inlibrisveritas
Written on Mar 11, 2017
I’ll be honest and say I fall asleep during Kubrick films. I can watch exceedingly long movies with no problem..but put in a Kubrick film and I’m out after the first 20 minutes. So I was hesitant going into this because I knew my appreciation for the puzzle solving would be automatically lessened due to my somewhat unwilling ignorance on the films themselves. However, I found that I had no issue what so ever following along and enjoy the ride! The puzzles are so engrained in the media they pull from that it makes you want to pop in the movies and start hunting yourself. The sheer amount of Kubrick trivia in this novel is just amazing, I went from knowing next to nothing about the main to knowing parts of his process and habits during filming. In fact, it sort of keyed me in on details I missed in my viewings of the films and made me appreciate them a bit more.
The main character, Shawn, provided a perspective that I have never read anything from nor was I was expecting. Shawn has Aspergers. I can’t speak to the authenticity of the voice itself, however, I really appreciated the viewpoint as he navigates his problems with social interactions, maintaining relationships, and learning more about himself.
The audiobook itself is narrator by Johnathan Franken and Yvette Nicole Brown. Franken, or Riker from Star Trek, provides the main narration for the book and Brown provides the voice of Desiree. It’s an odd style for an audio but as it is explained in the beginning this takes on a sort of radio show type feel to it and gives the book a bit of it’s own style. While I really did enjoy both Franken and Brown’s reading I will say that at points the quality dips a bit. The volume will randomly drop down in areas, so there was a lot of playing with the volume controls.
Overall I think this is a must for movie fans and for those who love a thrilling ride filled with riddles and danger