A Peculiar Peril cover art

A Peculiar Peril

The Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead

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A Peculiar Peril

By: Jeff VanderMeer
Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
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About this listen

A Peculiar Peril is a head-spinning epic about three friends on a quest to protect the world from a threat as unknowable as it is terrifying, from the Nebula Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer.

Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion - a veritable cabinet of curiosities - once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables).

Swept into encounters with allies more unpredictable than enemies, Jonathan pieces together his destiny as a member of a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora. But as the ground shifts and allegiances change with every step, he and his friends sink ever deeper into a deadly pursuit of the profound evil that is also chasing after them.

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year - 2020

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

©2020 Jeff VanderMeer (P)2020 Macmillan Audio Death & Dying Difficult Situations Fantasy Fiction Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Young Adult Time Travel

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All stars
Most relevant  
I cannot wait for the sequel. This book is YA fiction at its absolute best. If a little self indulgent.

Totally glorious

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The narrator of this story really brings it to life in a way that simply reading the book, for me at least, would not. The plot and characterization is brilliant, if a little strange.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a little weird in their stories, of which this has plenty. I eagerly await the next book in the series.

What an amazing and strangely weird story

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Mischievous multiversal mayhem with this mix of secret society fantasy quest, alternative history, interdimensional invasion, surrealist steampunk and droll period pastiche from celebrated sci-fi wunderkind, Jeff VanderMeer. Promoted as a YA book, this appears mostly due to the orphaned teenage hero and the seams of dark humour and quirky whimsy that run riot throughout, for otherwise the story begins in medias res, with the listener thrown headfirst into a sea of dense narrative threads and arcane detail, and left to swim their way back to the shore of comprehension unaided. The writing is vividly imaginative, archly post-modern and packed with grotesque absurdity (sympathetic abomination, Ruth Less, ravenous at a book club is a good example). With elements of Moorcock's 'Eternal Champion' series and the perennial Chronicles Of Narnia, this is probably closer to things like China Mieville's 'Un Lun Dun' or Terry Gilliam's 'Time Bandits'. YA, perhaps, but definitely for the smart kids. Frankly, it's also too long, becoming sprawling and self-indulgent; some tight editing could have sharpened up the pacing considerably. These flaws are only heightened by the rather arbitrary and unfocused ending (the story to be concluded in a second volume, apparently).
Still, Raphael Corkhill's thespian narration is a pleasure. Slow and deliberately-enunciated, he adopts the tone of a Victorian Gentleman, which suits both the gothic imagery and humour very well indeed.

Thibault's On The Phone Again (There Is No Phone)

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