Audiobook Review: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Genre: Fantasy Horror
Length: 46h 50m
Audio publisher: Audible, Inc (2011)
Translated by: Philip Gabriel
Read by: Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett
From: purchased from Audible

Story: Tokyo, 1984. Aomame hears some music in a taxi, and ever since things have been different. When did the police change guns and uniforms? How does she not remember the building of an observatory on the moon? She concludes she's in a parallel universe and calls it 1Q84.

Tengo is presented an offer he can't refuse: rewrite a moving fantasy story written by a 17 year-old girl to enter in a writing competition. But as Tengo learns more about Fukaeri, he begins to wonder how much of her story is true, and what that means for both of them.

Thoughts: The connection between 1Q84 and to George Orwell's 1984 is in name only. 1984 has Big Brother while 1Q84 has the Little People, sinister sprites with no clear goals or agenda. 1Q84 ostensibly takes place in Tokyo, but the setting could be anywhere. There are few references to Japan and none to Japanese 80's pop culture. 1Q84 mostly takes place in a vacuum of place and time with no clear goals or agenda.

The first third of 1Q84 has a lot going for it. Aomame is serious, calm and in control. Nothing rattles her, but she still wonders if she's doing the right thing in her job as a contract killer. She cares about the results of her actions. When she discovers the differences between the world she knows and the world she's in, she doesn't even consider that she's going crazy. She decides it's not her, it's the world that's wrong. And she stands by her convictions. Tengo is a mess, still fixated on his mother's breasts, but he loves to write and is slowly getting himself together. Unfortunately, as the book progresses, the fun action from the beginning stagnates and is replaced by repetition and horror. The Little Men are seriously creepy, the characters affectless, and I haven't been able to look at the moon the same since. Most disturbing is the defense and support of child molestation and pedophilia.

If someone asked me to abridge 1Q84, I would have no problem. This book needs some serious editing. There are many sections that are merely repeated as the point of view goes back and forth between Aomame to Tengo, and late in the book a completely unnecessary third point of view is added. I'm sure I could take off 20 hours and not lose any of the small amount of story. Long, boring books are particularly hard to listen on audio. When you're reading the print version, it's much easier to skip over or skim the boring bits.

Reading: Allison Hiroto reads in a soft, lightly accented voice. Some words were too heavily enunciated while others were difficult to distinguish, but overall she gave the feeling that Aomame is a fun-loving person despite her voluntary isolation.
Marc Vietor starts out reading Tengo's point of view enunciating every word, like a robot, but as the story goes on he loosens up and reads in a more relaxed manner.
Mark Boyett has a small part at the end of the book, but adds a lot with his reading. He uses an almost gangster accent, contributing a noir feeling to his sections. Even though this part of the book is completely superfluous, I enjoyed his reading the most of the three narrators.

Final thoughts: The cover is the best part of this book.

Grade: 2 out of 5 - I enjoyed the first third, but after that it falls apart.

Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

I was drawn to the CD of Ashes, Ashes (2011) by Jo Treggiari in the library based on its cover. Pandemics, tsunamis, living wild...my perfect book! The story has a lot of potential, Unfortunately it does not live up to its promise.

Genre: Young adult apocalyptic science fiction
Length: 9h 48m
Audio publisher: Oasis Audio, 2011

Recap: Lucy is surviving on her own: hunting and gathering for food, fixing her shelter, fending off wild animals. Gradually, the story of what happened to the world and how she got to this point is revealed. When a mysterious boy shows up, Lucy has to decide if she's ready or willing to trust a stranger and change her hard-won life.

Review: I love dystopian young adult fiction and pandemic/apocalypse stories. I am ecstatic about the recent surge of new titles in this genre and have enjoyed reading some excellent examples lately. Since Ashes, Ashes has a great cover, my expectations for it were pretty high.

I was drawn into Lucy's efforts at survival in the first part of the book. She was heroic in her tenacity and her trials were well described. I felt like I was right down with her in the mud. This section shows instead of tells. I wish the whole book had been like this.

The story follows Lucy in the third person, so we do not get many of her thoughts. I found this refreshing. However, the lack of a direct conduit into Lucy's mind also denies us her motivations, which was a problem as the book went on. After all of the action in the survivor section, the story loses its momentum. Lucy started acting against character, and I didn't understand or believe her choices. When a love triangle was introduced, Lucy lost all of the strength and power she showed in the beginning. She became insecure and indecisive. She lost my sympathy, and I had a hard time continuing. The story became less realistic and more cartoonish as it continued until it finally ended with the hook for the next in the series.

The book has an interesting world with plagues, floods, droughts. and tsunamis. There's a message of anti-global warming, but also anti-science and anti-medicine which wasn't well explained.  Lucy was an interesting character at the beginning, but she loses her self as the story progresses. She became an actor for the plot instead of being her own person. A poorly defined supporting cast and cartoonish motivations didn't help.

Grade: 2 out of 5

Reading/production: The CD starts with an interview with the author. I skipped over this, but was surprised it was placed at the beginning instead of the end of the recording. I enjoyed Cassandra Campbell's narration. She has a young-sounding voice suitable for 16-year-old Lucy.

Final thoughts: Although I enjoyed the first couple of chapters, I don't recommend this book. The cartoonish plot took over and smothered the good book that was started. There are much better dystoping/apocolyptic YA SF stories out there.

Nits: I was confused about the statement that one person out of one million survived. If that was true, there would be 8 people left in New York City. Lucy meets or mentions 20 to 50 people. How could they even know the death rate? If that many people died that quickly, all infrastructure for collecting death data from hospitals and health departments would collapse. It was strange that this was portrayed as such a firm fact.

Nums: It is a nice cover.