Titanoboa

A Novel of Deep Terror

By: Shigeru Brody

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

SOMETHING IS LURKING IN THE WATER... On the small island of Kalou, Fiji, a rash of disappearances has the local police stumped. Men, women and children seem to disappear without a trace. Mark Whittaker is the island's sole private investigator. A former LAPD detective who moved to the island to get away from the violence of the city, he's now thrust into the middle of the disappearances when he's hired to find the brother of a mysterious client. As Mark digs into the disappearances, he discovers that something sinister and ancient has been awakened on the island. Something that kills without pity or remorse. And he fears his once island dream is about to be turned into a nightmare.

Good book if you like monster stories.

Rather traditional monster story. The author did a good job keeping me interested. The AI narrator is a bit dry but tolerable.

Titanoboa

It was a pretty good story though the reason I docked a star off was the author obviously knew nothing about Titanoboa nor of snakes in general. It would pay for him to research his subject before putting pen to paper. Some of the fault should be on the publishers as well, for not catching these errors.

A lot of fun

This was a real thrill. I liked the narration. The only part i wasn't crazy about was the ending. it got sort of out there and I don't see how they would actually be killed. But play along. it's really worthy of a read or listen. a lot of fun

Creature Feature Noir

Overall I did enjoy this story however it is a real slow burn. Also at times I forgot this was a creature feature and thought it was more of a Noir evil oil company kind of story. Although the parts that feature the Titanoboa were good and made me feel at home with the creature feature side of things. I would only recommend this one if you really like more mystery and conspiracy thriller in your creature feature. I did actually surprisingly like the AI voice however it still does not come close to a real narrator.

I couldn't finish it. really SLOW..

I can't get in to the AI narrating. it is really slow.. May be a good story line but I just couldn't get past the AI

Solid Enough to Finish

I was extremely skeptical towards the idea of an AI narrator, but, I listen to things at a 1.6x speed, so that coupled with a matching soundscape (underwater and jungle when appropriate) made it bearable. There were definitely times when the inflections didn't match what was being said and that did throw things off a little.

The story itself was pretty good, though, I liked the touches into native aspects and touching on the history of snakes as a whole. You don't get a ton of interactions with the beasties until later in the book but, still, a fairly solid creature feature.

better than I expected

A better story than I was expecting, although almost all on land as opposed to Sea horror.

Interesting

This book started a little slow but really picked up. The AI narration wasn’t my favorite but didn’t detract from the story. Highly recommend.

interesting

interesting that this was computer narrated. The narrator sounded like a regular guy. Good creature book.

How poor “virtual voice” is at storytelling.

The story itself would have been a fun Saturday afternoon “monster movie” listen. However, it was a slog to get through with the “virtual voice” doing the narration. The voice itself is terribly flat, and what inflection there is, sounds painfully artificial. A live person reading a story can change their voice enough to denote different characters, where the AI just barrels along with zero change. It also feels like there is little to no proof listening or editing, with all of the mispronounced words. The icing on the cake was “9/11” being brought up a number of times, and the AI reading it as “9 to 11”. I know this is being used over real people reading the stories as a cost saving measure, but Audible can, and needs to do better than this.