Killing Time Written by: Caleb Carr

Allo readers, well…hmph what to say about this book, I love the Alienist written by Caleb Carr, but this recent book I read/listened to well… I didn’t so much enjoy. Where in the previous writing I was introduced to a highly detailed and story focused author who wanted to have every detail placed precisely so this book was not so flushed out, actually Killing Time felt like just that to me, that I was just killing time listening to this book. The book is also narrated by Caleb Carr and I was greatly excited, but Carr it seems is quite limited in his voice acting skills as he muffled quite a bit of characters voices and has quite a noticeable lisp that each character in turn thus have. The story itself is quite dry and  I felt apart from the tale as if my subconscious might be grasping what I listening to more so than me. I was reminded of the movie Nemo where this young boy is plucked and plopped into a fantastic world and for some reason he is important, but you never quite understand why this boy is important only that without him we wouldn’t have a story to tell. This book takes place in 2023 the not too distant future readers, but… is all or “any” of this future accurate? We are introduced to criminal profiler Dr. Gideon Wolfe whom I absolutely detested he was quite a useless character in all but the fact that we needed him to introduce us to the more important characters. Dr. Wolfe is investigating the murder of a prominent person and then due to this investigation he is then forced to investigate the murder of a friend in New York City when he is then thrown for another loop and caught p in the company of a beautiful woman, her ingenious brother, and a band of techno-terrorists who are at war with the world itself and it seems the cause of a few of those battles leading up to this war. Don’t get me wrong readers, there are some very interesting concepts in this book and you can very easily see with what is going on in our own time just how and why a future like 2023 could occur. Just the other day I saw a picture of teenage Gotham characters placed in a High school and thought…”OH NO! They’re going to make a BATMAN High SCHOOL SHOW NO!” it was a hoax, but looking at that picture seeing it on a site and reading the comments posted under said picture it seemed all the more plausible that this monstrosity was going to be a real show… now, that’s just a show based on a comic! (albeit a marvelous comic that has impacted the DC universe and thus our own) What would happen if a moment in history a monumental moment in history was altered and believed! What would happen if all our lives we were taught the sky is up and then to be shown through absolute proof that no, the sky is actually down. The concept of this story is brilliant the examples and possibilities eerie and quite fascinating, but the execution is just subpar I feel. Feeling anything for these characters or for the bizarre twist this tale takes towards the end is difficult. I feel like I listened to an outline of a brilliant book rather than the actual fleshed out book. The characters were just missing so much to them to bring them to life that special spark an author can give their creations. I liked this book okay, but felt like 1984 did it way better even if 1984 could easily have been the end result of this 2023 timeline. Still look what is going on in VA right now and with our oceans and the air in China and human rights all over the world… the future it seems is always at an impasse, but what will occur? So, did I love this book? No, did I like it? Kind of…but still some gem moments and concepts in this book that almost made it fully worth listening to it twice.