The Rook

A Novel

By: Daniel O'Malley

Narrated by: Susan Duerden

Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organization - and this person wants her dead.

As Myfanwy battles to save herself, she encounters a person with four bodies, a woman who can enter her dreams, children transformed into deadly fighters, and an unimaginably vast conspiracy.

Suspenseful and hilarious, The Rookis an outrageously inventive debut for listeners who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime.

©2012 Daniel O'Malley (P)2012 Hachette

Tale of Two Myfanwy's

I'm glad I didn't realize that The Rook was classified as YA on some lists when I downloaded it or I would probably not have given it a listen since I've been rather disappointed with my sampling of previous YA genre books. I'm not sure what makes a book YA, but this one to my relief did not suffer from the problems I have seen in my previous YA "dips". No sign of the simplistic, unrealistic YA characters - the Rook has well developed characters that a reader can identify with or at least understand (i.e. motivations track with their back stories and behavior is consistent). No teenagers taking charge of the world - all the central characters are full grown adults; some quite ancient so you get NO teenage angst or the overdone "coming of age" sexual rabbit trails in this tale. And finally, thankfully, no insipid romantic convolutions to veer the plot off track, undermine the female protagonist, or bore the adult reader.

There is some good world building in this hidden fantasy world set "beneath" our real modern day world - the politics of this fantasy world are laid out well and remain consistent although the constant introduction of new abilities throughout the book gets a little tired after a while. In spite of a lot of action, the plot line is pretty basic and the mystery of Myfanwy's attack/amnesia isn't that mysterious. However, I will not be overly critical of the plotting because I thought the development of the two Myfanwy characters was beautifully done. The amnesia angle might be a bit cliche, but it was handled so perfectly that I will forgive the cliche. Myfanwy doesn't just develop amnesia from a bump on the head - she has all of her personal memories deleted from her so that the woman who wakes up after the attack only resembles the pre-attack Myfanwy at a cellular level. All that nurture and experience did to influence what nature started with in Myfanwy is gone. We learn of pre-attack Myfanwy from her letters to her future "sister" as we watch post-attack Myfanwy develop her own new persona. I loved the way O'Malley made the two characters unique and yet related. Ex: Old Myfanwy by way of her life experiences is quite shy (nurture); new Myfanwy isn't shy, but is still fairly introverted (nature). After all, you are who you are by way of nature and nurture, lose the nurture and you couldn't be you. But nature sets the initial boundaries so any version of you would have to have some commonality with any other version. By the end of the book, both the reader and the new Myfanwy come to understand and appreciate the old Myfanwy and it feels like you've been part of a story with two individual female protagonists. I came to like both of them very much. All of the characterizations in The Rook were interesting and quite well done.

Reviewing the performance is harder. I had some trepidation about the book after reading some of the negative reviews about the narration. You can hear what the reviewers were complaining about from the sample, but you might not be prepared for how incredibly irritating this strange voice mannerism is over 18 hours of listening to it - OUCH! The sad part is that Susan Duerden's reading makes it difficult to tell how good/bad O'Malley's writing is. She reads as if the author wrote the whole book in sentence fragments and rarely utilized any periods. She breaks up every sentence into phrases and leaves each phrase hanging out there - her voice never drops at the natural end of a sentence or a thought as a normal speaker would. I found this to be a major distraction that broke the flow of O'Malley's writing. But, Duerden isn't universally bad which makes the review hard. Her voice is nicely modulated and with a pleasant British accent she is a pleasure to listen to other than the weird phrasing thing. In addition, she does great character voices for men, women, children, and monsters and the dialog parts of the book are really fun with her presentation. (She did a better American accent than almost any British narrator I've listened to.) Parts of her narration I would give a 5 star and parts a 1 star. I finally settled on 2 stars because she so badly impacted the author's writing for me and that's a big No-No in my book.

This is a great little fantasy tale with wonderful characters. No hesitation recommending the book, but check the audio sample before you download and just make sure you are prepared for Susan Duerden's reading the whole thing as a series of sentence fragments before you take on the audio version.

Narrator killed it for me.

I had very high expectations for this book. The premise was intriguing and the plot was exciting. However, the reader's performance was extremely sub par. She alternated between the same three pitches in the same sequence for 95% of the sentences throughout. The predictability of her speech was so annoying that I was distracted from the plot and had a difficult time staying interested. I will have to buy the paperback to reread; I simply cannot listen to this woman again.

Sing Song cadence of the narrator really grates

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would recommend the story, but i am having trouble finishing it because of the cadence of the narrator.. it's level level up level level up is very annoying to me, but perhaps someone else wouldn't be bothered by it.

How could the performance have been better?

less artifice and more natural speaking. When she did characters, they were ok, but the general 3rd person narration was so repetative and sing-song, it just made me forget what she was saying.

