
Whalefall
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Kirby Heyborne
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By:
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Daniel Kraus
A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Book Riot, Shelf Awareness, and NPR
The Martian meets 127 Hours in this “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.
Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.
The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.
Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “powerfully humane” (Owen King, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.
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If you’ve had to cut a parent or other relative out of your life, this book is likely to be incredibly frustrating.
Aside from that, there’s just not enough meat on the bone to make this a full length story. The actual diving and eaten-by-whale parts are just not given enough meaningful page time to provide a sense of urgency to things, especially with the constant flashbacks that completely derail narrative tension.
Not what it’s billed as
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Some folks didn't like the narrator but I thought Kirby was excellent and I look forward to experiencing more that he's done. Additionally, some people found the flashbacks to bring a weird rhythm, but the pacing and structure made me think of Arrival by Ted Chiang.
Overall, I'm sad I can only experience this for the first time once. Great read.
This is not an action story!
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Slow start but it gets better
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Amazing work of art
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Not as scary as I was expecting, way more about father n' son relationship and
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Overrated by other reviewers
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Beyond that almost any time the story delves into Jay's past my brain kind of shuts off until we're back in the guts. I get that is some people's bag, and some people will say "Wow, I relate so much!" I'm good, thanks. But, our narrator did an excellent job vocalizing each character, and the "BOHM BOHM!!" of the Whale Heart was very pronounced.
Oh, and overall making a sort of Cosmic Horror level experience of being eaten alive by a being you can scarcely comprehend the scope of was very well done here. I just didn't care for it obviously trying to shove it through as a metaphor for overcoming trauma. Felt very forced that the only reason this kid got swallowed was so it could function as a metaphor. If it was more subtle, maybe it would have worked better, but it was very forced.
also, Beaky MVP.
...OH! It's Trauma!!
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Claustrophobic and Suspenseful!
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Fantastic narration and a completely original thriller
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moving, visceral and unsettling
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