The Hunger
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The Hunger
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Kirsten Potter
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By:
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Alma Katsu
About this listen
Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Hunger by Alma Katsu, read by Kirsten Potter.
After having travelled west for weeks, the party of pioneers comes to a crossroads. It is time for their leader, George Donner, to make a choice. They face two diverging paths which lead to the same destination. One is well-documented – the other untested, but rumoured to be shorter.
Donner’s decision will shape the lives of everyone travelling with him. The searing heat of the desert gives way to biting winds and a bitter cold that freezes the cattle where they stand. Driven to the brink of madness, the ill-fated group struggles to survive and minor disagreements turn into violent confrontations. Then the children begin to disappear. As the survivors turn against each other, a few begin to realise that the threat they face reaches beyond the fury of the natural elements, to something more primal and far more deadly.
Based on the true story of The Donner Party, The Hunger is an eerie, shiver-inducing exploration of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.
Critic Reviews
"Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark." (Stephen King)
"Katsu adds a rich vein of horror to her imaginative retelling...astonishingly atmospheric, with a strong sense of claustrophobia, despite the vast prairies and mountains...this is an enthralling and chilling read." (Laura Wilson)
The characters are very well crafted and they draw you in. Well worth the purchase.
Kept me listening
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It kept you guessing what was going on and I didn’t want to stop listening.
My only issue is that it seemed a little underdeveloped, and it seemed a lot of loose ends didn’t quite get explained to my satisfaction.
There were so many main characters, and I would’ve liked more detail about what happened to each of them in the end.
Maybe I missed something, but one character seemed to have just disappeared with no explanation, and after following him through the whole book, that was unsatisfying.
I feel like a few extra chapters and a lot more follow-up detail would’ve been nice. There was mention in the middle of a few minor characters wandering off and never coming back, and I recall thinking it was out of the blue and wanted to get more information.
I feel like this could’ve been an amazingly epic story, a massive brick of a book, with a huge word count, something you could really sink your teeth into... (I’m thinking a historical version of The Stand or Under the Dome.)
But for whatever reason, it didn’t follow all the leads where I hoped it would.
Nevertheless it was a compelling story and the narrator was very good, and I will listen to it again for sure.
A few loose ends didn’t get tied up...
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Not sure of the ethics about demonising real historical people and accusing them of heinous crimes for the sake of storytelling though.
Loved the story (not sure about the ethics)
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It felt like I was on journey with the wagon train and it has left me seeking more novels in the same vein.
I'm not normally a supernatural fan, but this felt plausible enough for me to get engrossed in it.
The Hunger left me hungry for more
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The characters evolved throughout the story and I really enjoyed how the book was written with several entwining stories
Great
Highly recommend
Engrossing
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First the positives. Some of the scenes describing the wilderness are well done. There's a genuine sense of foreboding in the description of the wide prairies and endless salt flats. However, later scenes describing the nightmarish winter which ultimately doomed the group in real life are surprisingly flat. Beyond "it snowed a lot and the snow was deep and it was cold" there aren't really any visceral descriptions of the cold and its effects on the party.
Similarly, whilst it is made abundantly clear that the party are starving to the point of resorting to cannibalism, I never really felt the impact of their hunger. Instead of showing us the effects of severe, desperate hunger, we are just told "people were hungry." Descriptions of how the characters were coping with their starvation and the effects it was having on them physically and mentally are tellingly sparse.
I think a lot of this is the result of two main problems: you're never sure who the main character is and the "villain" is vague and ambiguous to the point of being forgettable. Without spoiling the story, the book can't decide if it wants to be a supernatural horror set against the bleak backdrop of the unknown wilderness or a more grounded take on a real life tragedy. Potentially amazing source material such as the Native myths are casually set aside in favour of a scientific explanation, which would be fine, except that the shadowy enemy is frequently framed in a supernatural light. As a result, the story is as confused as the characters themselves.
Finally, I found it difficult to empathise or connect with the characters, largely because I was never really certain who the main character/s was meant to be. Just when I thought it was X, the story focus would largely shift to Y. This more often than not resulted in me simply not caring if a given character was in danger.
The narration is actually pretty good. Voices are great and each character is distinct. I think th narrator did the best job they could given the fairly bland source material.
Great potential let down by a middling story
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