One of the best books in a long time

If you could sum up The Rook in three words, what would they be?

Suspenseful Captivating Entertaining

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Rook?

Rook Thomas is suck into a flesh cube and is struggling to hold on.

Which character – as performed by Susan Duerden – was your favorite?

The story was all about Rook Thomas, but I can't wait for the follow up and hopefully we get more graphtor info

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Amnesia can be deadly.

Any additional comments?

I don't right reviews normally, but this is one that was so good I had to.

Smart and Funny

Would you consider the audio edition of The Rook to be better than the print version?

Im a big Dresden/Marsters fan. I enjoyed this very British take on the urban fantasy genre. Very funny and smart. Takes a little while to hit its stride, but a good story, great reader. Lead character written so well, it's hard to believe the author is a man. Worth a listen.

Paranormal as an adult 'Harry Potter'.

If you could sum up The Rook in three words, what would they be?

British paranormal agents

Who was your favorite character and why?

Methany was my favorite character because she was the one that everything happened to. She came through it like a champ.

What about Susan Duerden’s performance did you like?

I enjoyed Susan Duerden's performance because she definitely had the accent and pronouncation that made the story real

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

My reaction to this book was that it reminded me of the Harry Potter series. With all the paranormal things happening, it was sorta like wondering what would happen next, only to be shown.

Any additional comments?

Anyone reading this book should be forewarned that there is a lot of jumping back and forth from what happened before Methany's memory was lost and to the 'present day' events of the book.

awesome

interesting story, very well written.
plus, the narration is masterful: one of the most pleasing I heard so far

The Rook

If you could sum up The Rook in three words, what would they be?

Great Fun!

Any additional comments?

It started out very dark, I almost gave up. Fortunately I continued, it didn't take very long before I was laughing out loud. It is a very clever story line, with great character development. Susan Duerden was a perfect narrator for this book. I got the sense she was having fun too.

Well done and different sort of urban fanasy

This is the first book in the Checquy Files series by O’Malley. The second book in this series, Stiletto, is supposed to release in Jan 2016. I enjoyed this book; is was a fun blend of secret government conspiracy and urban fantasy.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook is very well done. The narrator did an excellent job of giving all of the characters unique voices and portraying emotion and urgency in the narration.

Myfanwy Thomas’s first recollection is standing in the rain with a bunch of dead men in a circle around her and all the men are wearing latex gloves. Then she finds the note in her pocket which starts out “The body you are wearing used to be mine.” Myfanwy is in a body and has no memory of how she got there. The letter she finds gives her two choices: go to a safe deposit box, take the money there and run...or assume the life of Myfanwy Thomas as it was before her memory loss. After killing a bunch of people with a wave of her hand Myfanwy decides to try to find out more about her abilities and assumes Myfanwy’s old life.

Shortly after making that choice Myfanwy finds out that she holds the position of Rook (a position of top authority) in a secret government agency known as the Checquy. The Checquy polices supernatural and paranormal creatures throughout England protecting the population from things better left unknown.

As Myfanwy stumbles her way through daily duties (and enjoys her ultimate power) she is struggling to answer the top question in her mind; who tried to kill the original Myfanwy Thomas? Then when a group called the Grafters (who have long opposed the Checquy) start to threaten both life as humanity knows it and the Royal Court of the Checquy Myfanwy has to turn her attention to why the Grafters are after them and who in the Court of the Checquy is linked to the Grafters.

There are a lot of politics, administration, espionage, mystery solving and general craziness in this book as Myfanwy tries to unravel this web of deceit and lies. I love Myfanwy’s no nonsense attitude to everything; she takes the strangest of circumstances in stride and does an excellent job of mitigating the damage. She is also a bit snarky and witty as well.

I loved all the crazy characters in the story and their rather bizarre powers. The book was a lot of fun to read and you just never knew what the next page was going to hold.

The story wraps up well, although there are some loose ends that will most likely be addressed in subsequent novels. This is a different sort of urban fantasy. Think of it as urban fantasy where battles are fought with superb administration abilities and crazy personal super powers.

Overall this was a fun and different type of urban fantasy read. I enjoyed the quirky characters and witty dialogue. I also enjoyed all the strange powers our characters have and the very different anatomies of the Grafters. Myfanwy Thomas is a very unique sort of urban fantasy heroine and I found her to be refreshing and interesting to read about. I look forward to further adventures with Myfanwy and the Checquy. I recommend to those who enjoy mystery and urban fantasy stories.

Good story, narration was a challenge

I enjoyed the story. Creative. However, it took four or so attempts to adjust to the narrator before I could listen to the entire story. I simply didn’t like how she whispered a lot of words and ended her sentences in something like a fade out. It was weird. Probably just a personal thing for me, but this is why did not give it full stars.