The Darkwater Bride

An Audible Original Drama

By: Marty Ross

Narrated by: Clare Corbett, Donal Finn, Jamie Glover, Freya Mavor, Adrian Scarborough

Late Victorian London. When the most respectable of Scottish businessmen is pulled, dead, from the Thames, his daughter is drawn into an investigation which reveals a whole world of secrets and corruption and leads all the way to the tragic truth behind the ghostly legend of The Darkwater Bride – in an epic drama combining the genres of the Victorian mystery thriller with the equally classic Victorian mode of the ghostly tale.

Featuring: Rachel Atkins, Amy Cooke-Hodgson, Clare Corbett, Stephen Critchlow, Donal Finn,Jamie Glover, Peter Gold, Joel Gorf, Chris Grahamson, Edward Harrison, David Holt, Frances Jeater, Yolanda Kettle, Fiz Marcus, Freya Mavor,Gerard McDermott, Nina Millns, James Parkes, Richard Reed, Adrian Scarborough, Lizzie Stables, Mark Straker, Ben Whitehead, Sarah Whitehouse and Sarah-Louise Young.

©2018 Audible, Ltd (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

spooky audio drama / sex & violence crime fiction

I'm a big fan of well made audio drama and would probably listen to a one about pottery. This was definitely technically strong enough performance to keep me listening.

The mood is gloomy to fit a really disturbing story that also attracted my interest as a fan of 19th century horror. Throughout the story is underlined the struggle of the female protagonist in a man's world where she's either overlooked or threatened, often sexually. This combines well with the crime story which is related to violence against women. The theme of women's emancipation is well developed throughout the story, even if sometimes the constant and relentless abuse of women by men felt a bit over the top to me. It was very disturbing, which was probably the purpose, but same time I also felt that the picture it painted of the world was too negative and sometimes it got me questioning the likelihood of the turns of events.

[EDIT: Since this review, I have been reading and listening to the history about the culture in the era, and it turns out that English culture really was incredibly male chauvinistic at the time and women's position extremely poor, rather exactly what it is described to be in this story, so much so that the non-supernatural content in this story now appears to me rather plausible.]

This is basically a detective story that combines elements of fairy tale sort of fantasy horror and violent sex crime fiction. Not exactly my cup of tea. I'm not completely against the use of supernatural in fiction per se, e.g. I love Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Lovecraft's work. But here I was left with a feeling, from very early on, that more realistic choices could have been more to my taste in this story, maybe because of its strong detective story nature. I'm also not a big fan of this sex and violence crime fiction. However, these elements were not badly woven together if you like this stuff.

The drama was bit broken by protagonist being also occasionally the narrator. This means that time to time she was telling the story instead instead of living it. This could be backed up by her being the only living witness to the story, but not actually witnessing all parts of it. So far so good. However, I felt that this was slightly inconsistent, since parts of the story seemed to be acted without her presence or narration. So, in the end, maybe better narrative solutions could have been made.

The performance was really fine. My only complaint would be that early to the story I sometimes was not sure who were the characters in the scene and where it took place. In the whole this was not a problem.

eh.

good if you like listening to TV . thats what it as like. good story, but it was like a 6hr movie with nothing to watch. a lot of sound effects. volumes kept going up and down.

A Strong, independent woman who gets in the way

The story has some bits where it’s very interesting. If you’re into the supernatural it’s a decent listen. However, I find myself annoyed by the hyper-feminist protagonist. To me, she appears as a woman whose strength I admire, but her stubbornness at times interferes with her mission, making her essentially self destructive. At other times, this play reminds me of the Goosebumps series. It has moments and things get a little dark, but characters are one dimensional and actively hinder themselves. The performance was passable, but this is definitely not something I would recommend.

Just not for me.

I couldn't finish. Too gruesome for me. It took some time for me to get used to this type of reading also.

this is a damn good story and deserves to be told

title says it all, the twist about this book is that it's not nearly as supernatural as it seems, but just as dark and twisted as you would expect.

Rapt Attention From Beginning To End

Having a movie in your mind is a fascinating thing. The performances were so real, so vivid, and the voices of the characters were perfectly suited. I loved every minute and am now disappointed that it's over!

So good!

This is really truly so well done! Been the narration is fantastic, and all of the different narrators and effects keep it so interesting!

I loved every minute of it!

The performances were terrific. Like the old time radio dramas that I was addicted to as a kid!

Enjoyable listen.

Overall I enjoyed the story, but at times I think it went too raunchy when they were trying for shock factor. It also seems to give the impression that all men (or at least 99%) are barbaric shovanists. Too many to make it believable.

Overly Long Drama, Great Production

This was a great production. The cast was fantastic. The story wasn’t the greatest. It went on far too long in spots and spent too much time on the excessive scenes of degrading women. We get the point. This would’ve been much better with about 2 hours cut. The length made it difficult to follow at times, since the lead actress was also the narrator. Loved the paranormal elements, which should’ve been a stronger focus. The ending was too vague as well.