The Lost Machine
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The Lost Machine
Narrated by:
Jake Ruddle
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Narrated by:
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Jake Ruddle
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By:
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Richard Kirk
About this listen
In a wasteland ravaged by plague, Lumsden Moss steps out of a decaying prison. Armed with a satchel of yellowed notebooks containing the fragile memories of five murdered children, he is determined to track down and confront their killer. Lumsden, accompanied by a stranger, begins a long journey to the ancient City of Steps where he is forced to confront the horrors of the past and present.
©2010 Richard A. Kirk (P)2019 Encyclopocalypse PublicationsListeners also enjoyed...
And the above in no way conveys the visions and colours, the 'taste' of the story. Visual and imaginative, this is an odd, rather gruesome beautiful, tale, as before the gorgeous cover art.
Narration by Jake Ruddle was well performed, c!early bringing the text to the reader in a. Inclusive way.
My thanks to the rights holder of The Lost Machine, who, at my request, freely gifted me with a complimentary copy. An unusual short story with some loose ends, but well worth reading
Life is a series of nested prisons.
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Somewhere out there in the broken world is a man Moss seeks. A man Moss blames for the disappearance of children. A man that requires justice to be dealt upon him.
Richard A. Kirk creates an adult fairy tale with The Lost Machine. He weaves a series of strange encounters together as his lead character travels the alien world in his search for his foe. The landscape is littered with peculiar characters, and offbeat encounters. The almost abstract world is eloquently described, but becomes bogged down in its desire to be lyrical. As the story unfolds Lumsden Moss develops no real character, and he doesn’t evolve beyond being an avatar for the audience. In itself this isn’t a problem, but the strange encounters he faces begin to blur and when this happens there’s nothing to anchor the reader and keep the momentum moving.
The Lost Machine is well written, but the overall structure becomes muddled and this weakens the denouement. Ultimately I felt The Lost Machine to be an empty experience despite all the pretty prose. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy it, though this seems a contradiction, but my enjoyment was more academic than entertainment. It was an enjoyment of the moments the novelette presented rather than the story as a whole. I felt an underlying disconnection in The Lost Machine, as if the book was written by a hermit who only had vague impressions concerning social interaction. This does add sadness to the work, a bleak kind of beauty. It also adds a perpetual feeling of disquiet. Unfortunately it also adds the disconnection, and allows the prose to act as much a barrier as a carrier of the story.
It’s an interesting piece, this is certain, and a certain type of reader will probably get a lot out of the tale, but whether this is “entertainment” is questionable to me. But then, entertainment is merely a matter of taste, and your taste probably varies considerably from my own.
An Adult Fairy Tale
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Listener received this title free
The narrator (Jake Ruddle) does a fantastic job of bringing this story to life with good pacing and rhythm. Characters' voices are distinguishable without being over the top (Something that can very easily ruin a book for me). Ruddle's voice is relaxing allowing you the listener to become fully immersed in the story.
Overall it was a great short listen however I found the ending slightly disappointing thus:
Overall: 4/5
Performance: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Disclaimer: This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.
Brilliant Short Story
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