Watching a movie takes about 2 hours of undivided attention.
Reading a book takes longer, and you must give it even more attention as, if your mind drifts, you must reread parts to understand what is happening.
Recently, I've been getting into podcasts, and I found something out that I never knew before – podcasts are not all simply people talking. They can be stories.
Since I'm familiar with the lead voice actor, and have heard this podcast mentioned many times before, I decided that I would start listening to it one evening when I was cooking dinner...
Let me introduce the podcast, and then I'll get into my review!
My Review...!
The cover for this is amazing, once you've listened to the whole story you can understand every aspect of the cover, and it all makes sense. The intro music is even better, and by episode 5 I was banging my head along with it.
David has always had trouble with sleep, ever since he was a child, being plagued with nightmares and suffering from the physical effects of exhaustion. After recently breaking up with his girlfriend, Katie, Dave is still struggling to get over her, despite his coworker and friend, Matteo, trying to sign him up to dating sites. Dave's night goes from bad to worse, with a suspicious van trespassing on the property and then leaving work to try and find Katie...
When Dave arrives at the party Katie was at, he finds the party finished and an unresponsive man. Rushing him to the hospital, Dave quickly finds that the man in his car is not the only person to die that night.
Joining up with Linda, who was working at the hospital when all of the patients mysteriously died, Dave desperately tries to figure out what happened. Both Dave and Linda come to the same conclusion – not under any circumstances must they fall asleep.
The whole premise of the story is intense enough, but the way the story is told is even better. You get a first person narrative from Dave, along with listening to conversations as if you are there with the characters. There is backstory, flashbacks, you learn about Dave's dreams and why Katie broke up with him. As you progress through the story, more information is revealed and things start to slowly piece themselves, albeit not everything makes sense immediately.
The way this story is told, forcing you to live the story alongside the characters by giving you the story through sounds instead of words made it all the more dramatic and gripping. You don't get told that people are walking around, or that someone is panicking, you hear footsteps and heavy breathing. You live the story, and you can almost feel the panic alongside the characters – you must not fall asleep, or you will die.
The story tackles many different themes, such as mental health, and the struggles that Dave already has are amplified with the epidemic that he finds himself trapped in. The longer everyone is awake, the more they slowly lose their sanity, and some of these changes are so small and happen so slowly, you almost don't notice them. The progression of the story has been created so incredibly well that such changes, with you already feeling a part of the story, embeds you so much deeper in the narrative.
I listened to this entire podcast in one evening. I think it's about four hours of story, and I finished it at about midnight. If you want to listen to, and live, a thriller story that will stay with you and genuinely make you slightly nervous about laying down and closing your eyes, this is definitely worth a listen.
And done!
I ended up colouring in the evening, which is something I haven't done in a very long time. In case anyone is curious, it was one of those nature adult colouring books, and I was colouring trees. I made it autumn, so half of the leaves were reds and oranges!
I really want to do more of these podcast reviews, now I have discovered the world of these stories that I never knew existed. Better still? There are tons free on Spotify! I can put up with the ads to get stories like this. Also, I don't have premium because I can't be bothered to spend money to simply get rid of ads and let me choose what songs I actually want to hear. I'm fine with shuffling and being interrupted!
That's all I have to say for today...
Bye!
No comments:
Post a Comment