The Stone-cutter. The best read I've had this year

This book held me enthralled from the beginning to the very end. Many threads run through the story each one opening up another puzzle that had to be solved so that the death of a young girl can finally be understood and the parents allowed to grieve. Each line of enquiry draws you further into the lives of all the characters, unwrapping the folds of their exsistance and exposing the good aswell as the bad and the evil.

Relationships that start out as sound and secure break down as each story line unfolds, but the opposite is also true as people mentally mend they are able to pick up their lives and make them worth living.

An exceptionally good read.

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Great story

Disappointed that they haven't sorted out the narration yet. There are no pauses between chapters which can be confusing. Other than that I think it's great.

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Not quite top notch.

This is not my first Camilla Lackberg novel and won't be my last, perhaps. The overall storyline was a bit elongated, with the historical thread giving the biggest clue to the modern day protagonist. Somehow, despite the storyline being awash with emotions, anger, revenge, entitlement, I found it very difficult to relate to much that was happening.

More of a problem was the narrator, Eamonn Riley. His voice didn't seem able to convey the emotions, or a suitable pace to his delivery. I always felt that beneath it all he was trying to be a little cheery or something. Can't quite put it into words. What may not have been his fault, but someone on the production side as it's becoming more of a general problem I find, is the lack of a slight pause between chapters or between passages in different settings. On paper this would be clear, but not in narration.

So overall, this is a below par Lackberg story, dropped slightly lower due to narration and production problems. Still listenable, but the competition in this sector of the spoken word market is very strong.

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This is a super series.

Very good balance between the action and plaiting in the personal lives of the main characters. Compulsive listening.

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More pauses needed!

The most annoying thing was that the narrator did ot pause between chapters. It was wasn't easy to work out what period we were in, or where one person stopped talking and another started. Other than that, it was read very well.

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really good plot and character development

I think this is the best plot from this author so far, character development was great. it's based on attachment and parent child relationships.
The killer was obvious from the very start and the narrator wasn't paused long enough between sections, so who was speaking could sometimes be confusing.

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Superb the best so far

I loved this book. The 2 stories running through the book was full of suspense

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Twists and turns

Nobody could fathom how it would end even if it wasn't too hard to guess the culprit. Very good read

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Dull and duller

A very dull book: lackluster writing - there is simply no tension in it, no pace. And the narrator himself sounds so bored, it's no wonder the listener is also. I wouldn't bother if I were you.

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A Collection of Parts

This really is a collection of parts as it travells backwards and forwards through time, moves continents and my slips in and out of ability to suspend belief. Parts are excellent, with spot-on characterisation and descriptions and yet others parts had me saying out loud "people do not say that "or no-one behaves like that".

The part consistently flawed through the novel is the narrartion. The intonation and overstressing of certain words reminded me of when I was four and my primary school teacher's afternoon reading. I don't want to hear the narrator's emotional respose, or be told which word in a sentence to pay particular attention to, I want the words to speak for themselves. If the narration had been better then probably the story would have been less a construction of parts and more a seamless enjoyable event.

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5 people found this helpful