Arkham County by Guy Adams & AK Benedict – An Audio Drama Review

Blurb

Welcome to Arkham County. Population: 749,824. But that number’s dropping all of the time….

Lying northeast of Massachusetts, just south of Hell, Arkham County is somewhere you find yourself, not somewhere you ever mean to go. Once you do find it though, you’d better get used to living there, as you may be there for however long you have left to live.

From within the walls of Arkham’s asylum, reclusive writer Randolph Carter tells the story of orphan Violet Flintock, who arrives in Arkham County in search of her own history only to be instantly greeted by the bloody realities of this small town, whose foundations are built from the lore and mythology of HP Lovecraft.

In this Audible Original production, Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada, Fortitude) leads a cast to introduce you to the horrific, bizarre and just plain weird world of Arkham County. This HP Lovecraft-inspired tale will delight fans and those unfamiliar with his wild, surreal and terrifying horror stories.

Writers: Guy Adams & AK Benedict

Narrators: Full Cast

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Audible Studios

Running Time: 7hrs 26mins

My Rating of ‘Arkham County’: 1 out of 5

Purchase: Audible

Review:

Wow. And not in a good way. Not even in a bad way. Wow in the kind of way that aspires to be bad.

This just had next to nothing going for it and it made little attempt to hide the fact. Any time it seemed to be losing itself (most of the time) it would try and distract the listener by a lengthy period of groans, sound effects and just downright odd noises. I thought that Lovecraft was the absolute worst person to write Lovecraft. Turns out I was wrong.

The characters (99%) of them were an extreme of some sort. If you pointed one out and asked me to rate their level of being over the top/pointless/so false that even fiction should be ashamed/ I would say either 1 or 10. There was no middle ground. A character was either quiet and unobtrusive whilst appearing to be relevant in a larger way (but never actually proving to be so), or they were just loud and obnoxious to the point it felt like they were competing with each other to be the most hate-inspiring character.

Another massive drawback for both characters and story (I THINK there was a story in there somewhere rather than the horrendously disjointed mess it was masquerading as) is that the characters all talk in ways no human being would ever talk. Have you ever read dialogue in a book that sounds like an author took every word out of a thesaurus in an attempt to sound clever? That’s how all dialogue in this sounds. One great line of dialogue includes someone describing a scent as ‘like the scent of bone marrow’. Who knows what bone marrow smells like and why is that the first thought that pops into your head ahead of countless easier descriptions?

Overall it was just one long inane ramble of noise, sound effects, bad characters and horrendous dialogue. 

I feel bad for putting a purchase link on my blog as I’d feel responsible if someone went ahead and did so, despite the less than kind words said in my review. I cut the review short as I feel I conveyed my thoughts and, any further attempts would have devolved into unnecessary cruelty on my point.

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