Audiobook Review – Second Hand Curses by Drew Hayes, Narrated by Various (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 9 hours
Publisher: Audible Originals
Release Date: November 21, 2017
ASIN: B074XHGCWJ
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed audiobook from Audible Plus
Rating: 3/5 stars
“ When your fairy godmother threatens to enslave you with a curse – when a malevolent piper solves your rat problem but steals your children – when you seek revenge on the prince who turned you into a frog – who can you turn to in your hour of need? The band of scoundrels known far and wide as the Bastard Champions – the swashbuckling trio who travel a world of legend, seeking adventure and righting wrongs – as long as there’s enough gold to be earned.
They are Jack, the seemingly unkillable leader whose ever-present grin belies a dark past; Marie, who fights with fury but battles more fiercely to control the beast within; and Frank, the master of logistics, whose cloak hides horrific scars that are far more than skin-deep. As they slash and scheme through kingdom and village alike, the Bastard Champions uncover tantalizing clues to their ultimate quarry: the powerful Blue Fairy, who has made each of their lives a living hell.”
Series Info/Source: I got a copy of this audiobook through Audible.com. This is a stand alone book.
Audiobook Quality (4/5): The audiobook was well done and easy to listen to, no complaints.
Story (3/5): This is the second book by Hayes I have read (the first one was “NPCs”) and I kind of feel the same way about this book that I did about that one…it was okay. I always like the premise of these novels a lot more than the actual execution. The way this book is set up you have three adventurers that are characters from various other fables/history/folklore and in each chapter they deal with a sort of issue/curse. Each chapter is kind of a short story and these chapters are loosely connected by the characters’ main goal of hunting down the Blue Fairy.
Characters (3/5): The characters are pretty basic and over-characterized…not a lot of depth to them. I did like the various cameos and mash-ups of characters and situations from previous fairy tales, folklore, and historical fiction. However, this is a bit of a mess…this is a mash up of basically any type of historical story. You have references to fairy tales, references to folklore and some classic literature references (Frankenstein) as well…it really is a mess of a mash up.
Setting (3/5): The setting is a pretty typical fantasy setting. There is some discussion of the omnipotent “Narrative” driving the story. This gives a bit of a twist to the world but is something that’s been done in numerous other fantasy tales. There is some discussion of a land across the sea that doesn’t have magic and is more technology based, but this is never really gone into in detail.
Writing Style (3/5): The format makes the story a bit disjointed, you are kind of jumping from story to story and trying to stay in tune with the overall goal of the adventurers at the same time…it doesn’t flow very well. As with “NPCs” I thought the writing in general was okay but not great.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this is okay. It’s an open-ended story that is also pretty basic. It’s entertaining, and I did grow to enjoy the characters and their adventures, but it just felt kind of thin and lacking…I never felt really sucked into this story and there just wasn’t enough complexity here to keep me fully engaged. This is the second book by Hayes that I have felt this way about so I don’t plan on reading more books by him in the future, his style just doesn’t work well for me.
