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  • The Croning

  • By: Laird Barron
  • Narrated by: Emily Zeller
  • Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (125 ratings)
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The Croning cover art

The Croning

By: Laird Barron
Narrated by: Emily Zeller
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Editor reviews

Laird Barron's debut novel plays to his strengths as a short story writer by fragmenting the chapters with a mind suffering from senile dementia. Flashbacks and forgetfulness build character of Don, a doomed man walking the edge of cosmic horror that the listener alone perceives, like a killer waiting in a closet.

The delicate-voiced Emily Zeller highlights how expertly and carefully Barron chooses his words, and also allows The Croning's horror to sneak up and stab the listener when it unexpectedly rears its hideous head. The quiet, exacting sweetness of Zeller's performance offsets the coldness of Barron's universe, its indifference to human suffering, and the sureness of its ultimate victory.

Summary

Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us....

Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... of The Croning.

From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.

©2012 Laird Barron (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"It’s a rare year in which a superabundance of fine horror novels — novels that reward rereading — appears. That said, most years bring at least a handful of novels whose titles can stand to be mentioned alongside Matheson’s I Am Legend, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and King’s The Shining. To this year’s list, add Laird Barron’s The Croning." ( Los Angeles Review of Books)

What listeners say about The Croning

Average customer ratings
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

quack novelist selling suspect literature to a gullible public

This book has what I have come to term the emperor's new clothes syndrome written all over it. In other words I'm not exactly surprised it won a horror award. it's just bad enough to be the kind of thing judges go for because they probably haven't read half the cooks shortlisted and it adds prestige to the title making it easier to sell to the public who love it just because it's won an award and they feel they just have to like it. They don't actually and not everybody does. I don't for one.

The narator is very good. it's just a shame she had to read such dross as this. It was written for television by a writer who, like so many others, is too dumb even to be aware that a question mark is not followed by the word 'said' but then as a reader you just have to get used to that.

If you like visual effects and have enough imagination to see the movie potential in this book then you might get something out of this. The plot is really pretty good. It's just the writing of it that lets it down.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Seemed all over the place

I love this performer and she did great with the characters as always but I found this very hard to listen to it seemed to jump all over the place

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The modern Lovecraft and much more.

First of all I love Lovecraft but I got hooked when I was younger.
Without spoiling anything this is much better and it is actual horror that at moments made me feel uneasy and totally in the moment.
It is very well written, the story telling technique is gripping and at times a little dizzying.
And the ending is very satisfying and proper.
I love id!

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great story. Poor narrator

Unfortunately the narrator simply does not know what some of the words mean, is not familiar with certain idioms, and completely mispronounces other words. Accents are also sketchy. Great story though.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Rambling, disjointed, unsatisfying

All over the place, at times amusing, then mind deadening. Ultimately it had a storyline, but it was hard to tell as it progressed.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Modern cosmic horror masterpiece

The apex and unifying masterpiece of his old leech Mythos, a must listen or read for any fan of lovecraftian horror.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Great start, good last act, boring everything else

The opening chapter for this book started strong, but the middle section was a boring mess. Long descriptive lists of people, locations, years, that felt a chore to read. I get what the author was trying to accomplish with the piecing together of memories from across the years, but the book wasn't long enough for that and it just comes off as difficult to read and uninteresting honestly.

It's a shame as the last part of the book was good again, but by that point I had already lost interest and was just rushing to finish it.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

There is a payoff, but it's a long old slog

This book had interesting ideas but unfortunately just seemed like a snippets of random points in the lives of a married couple, most of which are very dull and drawn out.
The intro is a 1 hour retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, and then it's a mish mash of memories from the lives of the main characters.
The end payoff is decent, but it comes in the last hour and is quite revelatory. There really isn't much in the way of clues as to what's going on for the first 7 hours.
The narrator did a good job but was the wrong person for me. The main character is a man so it seems strange that a female was chosen.
It was part of the plus catalogue so I can't complain, but I definitely would have returned it if I used a credit.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Ed
  • 24-01-23

Entertaining

Not my usual genre but enjoyed the mystery and surreal story telling and was a satisfying story arc.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A surprising tale of twists and turns

I was pleasantly surprised by the story. It was rich and highly enjoyable. It twists and turns through reality and fantasy until you don’t know which way is up!

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