curtis. She’s also a Listener and, like Curtis, she doesn’t know if the voices in her head are real.
From the shocking murders in the first chapter, the reader knows he’s in for a ride. Sadly, that murderer wasn’t even the worst character in the novel. Like Swan Song, the characters here embody different types of good and evil, and the unknown of their personalities makes it difficult to know where things will go until the end.
Once the …
McCammon never fails to satisfy, and he definitely brings the emotion in this one.
Curtis is a Listener. He can hear and mentally speak with other listeners. He has a very specific telepathy; he can’t simply read minds. As a child, his mother took him to different types of doctors until one finally explained that he wasn't sick or crazy, just different, maybe blessed.
Nila, a young girl of 10, finds Curtis. She’s also a Listener and, like Curtis, she doesn’t know if the voices in her head are real.
From the shocking murders in the first chapter, the reader knows he’s in for a ride. Sadly, that murderer wasn’t even the worst character in the novel. Like Swan Song, the characters here embody different types of good and evil, and the unknown of their personalities makes it difficult to know where things will go until the end.
Once the plot moves into the kidnapping, I found myself uplifted by Curtis’s need to help a stranger despite the many obstacles in doing so, race not being the smallest of those.
I listened to this book, and for the first time in a long time, I was worried for the characters and caught up in the moment. My walking pace was significantly faster the week I listened to this, and I frequently had to stop and unclench my fists. I even gasped aloud at a couple of events.
Readers should be aware that this book is set in the 1930s and has all the racist hallmarks of the period. They are important to the complications of the plot.