The Infernals: A Novel
Series: Samuel Johnson vs. The Devil, Book 2
By: John Connolly / Narrated By: Tim Gerard Reynolds
Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
Sophomore efforts in a series are usually >meh< but this was HIGHLY disappointing
I did it; I had extra time and I used it to re-listen to The Gates, the first in a series which was vaaaastly entertaining and cunningly written. A young boy, Uber-thinks-too-much kid, and his little dog see a portal into Hell and take steps to save his town, and the entire planet. There were footnotes packed with humor and legit science, and dude! Jonathan Cake narrated it like he was having a blast, enjoying every tightly-written little nuance author John Connolly crafted.
Saw Jonathan Cake was NOT narrating the following in what was sure to be a delightful series, and I felt bad. Then Audible stepped in and offered Book 2, The Infernals, during a sale.
Yessss… plus, Tim Gerard Reynolds ain’t no slouch in the performance department, so maaaaybe it’d be a Yes to this listener, meeeeee?! Still, I ALWAYS lower m’ bar when taking on a sophomore effort, cuz when the first was SUCH a Yowza? Well, of COURSE it’ll fall somewhat short of the mark. Genius ideas simply canNOT come to an author in any amount of time.
And Big Sis and I listened at the same time, with glaring results. See, she remembered The Gates and entered with a HIGH bar; and me? Like I said: Low bar esPECially without Jonathan Cake, no matter what-all accolades TGR brings to the table.
Sis pretty much decried this as a MONstrous failure, and I was quite simply sorely at: Well, I liiiiiked it, but gosh how it missed the mark so many times.
Whereas Hell opened to Earth in The Gates, leaving a portal for a variety of demons and demonic creatures to come through, here in The Infernals there’s an opening but returning villainess Mrs. Abernathy doesn’t get quite the straightest shot in the world, and she sucks in Samuel and Boswell, not to mention a troupe of crotchety and disruptive dwarfs, an ice cream truck, and two policemen (Heroes from the first book) who just happened to be in the way, juuuuust about to stop the dwarfs who were shaaaamelessly drinking and driving.
And things get pretty goshdanged haphazard from there on out. Samuel is barely there, mostly it’s the dwarfs and their shenanigans, and PLENty of creatures from Hell who are chucked into the story for little apparent reason. We get more on their backgrounds and their doings than we get on Samuel. Ditto for the policemen, and no matter how much they might do, one wonders: Where’s Samuel? I mean, at first when Connolly sets up the snatching and sucking into Hell, I was delighted, having enjoyed the cops, cheering that they’d be included.
Uhm, yikes. It becomes about them, plus about everything else. Barely any Samuel (Who behaves in mild ways, no courage in any situation until WHAM! he’s super duper bravery itself), and worse? NO BOSWELL except as a convenient plot device.
And where are Samuel’s friends? Barely there, and only mentioned at the very beginning and verrrry end.
Then Big Sis noted that the footnotes are way toooo long in this book, and that they lack science and instead focus on morality tales. Remember: She’s a hyper-intelligent woman well-versed in many branches of the sciences, so she was sorely disappointed, -like- MAJORLY so. High bar, remember? Me? I found them amusing, but boring cuz they do indeed go off in tangents, however, I wasn’t exactly spitting nails (Well, THERE’S a Plus for Connolly: Only one of the pair of us was spewing venom… quite the kudos, eh?).
And the biggest disappointment? So whaaa?!? Like, did Connolly go for the Big Guns Narrator and shake off the lesser-known Cake? Booooo. Or did Cake think: Well, that was fun but now time to focus on acting career? Boooo, tho’ I wish him well. TGR does okay, but his performance was more blah, plus those lengthy footnotes lacked the wry tongue in cheekiness that Cake managed. That said, TGR had to deal with muuuuuch longer footnotes, but still. He did NOT sound like he was enjoying reading them. Oh where was the fun in this narration, the joy?!? SAG-AFTRA blah Audie Nominee blah blah blah and all that, but jeez, dude.
So no, while this was okay, while I wasn’t exceedingly distraught that it didn’t live up to my lowered expectations, I have to say that even with that loooow bar? I still came out of this sore-disappointed.
Dunno about the next one, miss Jonathan Cake horribly, and if Boswell is still barely there?
Well, spitting nails is ALWAYS a possibility… let there be a sale whereby the third and final audiobook comes for a pittance. Like, reeeeeally cheap. I’d be willing were it $3.99-4.99. But Big Sis? YIKES, y’all: $1.99 and it still mightn’t merit a Listen…
Oh, OUCH!
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