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A review by blurrypetals
Locke & Key by Joe Hill, Gabriel RodrÃguez
5.0
February 17, 2020
I really wanted to experience this one again after watching the new Netflix adaptation. I love the audio play to pieces, and Ian Alan Carlsen as Dodge is truly something to behold. Dodge is a character Carlsen so clearly has an immense amount of fun playing that he becomes absolutely magnetic for the entire runtime. It makes the moments he isn't around pale a little in comparison, but it would be unfair to say they are lesser than.
This is all to say that Lucas Caravaggio a.k.a. Zack Wells a.k.a. Dodge is definitely my favorite part of this story, so the fact that Dodge's role is so cut down in the new show was really disappointing. I really enjoyed the adaptation for the most part, but it definitely was missing a little flair, a little bit of that truly devious energy that comes with Dodge and his absolutely malevolent desires and tactics to get himself what he wants.
I'm just glad that, even if the Netflix adaptation doesn't do great at adapting this truly great, delightfully evil character, I've already got the perfect version right here on my Audible account.
October 18, 2018
Hot damn. I mean, hot damn. I genuinely Googled, "best Halloween audiobooks," the other night and the fact that this popped up multiple times compounded with the fact that Haley Joel Osment and Tatiana Maslany were credited narrators on this as well as the fact that it was written by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son whose work I've been meaning to check out for ages made this a near-instant buy.
Color me impressed because I don't think I have ever seen a case where a graphic novel series has been adapted from the page to just audio like this and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a production as well put together and engineered as this. The foley, the music, the editing, the acting, every little bit of finesse and detail that went into this is absolutely mind-boggling to me. Like honestly, take any praise I gave in my review for Sadie by Courtney Summers and dial it up to 11 and that's how impressed I am by this audio play.
Not only am I really impressed with this on a technical level, but I also was really transported by the writing and acting in this. I was already sold, as I said before, with Haley Joel Osment in the cast, but the actors portraying Ty and Dodge (in his Lucas/Zack form) were also really excellent, especially Dodge. This whole story just felt a whole lot like The Spiderwick Chronicles and other such creepy, magical adventures for big kids to me and I loved it. It felt like something, barring the curse words and references to sex of course, that my mom might have read aloud to my brother and I and that childlike magic, just like the magic of the keys in Keyhouse, was really special here because it then made the more adult themes and scary shit happening to these kids that much more jarring and unsettling by contrast.
Dodge, by the way, might be one of my new all-time favorite villains. I do love my villains like The Darkling in The Grisha Trilogy that you can understand and sympathize with, but there's something novel and honestly a little delightful about a villain that's just plain evil for evil's sake every once in a while. He's murderous, selfish, merciless, takes great joy in hurting others, and there's no explanation other than he's just a fucking evil demon who wants to make people, especially the Lockes, suffer. He was just one evil SOB and I loved every minute he was on, especially in his Lucas/Zack form because of the actor who played him and how clearly he delighted in playing such an irredeemably evil character.
This was an absolutely pitch perfect, spooky Halloweentime listen and I'm so glad to finally have a hand in on this series that's so beloved by such a cult following. I'm excited to get to see all the visuals that go with this amazing audiobook when I read the graphic novels that came before it and I'm equally excited to see what happens with the upcoming Netflix adaptation.
I really wanted to experience this one again after watching the new Netflix adaptation. I love the audio play to pieces, and Ian Alan Carlsen as Dodge is truly something to behold. Dodge is a character Carlsen so clearly has an immense amount of fun playing that he becomes absolutely magnetic for the entire runtime. It makes the moments he isn't around pale a little in comparison, but it would be unfair to say they are lesser than.
This is all to say that Lucas Caravaggio a.k.a. Zack Wells a.k.a. Dodge is definitely my favorite part of this story, so the fact that Dodge's role is so cut down in the new show was really disappointing. I really enjoyed the adaptation for the most part, but it definitely was missing a little flair, a little bit of that truly devious energy that comes with Dodge and his absolutely malevolent desires and tactics to get himself what he wants.
I'm just glad that, even if the Netflix adaptation doesn't do great at adapting this truly great, delightfully evil character, I've already got the perfect version right here on my Audible account.
October 18, 2018
Hot damn. I mean, hot damn. I genuinely Googled, "best Halloween audiobooks," the other night and the fact that this popped up multiple times compounded with the fact that Haley Joel Osment and Tatiana Maslany were credited narrators on this as well as the fact that it was written by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son whose work I've been meaning to check out for ages made this a near-instant buy.
Color me impressed because I don't think I have ever seen a case where a graphic novel series has been adapted from the page to just audio like this and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a production as well put together and engineered as this. The foley, the music, the editing, the acting, every little bit of finesse and detail that went into this is absolutely mind-boggling to me. Like honestly, take any praise I gave in my review for Sadie by Courtney Summers and dial it up to 11 and that's how impressed I am by this audio play.
Not only am I really impressed with this on a technical level, but I also was really transported by the writing and acting in this. I was already sold, as I said before, with Haley Joel Osment in the cast, but the actors portraying Ty and Dodge (in his Lucas/Zack form) were also really excellent, especially Dodge. This whole story just felt a whole lot like The Spiderwick Chronicles and other such creepy, magical adventures for big kids to me and I loved it. It felt like something, barring the curse words and references to sex of course, that my mom might have read aloud to my brother and I and that childlike magic, just like the magic of the keys in Keyhouse, was really special here because it then made the more adult themes and scary shit happening to these kids that much more jarring and unsettling by contrast.
Dodge, by the way, might be one of my new all-time favorite villains. I do love my villains like The Darkling in The Grisha Trilogy that you can understand and sympathize with, but there's something novel and honestly a little delightful about a villain that's just plain evil for evil's sake every once in a while. He's murderous, selfish, merciless, takes great joy in hurting others, and there's no explanation other than he's just a fucking evil demon who wants to make people, especially the Lockes, suffer. He was just one evil SOB and I loved every minute he was on, especially in his Lucas/Zack form because of the actor who played him and how clearly he delighted in playing such an irredeemably evil character.
This was an absolutely pitch perfect, spooky Halloweentime listen and I'm so glad to finally have a hand in on this series that's so beloved by such a cult following. I'm excited to get to see all the visuals that go with this amazing audiobook when I read the graphic novels that came before it and I'm equally excited to see what happens with the upcoming Netflix adaptation.