The Luck Uglies
Series: The Luck Uglies, Book 1
By: Paul Durham / Narrated By: Fiona Hardingham
Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
Just how it should be! Forget about the kids who’ll LOVE this cuz it’s all about meeeeee!!! I LOVED it too!
Okay, this is what a toad I am (And that’s MOST disrespectful to toads!): When I first started listening to The Luck Uglies, I was incredibly unamused. Because, you see, it’s all about meeee, and it’s not about the Middle-Grade Listeners who’d be absoLUTEly enchanted with the opening scene. I was all, like: Oh, adorable street urchins in hot water after swiping something… >yaaaawn<, knowing all the time, man! kids would so be into that!
Young Rye O’Chanter is hauling patoot, struggling in her too-big boots to keep up with besties Folly and Quinn. The trio have just accidentally pilfered the very-banned “Tam’s Tome” and the Poet who owns it is mighty peeved, and he’s oddly light on his feet as he chases them down. Way up high, ‘pon a rooftop, Folly and Quinn have made the mighty leap from one rooftop to the one across the way and are bellowing at Rye to JUMP! He’s Right Behind YOU!!!
Rye knows this kinda sorta will not end well as she’s kinda sorta NOT graceful. But the Poet IS right behind her, and man is he mad, or what?! And so she JUMPS!
And so she plummets to the ground. Fortunately, where grace is not on her side, luck is, with lines of drying clothes slowing her mad headlong fall to the ground, and with her landing in a not-so-deadly spot. But I was bored, until I realized that author Paul Durham was going to Go There, and NOT have his heroine sportily making it to the other rooftop but would have her, more like meeeee, in that I too wouldn’t be able to do anything as well-coordinated as leap successfully.
So while I’m at it, I’ll applaud Durham just all-around, shall I? cuz he writes reeeeally well, and his choices are to die for, esPECially if you’re a kidlet or a cynical woman getting on in years. He slowly reveals our characters to us, the environment where their lives take place (Think: the medieval-like Village Drowning), and there are mysteries, and histories, and myths, and extinct monsters, and an evil Earl and soldiers who are up to no good. And Durham takes his leisurely time, unfolding the stories, peeling back layers to EVERY bit o’ story and writing them to where the Listener, in this case meeeee! (I) was on the edge of m’ seat and oh so very engaged and delighted.
Rye, Folly, and Quinn are our young heroes, and they’re not black or white protagonists but are, rather, written as flesh and blood kids, neither extraordinary, but well-meaning. Rye gets into sooo much trouble, and Durham points out that she herself acts first, before her brain gets a chance to think about things… and that NEVER Ends Up Well.
There is a plot, there is the reappearance of a Bog Noblin, one of wicked and savage monsters living Beyond the Shale. The Earl can’t protect anyone except himself, and as a matter of fact? He seems perfectly happy to offer up Drowning as a sacrifice to the Bog Noblins as they threaten mayhem and slaughter. Who CAN protect them? Wellllll, seeing as the Earl ain’t willing? Maybe it is indeed time for the hated and despised Luck Uglies to come back?
They’ve all been exiled for despicable and illegal actions made, but there’s this man, Rye calls him Harmless as her mother avers the man is “harmless”. He’s promised to always answer every single question Rye chucks at him, as honestly as he can. He’s forthcoming with what the Luck Uglies have done in the past, so once again, things aren’t black or white here. Rye has to weigh situations and judge for herself, developing as any well-written character should.
Fiona Hardingham, a much-admired narrator whom I dinged MOST soundly for her botching of The Summer Before the War, reeeeally does a spectacular job here. Those ragamuffin street-ish urchins are aDORably portrayed, and each adult was likable, even Harmless (And Hardingham sometimes can butcher a male voice!) was a valiant-Hero/Not-Hero. The Earl? Calculating and brutal. The soldiers? Loutish brutes. Rye’s little sister? COULDA been one of those Adorably Precocious Children that I loathe so much, but here she was most certainly not. Just a wonderful bang-up job by Hardingham who managed characters as they went from hushed to full-on dead runs through the night with monsters and mobs chasing them. Treks through subterranean tunnels? Check. Rye dashing out while a Bog Noblin is about to eat two babies? Hardingham handles the hushed tones, the terror, the courage, then the no-holds-barred scurry back to safety. Simply well-done!
This is the first in a trilogy, but while it leaves ample room for the following books, it in no way wins a “Michael J. Sullivan Booooo! Award.” Meaning: No freaking Final Five Minutes twists, no freaking Cliffhanger ending. Durham has skillfully and wisely crafted an ending that is both satisfying -and- one that leaves the Listener wondering when-all one CAN get to the Next One!
A mighty feat, that. And one I soooo loved!
Oh, and yeh, the kids in your life’ll love it tooooo!
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