Apocalypse Now Now

By: Charlie Human

Narrated by: David Atlas, Fiona Hardingham

now now adv. a common South Africanism relating to the amount of time to elapse before an event occurs. In the near future; not happening presently but to happen shortly

Baxter Zevcenko's life is pretty sweet. He's making a name for himself as the kingpin of his smut-peddling high school syndicate, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he's dating the girl of his dreams, Esme. But when Esme gets kidnapped, things start to get seriously weird, and the only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter who goes by the name of Jackson "Jackie" Ronin. Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town's supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including an odd brush with the apocalypse.

©2013, 2015 Charlie Human (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Great fun

The story does lose its way and some tension in the third act. But with charming characters, fun world building and great use of San myth, I had a lot of fun.

Needed South African narrators

I enjoyed the story but as a South African found the narration wanting. While the narrator's accents were not the worst attempts at South African accents I've heard. the pronunciation of South African names and terms was terrible, starting with mis-pronouncing the author's surname. Non South Africans will have no problem with the narration but South Africans will find the mis-pronunciations jarring as I did.

the narrator.....

I actually enjoyed this story. But the narration made it difficult to finish. This is one I wish I had just actually read instead of listened too

Great potential but tried to do too much

This book was a really interesting book is started off very interesting in the sense of how he was negotiating high school and the different factions. Unfortunately did it had a hard shift towards the more scifi elements of the story and it felt like it was almost a different book. If he would have done a better job of connecting the high school group negotiations with the Sy fi fantasy elements of the book I probably would have given it 5 stars. Nevertheless the protagonist was a great anti-hero and I would love to see more stories about him.

Kinda monotonous

I am not sure if it is the author or narration, but the book feels flat. It is a bit disjointed as well. The disjointed nature is part of the story, but, especially near the end, it just didn't make much sense.

Wow

Decent voice acting.
Crazy awesome plot. (Author, you really got me, you know which part)
And can I say what amazing character development. I can count on one hand how many books do this well.

Epic!

This book was hilarious and brilliant. Couldn’t put it down. You are doing yourself a disservice if you pass it up.

There are South African narrators! Use them!

I'm sure poor Charlie Human (pronounced he-mun) wrote something worth reading. I'll just never find out by listening to David Atlas butchering the South African accents in this book. My poor ears! It was like listening to Keanu Reeves' British accent in Dracula. Was it that hard to at least try and pronounce some of the names and surnames correctly? South Africa has many talented voice actors. Shame on Audible and Amazon for using a non-native to narrate one of the few South African books in their catalogue that wasn't written before the year 2000.

Unapologetically gritty and entertaining

I was taken by surprise. I started the book without reading the full synopsis of the story. And I have to say this series (two books only so far) is a refreshing take on magic that doesn’t constrain itself to the commonly expected happy fuzzy feelings. It’s raw and unafraid to go beyond whys expected and delivers and engaging story with welcomed adult humor and emotions.

amazing narrator, enjoyable story

if you like narcasist crazy main characters, you'll love this book. imaginative and creative world.