The Curator

By: Owen King

Narrated by: Marin Ireland

From New York Times bestselling author Owen King, who “writes with witty verve” (Entertainment Weekly) comes a “richly imagined” (The New York Times) Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers are the most wonderful criminals you can imagine.

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”, it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability.

Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire—to understand the mystery of her brother's death, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, where citizens like Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, are now in positions of authority, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. Robert offers her one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be. Set against the backdrop of an oddly familiar and wondrous city on the verge of collapse, Dora’s search for the truth will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the edge of worlds.

Critic reviews

"Marin Ireland navigates an ever-expanding world of characters and details. In a mysterious city recently devastated by conflict, museums and universities have been turned to rubble. Dora finds work as a curator at the last remaining museum, where she seeks her long-lost brother. In the city, cats are highly revered. King's audiobook unfolds in a dreamlike fashion, with much character introduction and a myriad of short, significant moments. As the story progresses, the nature of the broken city and its main players emerges, capturing timely themes of systemic oppression. Throughout, Ireland does exceptional work in a commanding performance that provides a vivid canvas for listeners. She gives an expert’s touch to the complicated proceedings."

maybe it's me

I wanted so much to love this story. The characters and the premise seemed interesting at first but it was SO MUCH WORK trying to figure out what was going on. I think the relatively undefined place and point in time made it extremely unrelateable. I'm all for fantasy, revolution is an interesting subject, magic is wonderful, but my inability to understand the environment of the story just made everything feel mixed up and impossible to follow.
Maybe I'm just not that smart.

Boring

Got this book based on the many good reviews. I find it slow, boring, and poorly narrated. I kept thinking that maybe a narrator who didn’t treat it as if he were reading an inorganic chemistry text might have brought it alive, but… The main character was such a non-entity. The story that revolved around her had no drive. The author was laying down the rules of his world, but forgot there should be an interesting story to bind the ingredients together. Caveat: I did not finish it. I got within 1-1/2 hours and threw up my figurative hands, so maybe it all came together?

Confusing story unless you summarize it

I was about 40% into the book before I understood what the general idea about the book was. Overall it was unnecessarily wordy and jumped around.

Shame

After reading sleeping beauties and enjoying it quite a lot. I had high hopes for The Curator. Sadly it was a downfall and chapter after chapter I had to force myself to get through it. Sleeping beauties was clearly held together by his father as this was to me a complete waste of my time. I begged for it to end as quickly as possible.

Just couldn’t get into it.

The characters didn’t seem to have much emotion, Rather stoic, not for me. The cats mostly seem like NPC’s. Everything was presented rather…dryly, I guess. Disappointed that I paid for this.