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Early Riser

A Novel

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Early Riser

Written by: Jasper Fforde
Narrated by: Thomas Hunt
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “hilarious” (The Guardian), “blindingly inventive,” (The Seattle Times) and “wonderfully weird dystopian thriller” (Shelf Awareness) from the author of The Constant Rabbit and the Thursday Next series

“A cause for celebration . . . Fforde writes witty, chewy sentences, full of morsels, and delivers them deadpan. . . . [His] relentless imagination and his affection for his characters are contagious and irresistible.”—The New York Times Book Review

Every Winter, the human population hibernates.

During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, devoid of human activity.

Well, not quite.

Your name is Charlie Worthing and it’s your first season with the Winter consuls, the group responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams, which you dismiss as nothing more than an artefact born of the sleeping mind.

When the dreams start to kill people, it’s unsettling.

When you get the dreams too, it’s weird.

When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.

But teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping, and stamp collecting; ensure you aren’t eaten by Nightwalkers; and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical Wintervolk.

But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you’ll be fine. Dystopian Fantasy Fiction Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Thriller & Suspense Comedy Dream Winter
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The only real downside to this book was realising I'd reached the end of the story.

Fantastic!

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What a great story. I hope I meet the characters in My dreams.
And I'm making plans to visit Wales, go to the Gower and eat cockles with lava bread on toast with thick cut bacon.
Thank you Jasper Fford

....sigh....Wonderful ❣️

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True, I'm only 2/3 through this, but after the marvellous Shades of Grey, this is very disappointing. Similar to Grey in some respects, I find this often boring (to the point of making me sleepy while on the open road—not good), rarely funny (vs. SoG which maintains humour throughout), and just not much of a story, despite the cute concept. Maybe it will get better in the final third, but I kinda doubt it.
UPDATE: This has become one of my "sleep books"—something I listen to when I need to get back to sleep. The narration is pleasing to the ear, the writing good, but overall it's still not a book I'd highly recommend...

Disappointment

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