
Midnight Robber
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Narrated by:
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Robin Miles
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By:
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Nalo Hopkinson
About this listen
Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)
It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime.
Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life...and set her free.
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Took a while to get into, but worth the effort
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With that out of the way, there were many things I loved about this book. The author expertly weaves Caribbean folklore and culture in a utopian/dystopian (depending on which side you are on) futuristic world. This book felt like fantasy, mythology, science fiction, survival, and adventure all rolled into one. It was also a coming-of-age story about Tan-Tan and what she does to survive and figure out who she is. The tale is told in what I believe is a Caribean dialect, which is one of the main reasons I decided to listen to the story. Robin Miles narrates the story, and as brutal as some of it was, she made it a joy for me to listen to this book. I originally intended to read along with the narration, but only one of my libraries had a copy, but it had a long waiting list. As it turns out, I didn't really need to read along, although I might try doing that in subsequent readings of this book. It took some concentration in some places, but the language is pretty logical and Robin Miles made it pretty easy for me to follow the story. In some ways, it reminded me of Clockwork Orange because of the unique language and the controlled society, as well as some of the violence. However, Midnight Robber is not nearly as violent and Tan-Tan is a very sympathetic character for all that she speaks about a good Tan-Tan and a bad Tan-Tan.
If you enjoy classic sci-fi, rich world-building, fantastical creatures, and interesting characters, and you can deal with the trigger warnings above, then give this book a try and for the more adventurous of you, listen to Robin Miles' excellent narration.
Amazing performance made much of this story sing
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Fun, Enjoyable story...
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All of this is beside the amazing performance by Robin Miles. Her vocal work with the variety of characters and accents is so precise and detailed. There are a few interludes that disrupt the style of narration which could have been jarring in audio form, however, Miles handles them with aplomb. This book would not be the same without her vocal work. Thanks to her I saw these characters in my minds eye and I heard their personalities come through. I’m so glad I listened on Audible instead of reading.
Foundational and Amazing
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And can we talk for a minute about Robin Miles’s performance? She has been excellent in everything I’ve heard her read, easily juggling a dozen accents and two dozen characters with staggeringly genuine execution. Here, unless she already spoke Creole or Patois, she legitimately learned a new language for this novel, and spoke different accents in THAT. I MEAN. And don’t worry that the language will be distracting or that you won’t understand the story. You might need a chapter to adjust, and you might expand your vocabulary a bit, but it won’t, and you absolutely will.
I can’t talk about the climax and denouement, or even much of the plot, without dropping too many spoilers, but I promise you this. You will walk away from this book with a profound sense of rightness. You will feel satisfied and emboldened. You will know that fairy tale monsters will try to eat you alive, and that this scars a person in more ways than one. You will also know that if you fight the monsters, with weapons, wits or words, the one of the lives you save may be your own.
Superb storytelling and performance
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Literally best book I heard this year
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Stories I grew up with
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