The Croning

By: Laird Barron

Narrated by: Emily Zeller

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us....

Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... of The Croning.

From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.

©2012 Laird Barron (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"It’s a rare year in which a superabundance of fine horror novels — novels that reward rereading — appears. That said, most years bring at least a handful of novels whose titles can stand to be mentioned alongside Matheson’s I Am Legend, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and King’s The Shining. To this year’s list, add Laird Barron’s The Croning." ( Los Angeles Review of Books)

Great Writer - Good story - VERY Wrong Reader,

Is there anything you would change about this book?

YES! The narrator! Laird Barron writes Horror Noir - a dark & scary cross of Mikey Spillane & H. P. Lovecraft. He is bound for not just being good, but being GREAT. He writes from a first person view of gritty tough-guys that have stepped right out of a violent 1940's crime pulp novel. His characters gruffly talk about their cocks, and middle age, and death, and killing, and horror. Audible, for some strange reason, chose the very beautiful, young, very feminine voice of "Emily Zeller" to read you this story. This story: of a tough old man facing cosmic inhuman mind-bending vile evil.
It's like picking "Hanna Montanna" to sing KISS's "Destroyer" album. It's as wrong as "The Captain and Tennille" singing Judas Priest's "Sad Wings of Destiny" Album, or Metalica's "Black" album. Julie Andrews should NOT sing Rob Zombie's "Hellbilly Deluxe"!
Ya' gettin' me here?
It just don't work!
The greatest reader of H. P. Lovecraft work is "Wayne June". His voice is deep, rough, and sounds like he's had a life of first hand experience of... evil things, he's walked to the edge of the pit, looked in, and made it back.
Do you want to hear Laird Barron and a correct narrator? I urge you now to go to "Tales To Terrify" (the pod cast) and listen to episode # 40. Listen to "Frontier Death Song" by Laird Barron and read by "David Robison". David has a whiskey and smokes rough voice that turns Laird's tough, noir, words into cryptic-dark-spine-freezing passages punched out of the Necronomicon by way of a 40's detective radio show wearing brass knucles. Awesome.
Don't get me wrong, Emily Zeller is a fine reader.
I want Emily Zeller to read me "The Hobbit".
Or "Lord of the Rings". Something with Elves in it.
What I DON'T want is Emily Zelle, who sounds like my cute 20 year old niece, telling me about HER dick "shooting blanks"... I don't even want to think about her thinking about things like that, let alone trying her best to sound "tough" and "mean" and middle aged, and well, male.
OK, maybe a woman could have narrated this book. However, she needs to sound like she could eat bullets and spit nails. She needs "the chops" to do it - she needs the sound in her voice of a life of hard drinking, smoking, heart breaking, and ass-kicking.
Audible - you forgot the golden first rule on this one!!!
RULE #1.) You need to know the book, and you need to know the narrator and "IF" they will work together. This is maybe one of the worst choices of reader for this novel. We needed "Mickey Rourke" , instead we got "Annette Funicello"!

What did you like best about this story?

Laird Barron is a good talent, becoming GREAT!

How could the performance have been better?

You needed "David Robison", or "Wayne June" to read this, NOT "Emily Zeller".

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

Please know the material and put it together with the right reader! This is a good/ maybe great horror noir book, but it's hard to tell because the narration is done by the wrong person.

fantastic book, terrible narrator

She mispronounces words and puts emphasis on the wrong syllable too often. It takes you out of an otherwise great book.

Fantastic!

Excellent narration, and truly unique way of structuring a horrifying tale. Will recommend this to anyone who enjoys tales of the grim dark.

Quite frightening!

I loved this story. Wildly fanciful first chapter which set the tone for the deep darkness behind the mundane. The jumping in timeframes was tough at first but makes sense given the discordance in Don’s perception of events. The scariest aspect of this is imagining nameless dark horrors in the context of your own family. The deceit and normalcy by day, dark gods and primordial ritual by night. Great book! Strange performance though at times, mispronunciations abound. Had to rewind a few times to understand the word being spoken was Ouroboros. But the changes in characters voices were good, but the mispronunciations were distracting.

Narrator was a Horrible Choice for this book.

The story is a masterpiece in Cosmic Horror.
The problem is, the teenage girl that voiced the book, killed the mood and immersion. Listening to her give her impression of male voices, turned potentially tense, powerful, terrifying conversations, into comedy relief.
SJW curse abounds. Why a young woman was chosen for a book that featured mainly masculine characters, defies logic.
A shame.

Scary?

I listened to the first three stories. Every story begins boring and concludes… scary? The dialogue between characters isn’t capturing. I just came from a Cormac Mcarthy novel, so many I’m being overly critical in expecting a more literary experience. The stairs arcs aren’t anything new or exceptional. The moment when something finally happens and it begins to get spooky, it quickly wraps up. It reads like a middle school book—then I remembered the awkward swearing. I may listen to more as I’ve spent the credit.

great story AWFUL reader

I really like this story and want to appreciate the listen, but oh my God is the reader terrible. every character sounds like a croaky witch or a moron and it is so distracting that it kills Barron's usually impeccable style. this story needs a redo and fast.

What the...?!

What a wild ride. I will be wondering about this story for years. It's slow moving and creepy. It takes you on a psychedelic, paranoia trip though a man's life. It twist and turns in on itself like a giant worm. Sidenote: The details the author goes into making me see everything made it even more creepy. Read it and never be safe again. LOL

Barron is an elegantly raw weird fiction heir

Eccellent, imaginative and ticklingly dark. While his short stories may be better suited to to genre in general, this one really got to me.

Perhaps laird barrons best book

I don’t often write reviews but the way this novel folds in on itself is wonderful. Humorous and spooky at the same time, I enjoyed the entire thing. The narrator was good, I don’t understand why everyone is so down on her?