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Wildwood

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About this listen

When her baby brother is kidnapped by crows, Prue McKeel begins an adventure that will take her and her friend Curtis way beyond her hometown and deep into the Impassable Wilderness.

There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval, a world full of warring creatures, peace-loving mystics and powerful figures with the darkest intentions.

What begins as a rescue mission becomes something much bigger as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

Please note: Due to the age and nature of this archive material, the sound quality may vary.

©2012 Colin Meloy (P)2011 Canongate Books Fiction Growing Up Growing Up & Facts of Life Literature & Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy
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Before getting into the meat of it, the accents are dreadful. There is one character who has the uncanny ability of traveling between Dublin, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cornwall, Texas, Yorkshire and Jamaica in a single sentence. I note another reviewer has said this adds to the charm of the book. I cannot agree, it’s distracting at best and downright off putting at worst.

The book itself is fairly standard fantasy fare for young kids. The Decemberists (the band the author is lead singer of) are one of my favourite bands so I had high expectations of how much poetry and beauty would be in the prose. There are points at which it felt very Colin Meloy, and others where I was bored nearly to tears. Unfortunately some of the “very Colin Meloy” moments are the use of the word “gypsy” as a weird mix of exoticisation and slur at least twice (not counting the reference to a folk song), which feels very on-brand for Colin but not something I would want my literal children to internalise.

I do think the book is really long for what it is and the world-building, while fun, isn’t up to scratch for a 15 hour kids book from 2011. It feels under-edited and a bit boring in spots, I always wonder with celebrity authors, even people like J K Rowling, whether the editor is scared to tell them “it’s too long bro”. Who knows.

Perhaps due to the saccharine narration but the children sometimes seem like naive 6 year olds and sometimes seem like teens. The protagonist’s response to her baby brother being kidnapped is to worry about whether she’s going to get grounded for longer than a week which is just unhinged for a preteen. Any ten year old would be beside themself in that situation, not because of TV rights or groundings but because their literal baby brother has been carried away from them. At one point a 12 year old boy kills multiple real human people with a cannon and is just… kinda… fine about it? I get that sometimes emotions are dampened in kids books but, again, I won’t be letting my kids read this.

The narration interacts with Colin’s sometimes-clunky sentence structure in weird ways and the narrator will often leave a pause where none is required or just completely blow through what I assume is supposed to be em-dashes? There are so many moments where I was left thinking “that’s the take you went with!?”

Can we stop the trend of getting Hollywood actors to narrate audiobooks? It’s a different job. Some can do it well but most times you are just better served getting a professional narrator on it. There were times where I thought “this feels like their first time narrating an audiobook” and maybe it was to be fair but it really could have done with a better narrator.

Awful accents and boring narration. Would not give to a child.

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If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

Story is great but the accents are awful... They utterly distracted me from the story and it spoilt it for me.

What did you like best about this story?

The storyline was interesting

What didn’t you like about Amanda Plummer’s performance?

Really not strong on accents at all... Mixed up Northern, Irish and Scottish all in one sentence!?! Dreadful... Would've been far better to avoid them and let the Listener enjoy the story

What character would you cut from Wildwood?

None

Any additional comments?

Quality of the recording isn't great... 3 separate times the recording stutters and stalls and 'jams'. I feel let down & like I wasted my money a bit :(

Hmmmm....

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Fab book, great story, but Amanda Plummer's accents are just terrible. Her accent for the bandits keeps changing from some horrible mishmash of Irish, Scottish, Newcastle, Jamaican, to god only knows what. It is really distracting and a shame. Changing accents many times in one sentence, why did nobody tell her?

As another reviewer said this book also skips in places.

Disappointing

Awful accents, but great story

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I’m enjoying the story a bunch, and I think Amanda Plummer’s performance is interesting (I like it overall, though it took some getting used to) but the big issue is that the recording itself has audio issues, particularly at the start of chapter 12. Kind of inexcusable to pay for something that’s broken like this, to be honest.

The recording has stuttering and skips

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I don’t know what’s happened but the recording seems to be incomplete. The chapters cut in the middle of sentences and lots of the book appears to be missing. A shame because I know the story and like it very much.

So disappointed

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