I used to listen to the Howard Stern radio show all the time. So much so that Laura would yell at me to get the headphones off and 'engage' as she put it. I don't know why, but listening to every second of that show made me feel better and made the time pass when I was doing house work a lot faster.
So I started to listen to audio books starting with the Harry Potter series. I listened to both the US and British versions of the books more than once. I've also branched into other books, mostly on the humorous side.
But I also started listening to books from Stephen King. Back when I was in high school and wasn't working every single day, I had time to read his books. Now I have little time to sit down and read, let alone write. So I've started listening to books that I've wanted to read of his because of the lack of time.
One of them is one of his most recent books called Duma Key. Duma Key centers around a guy named Edgar Freemantle, who after getting injured in a horrific accident in which he loses an arm and suffers major damage to every part of his body after a crane backs over his truck on a job site, loses his wife to divorce and most of his friends. He leaves his hometown to get away from it all and ends up at Duma Key in Florida.
Once there, he takes up drawing and then painting. He also starts to rehab himself by walking up and down the beach. He finally meets up with a man named, Wireman, who is damaged like himself from an accident in his life. He and Edgar bond. Wireman is taking care of an old lady named Elizabeth, whose father owned most of Duma Key.
It's right around here where Duma Key starts to go from interesting to tedious. Because we're dealing with the narration of characters that are an old southern lady and a hispanic man, it really slows the book down. The whole audio book is over 22 hours long and boy does it feel like it. Wireman constantly calls Edgar "Muchacho" and "Amigo", which really got on my nerves. I mean Wireman was a great character and I grew to like him, but every time he used those two works, I wanted to scream.
Also, the narration of Elizabeth is done rather slow in that southern drawl, but only slower. I got tired of the slow pace 6 hours in and edited the file so it was 10 percent faster, which brought the total time of the book to under 20 hours.
After that, the book literally flew by!
What was irritating about the book, even with the speeded up voices, was the tone and pacing. For the first 3/4th of the book, the plot is a little weird, but not weird enough. Edgar paints like a genius, but it's not overly creepy. The book needed more strange stuff happening to him. By the time weird stuff does start to happen to him, I think most impatient people might have given up. I almost did!
The first half just felt like the Shawshank Redemption in the Florida Keys, but the second half suddenly ramps up with the undead, ghosts, giant frogs, a bouncing lawn jockey, murderous paintings, possessed people, blood, vomit, salt and sand.
It was a decent listen, though. I guess I'd recommend it if you like Stephen King and have the patience.
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