Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • A Peculiar Peril

  • The Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead
  • By: Jeff VanderMeer
  • Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
  • Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (9 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
A Peculiar Peril cover art

A Peculiar Peril

By: Jeff VanderMeer
Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Wonderbook (Revised and Expanded) cover art
Mad About the Hatter cover art
Piranesi cover art
Children of Time cover art
The Silmarillion cover art
The Artifact Hunters cover art
A Time and a Place cover art
Unbound cover art
Winters Heat cover art
The Blurred Lands cover art
Feathers and Fire Series: Books 1 - 3 cover art
Necroscope cover art
A Gift of Time cover art
Oddjobs cover art
Pile of Bones cover art
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass cover art

Summary

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

What listeners say about A Peculiar Peril

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What an amazing and strangely weird story

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Totally glorious

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

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

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!