Ambitious Effort on a Passionate Project

October's November by James Loram is an ambitious undertaking toward creating a fun and interesting listening experience for the audience. However, there are some aspects of this which fall short and could really turn off some listeners from listening to the entire production.



In a nutshell, October, the main character, has the power to see people's violent intentions in the form of a dark cloud over their heads. While playing a gig at a local coffee shop, he meets a girl name Hannah who he immediately connects with. Unfortunately, Hannah is being stalked by a creep named Karl who gets off on drugging women and raping them. October and, his friend and band mate, Tom save Hannah from Karl but he escapes before he could be captured. As October and Hannah's relationship grows and flourishes, Karl regroups and conspires to finish what he started. Along the way, October must content with Detective Foster who believes October knows more than he lets on and another mysterious player in this strange and deadly supernatural horror/mystery.



Overall, the story works because of its simplicity. At it's most simplest form, it's a supernatural love story with some music peppered in to give October a bit more depth than his special powers. October works as a character on so many levels because he adapts to the situation, evolves as the story continues, and in the end, comes out transformed into another person. The same can be said for the majority of the cast as well. The story arcs are all neatly resolved and the pacing throughout keeps the listener entertained and following along through all the twists and turns in the story.



My gripes with the story are that I felt as if I didn't quite understand the origins of the main antagonist despite an explanation. Perhaps this could be blamed on myself missing certain parts of the story due to paying attention to the road or whatever chores I was busy doing while listening, but I still felt as if it wasn't clear enough.



Two other parts of the story which I think could have been done better were the building of the relationship between October and Hannah. They met and then in a matter of what felt like two days had fallen completely and utterly in love. This felt forced and it could have been explained away slightly better with a bit more exposition or delving into the reason for the strangely quick bonding.



The other part of the story which I didn't find appealing was Detective Foster in general as a character. He seemed overly suspicious of October to the point of where it felt as if he was being extremely paranoid and simply picking on him for the sake of just being a jerk. Even knowing the character's thoughts on the situation didn't make it any easier to excuse his jerkiness. While he does come around towards the middle of the novel, he seems to go from overly suspicious to overly inept as he's caught off-guard on several occasions. On top of that, the voice Loram used for the character didn't do it for me but I'll address that in the next part of the review in regards to the performance.



First off, my hat goes off to Loram for writing, narrating, and producing the original music for this audio book. Much respect for an author who narrates their own work. It's cool to have the author give voice to the characters in their works. It radiates a level of authenticity which is sometimes lost when someone else narrates a story.



As far as the voice performance goes, Loram's narration, for the most part, was great. He reads his story clearly and concisely. Each character has their own distinct voice which makes it easier to know who is speaking throughout the book and shows Loram's range. However, the performance takes a serious plunge in the voice of Detective Foster. This character's voice and accent were grating to the ear. Given how much time and attention is given to the Detective, it makes listening to these parts feel like a chore and I couldn't wait for them to end. Otherwise, all of the other character voices Loram used worked well and weren't bothersome at all.



A notable difference between October's November and other audio books is the effects used in the narration. For example, when a character is having a thought, there is an echoing sound effect applied to their voice. Since I wasn't expecting it the 1st time I heard it, it was jarring to hear this and I thought it was a mistake. After a while, I got used to it and didn't mind it so much but some audio book listeners might not be able to get past this. There is also use of music in the book which I've seen mixed opinions about on the internet. Personally, it wasn't a deal breaker for me. The echos took some getting accustomed to hearing but after a while it wasn't even noticeable. The musical parts were few and far between except for the ending chapters where there are some musical performances. They aren't bad but as stated before, some audio book listeners are turned off by this.



Overall, this book was obviously Loram's passion project bringing together the many different elements of story telling, musical performance, and voice narration. Loram takes a risk in offering a different type of audio book experience which will turn off some and appeal to others. If the listener can get past some of the production choices, I'll willing to say they'll have a rewarding experience.



