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Locke & Key  By  cover art

Locke & Key

By: Joe Hill,Gabriel Rodriguez
Narrated by: Haley Joel Osment,Tatiana Maslany,Kate Mulgrew,full cast
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Go Behind the Scenes of Locke & Key

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Publisher's summary

Audie Award Finalist, Original Work, 2016

Based on the best-selling, award-winning graphic novel series Locke & Key - written by acclaimed suspense novelist Joe Hill (NOS4A2, Horns) and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez - this multicast, fully dramatized audio production brings the images and words to life.

A brutal and tragic event drives the Locke family from their home in California to the relative safety of their ancestral estate in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, an old house with powerful keys and fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. As siblings Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode Locke discover the secrets of the old house, they also find that it's home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all....

Featuring performances by Haley Joel Osment (Entourage, The Sixth Sense), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Kate Mulgrew (Orange Is the New Black, Star Trek: Voyager), Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez, and Stephen King (The Stand, 11-22-63), as well as a cast of more than 50 voice actors, this audio production preserves the heart-stopping impact of the graphic novel's astounding artwork through the use of richly imagined sound design and a powerful original score.

*Locke & Key contains explicit language and adult situations.

Experience this title in immersive 3D audio by setting your download quality to High within the app. Headphones recommended. For more, browse our entire collection of 3D audio listens.

©2014 Joe Hill (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The concepts in this production, based on a graphic novel, are perfectly executed by a full cast.... Kate Mulgrew leads the way with her perfect portrayal of an ancient grandmother with an evil streak." (AudioFile)

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What listeners say about Locke & Key

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I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

This book was just a comic book that drags on and on and on. It is very difficult to follow because of all the different readers, some of which put me to sleep as soon as they started reading.

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138 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

I am a Huge Joe Hill Fan

So, Please Hear Me Out
I believe I have bought and read every Joe Hill book on the market. I love the guy. It will take more books, before I know if I like him better then his dad, but he has a good start.

FREE
Right now this is free and it might not stay that way, so by all means get it.

The Graphic Version is Better.
This is a full cast with music and sound effects and that is all good. Stephen King even does a walk on. For me doing this book this way, made it sound more young adult then it is meant to be. Yes, graphic novels are not for old guys like me, but they audio version comes off as a little silly and over done. At times during the screaming (which is blood curdling) it is easy to get lost on who is doing what. Since it is not done in a novel version, there is a lot that seems missing. A novelization of this would probably work out great. Gabriel Rodriguez does the art work and it is art. The art adds a lot or is the whole story. After listening, see if you can find the book, you will see what I mean. Having the graphic novel also gives you the ability to take your time and admire the art and the story. I just feel the graphic novel is more fulfilling.

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106 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Folks, this is an audio play.

Dismiss all the negative reviews from people complaining they couldn't follow the narration.

Why? Because it's not narrated. This is an audio play, much like what people used to listen to on the radio a hundred years ago or so. Yes, there are many different voice actors, and yes you do have to pay attention to follow the plot. But it's worth it.

I enjoyed the hell out of this and want to find more audiobooks in this vein. It's one thing for a narrator to describe a scream, it's quite another to hear the actual terror and pain.

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93 people found this helpful

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don't waste your time/money

everything about this book/audiobook was horrible. story was just an edge feast trying to make each new situation worse than the last. I'd say nearly 10% of this audiobook is crying or screaming. Another 10% being music randomly played for 20 seconds to over a min straight transitioning between scenes. At times there will be a struggle situation and it isn't clear what happened until later when you find out one of the characters is still alive. just overall a horrible story and horrible production . It's like listening to a movie playing in the next room over.

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77 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places"

I'm not a comic book/manga reader. It's probably an age thing. I don't remember any good comic books at the corner drug store that I could walk to in the small Midwestern city I grew up in. Archie, Jughead and Richie Rich just didn't do it for me. The last "comic book" I bought was Stephen King's "Creepshow" (1982), with its fantastic artwork by Bernie Wrightson - and yes, it was published before George Romero's mediocre movie of the same name was released.

With writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Ramirez "Locke & Key" (2008 - 2013, limited series comic books, IDW publisher; 2015, Audible Studios performance), Audible actually created a new genre: Audible Comics. At least, I think that's what they are planning to call it. Right now, it's 'uncategorized' in the book index. Whatever genre it is, it works quite well as a listen.

According to the Wikipedia entry for "Locke & Key", the director of the Audible performance is voice actor William Dufris. Wikipedia can be hit-or-miss, but the "Locke & Key" entry spawned footnotes like bunnies, and it looks credible - although I can't find a second source to confirm the director. Whoever did direct the performance did an astounding job. There are a bunch of really talented actors (about 45, plus the three top billed stars); great sound effects; and specially commissioned music.

It took me a while to get through "Locke & Key" because it demands careful attention. Miss a few important lines, and you'll miss a plot twist. It should be listened to at night, when the imagination can run wild and scared, and without the distraction of smart phones and television. Have a cup of hot herbal tea, or a glass of red wine to go with the listen. It is, after all, Lovecraft, Massachusetts, where the line between worlds is just a hidden door deep within a drowning cave; locked with key after key forged from metaphysical metal; and guarded by the echoes of loved ones, daemons from ghastly other worlds, and teenagers who ease into the supernatural like easing into driving. They'll tell you it's an awesome and frightening responsibility, but you get used to it.

"Locke & Key" is really a new form of storytelling. It relies heavily on the imagination, which makes the experience different for every listener. The production quality - the actors, the music and the effects - is so high (and probably so expensive) it will be hard for future performances of other works to meet the standards this performance sets. Enjoy the scare - it's well worth the time to listen.

The title of the review is a quote from "The Picture in the House" (1920, 1921) by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).

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69 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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It's a mess

Ihave a feeling I'd really like the graphic novel. But the audiobook is a mess. There's very little direction or narration of who is saying what. So it's just kind of a guess sometimes as to who is speaking and what is happening. There's lots of sound effects but I often couldn't tell by the sound effect what was happening. At one point a character changes gender and then I was completely lost as to who it was that was speaking. Overall I found the audiobook to be so confusing that I finally stopped listening. Maybe if I listened to it as I read along with the graphic novel I'd enjoy it more.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Egads! Not worth the free ride.

Overproduced and poorly acted. Brodie, the three year old in a nine year old's body was more then a tad too annoying to contend for such a long story length. What about the seemingly ten hours of unnecessary interlude music?! How much shorter this would have been without the mood music and excessive sound effects.

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60 people found this helpful

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Have no idea what is going on

It's what a blind person must feel like listening to a movie.Its just random noises and people talking,just horrible and confusing.

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56 people found this helpful

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Very intriguing

Not sure what all the bad reviews are about... I guess you really need that twisted mindset of years of Stephen King to understand Joe Hill. I will say it does require a lot of focus and imagination to keep up with the different references, times, and situations. I though the story was very fun and the way audible performed this was fantastic...it really put me in a theater watching a movie...

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55 people found this helpful

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gave up after chapter 3

This was terrible. We could barely understand what was going on in the story. I have listened to and loved the old radio dramas and thought this would be similar but it certainly wasn't. The characters were hard to understand when they were speaking. I got the gist of what was happening from the narrator but it just wasn't worth it to continue listening.

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