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A review by mayhappily
Worthe's Village by Ron Ripley
3.0
I listened to this as an audiobook and, unfortunately, the narrator was not for me. Even more unfortunately, the narrator was so not for me, that I'm not sure how much it effected my experience of Worthe's Village. I do, however, feel certain that it would've ended up being a middling book (for me, personally) no matter if I'd read it instead of listened to it.
My stumbling upon Worthe's Village happened while I was browsing for my next audiobook. It wasn't even this, the first in the series, that caught my initial attention - that was a sequel - but as a fan of order I chose to begin at the start.
The Haunted Village series is a tale of a mad (or at least very unconscionable) scientist carrying out an experiment - for as of yet unrevealed reasons, to my chagrin; I mean, I wouldn't condone his empirical methods even had I known his reasoning, but maybe I'd at least have an understanding of why he's doing it. I prefer even my zompoc books with a dash of logic!
Abel Worthe is, and I quote: "brilliant, wealthy, and utterly immoral." His field of expertise is the study of fear and death. He uses his wealth to buy up haunted houses and have them transported to his Haunted Village, to which he then introduces human tests subjects. Test subjects who werenot always never asked to participate and who will never be allowed to leave.
One of these test subjects is Marcus Holt. A VA of 62 years - he is throughout the book referred to as "old" and this really bothers me; he is continually described as if we should expect him to be on his death bed and I just don't find that feasible - who might just prove to be a wrench in Worthe's plan.
I didn't care overly much about any of the characters and part of that might be because of the way the narrator voiced them - it almost came across as mockingly. Another part of it, the bigger part of it, is because the lack of motivations. Say a character is cast to play the part of a villain, if done well that can be super interesting, but when you have no discernible motives for why the villain is a villain, it just creates confusion.
My stumbling upon Worthe's Village happened while I was browsing for my next audiobook. It wasn't even this, the first in the series, that caught my initial attention - that was a sequel - but as a fan of order I chose to begin at the start.
The Haunted Village series is a tale of a mad (or at least very unconscionable) scientist carrying out an experiment - for as of yet unrevealed reasons, to my chagrin; I mean, I wouldn't condone his empirical methods even had I known his reasoning, but maybe I'd at least have an understanding of why he's doing it. I prefer even my zompoc books with a dash of logic!
Abel Worthe is, and I quote: "brilliant, wealthy, and utterly immoral." His field of expertise is the study of fear and death. He uses his wealth to buy up haunted houses and have them transported to his Haunted Village, to which he then introduces human tests subjects. Test subjects who were
One of these test subjects is Marcus Holt. A VA of 62 years - he is throughout the book referred to as "old" and this really bothers me; he is continually described as if we should expect him to be on his death bed and I just don't find that feasible - who might just prove to be a wrench in Worthe's plan.
I didn't care overly much about any of the characters and part of that might be because of the way the narrator voiced them - it almost came across as mockingly. Another part of it, the bigger part of it, is because the lack of motivations. Say a character is cast to play the part of a villain, if done well that can be super interesting, but when you have no discernible motives for why the villain is a villain, it just creates confusion.