Joel Leslie is the wrong narrator for this book. His voice is a little gruff and a little raspy and I find it really, really doesn’t suit Griff in particular. Griff is supposed to be a sweet surfer himbo, but his voice is only occasionally different from Shae’s, who has what I think of as Leslie’s standard voice. So not only are the two main character’s voices a little too similar, Griff sounds way too serious for what he’s actually doing. Additionally, Chloe Archer’s work tends to be comedic, but I honestly can’t tell if this one was supposed to be. I don’t know if Joel Leslie just really doesn’t suit comedy or if this work was intended to be more serious than Archer’s other works. Either way, the tone isn’t dramatic, funny, actiony, etc, but just kind of flat and generic.
This is also not Archer’s best to begin with. The writing itself isn’t as polished as I’ve come to expect from her. Archer doesn’t do a great job of letting the reader figure out things for themselves. For example, there are quotes like “I’m awkward as fuck, like a nerdy loner character in an anime.” Shea’s apparent social awkwardness isn’t shown to readers/listeners through his behavior, but just straight up told to us. This is a constant issue throughout the book, not just a one time thing. As mentioned previously, the tone of this book wasn’t clear to me, and despite its length, it really doesn’t feel like much happened outside of the very beginning and end. There are also lots of little errors. Griff is described as being focused on calming Shae at least four times in the same scene, Haku (basically a tiny dragon) ran letters between Shae’s prison and an outside source even though during their escape they have to melt a hole large enough for Haku to fit through, etc.
And finally, this is more of a personal thing but Griff is so, so annoying. He’s basically if a puppy were a human, and I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way. He’s wolfkin (think catboy but wolf) and constantly uses puppy dog eyes to get his way, whimpers, whines, and finally howls during general conversation. That coupled with Shae almost exclusively referring to him as “Wolfboy” rather than his name makes it difficult to think of a person, rather than some kind of caricature. He’s probably got the most complex character building out of all of them, but the way he’s referred to and his actions make that difficult to see.
In short, this book is mediocre. I do kind of feel like I wasted a credit, but oh well.