Saturday, July 2, 2016

Silent Thunder by Iris and Roy Johansen


Rating: WARTY!

I quit this audiobook about two fifths the way through because it was becoming ever more boring. The essential plot was really nothing more than a modern day pirate treasure hunt, and it took far too long to get going. It began with a woman and her brother who were supposed to be examining a Russian submarine which was about to go on display at a museum. Why they were even involved is a mystery. Purportedly they were ensuring that it was safe, and determining which areas needed to be cordoned off from the public, but none of this explained why they were digging around behind panels and moving consoles on a submarine which hadn't even been cleared for hazardous substances.

Clearly they were only there so the brother could get killed and the sister find some secret codes which she promptly loses. There were less ham-fisted ways to do this. The way it was done made no sense whatsoever, but arguably worse than this was the reader's voice. Jennifer van Dyck has this way of reading which sounded odd to me from the start. At first I couldn't figure out why she sounded so weird, but then I realized she was putting the same stress on every syllable, so everything she read sounded almost like a question. It was hard to listen to for any appreciable length of time to begin with, and it did not become easier.

If the story had been more interesting I might have persevered, but why bother when it's this bad from the off? At least it wasn't in first person otherwise I never would have made it through to twenty percent. Of course it's the start of the inevitable series (yawn), but I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing it.