Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Preacher Prophet Beast
SERIES: The Tyack & Frayne Mysteries #7
AUTHOR: Harper Fox
NARRATOR: Tim Gilbert
PUBLISHER: Audible Studios
RELEASE DATE: December 1, 2017
LENGTH: 6 hours 24 minutes
BLURB:
Lee would gladly trade all his psychic gifts for a chance at ordinary life with his husband and his little girl. Three years into their marriage, they’re settled in their new home – but the House of Joy can’t shield them from an oncoming threat with the power to uproot their whole world.
Lee can’t define it further, and even his beloved Gideon can’t unmask a monster with no face at all. Gideon is mired in problems and secrets of his own as he struggles to adjust to his new rank and the complexities of plainclothes police work with CID, and for once the devoted Tyack-Frayne partnership is failing to communicate.
Turbulent times in the world at large reach deep into the Bodmin heartland, and the village of Dark is without its guardian constable. More than Lee and Gideon can possibly know has been depending upon their rapport, and as the summer rises towards the longest day, a new and unfathomable kind of Beast is afoot on the moors….
REVIEW:
Hmm I don’t know… This book was just too much but also not enough at the same time. And I kind of want to say: “What a bloody mess”
I love this series, and each and every book up to this one has been a great and wonderful read. So after finishing this one I’m a bit disappointed. I would say this was by far my least favourite installment in this series to date. It felt lacking on so many levels. I missed the wonderful atmospheric feel that Fox created in her other books, and that creepy and haunted feeling to Dark and the people in the village was missing. It kind of felt like any old paranormal book, and that’s not something we’ve come to expect from this series. It lacked the feelings that made it unique, and nothing can portray this more than the first line the first book and this;
Once Upon a Haunted Moor:
“That sound – you feel it before you hear it, a kind of low vibration in your bones.”
Preacher, Prophet, Beast:
“My name is Lee Tyack-Frayne.”
A bit of a difference, isn’t it?
I also felt like that wonderful connection between Lee and Gideon was missing. In this book they felt just like any old married couple with a toddler, no muss no fuss. We are not used to that. Ok, so Tamsyn does have some rather unusual powers and ones that come into play in this book, but still it’s just not enough. Lee and Gideon have been this…force of nature almost, their connection as real and tangible as anything you can see and touch. Part of a whole. But this time around it was lacking everything that made them special. I do appreciate that they had a bit of ups and downs and not always lovey-dovey, but I still didn’t feel them like I used to.
These books have also been very intimate of a sort. They take place in Dark and some of the surrounding small towns and villages. The rest of the world just didn’t matter, it wasn’t all that important to the people here. So for all intents and purposes the rest of the world didn’t exist. Yet suddenly Brexit and Trump and the instabilities in the world are being discussed more than once. And Ok, these things are important and the impact factors in the world are high. But nothing can touch Dark or Bodmin Moor, so this was just so unnecessary. It just doesn’t have a place in this series.
Let’s move on to the plot shall we. I have to admit I am so very confused about it. There was just soo much going on. Both new and old threats, ones we’ve long thought were done with, come out to play, threatening the lives of Dark and the people we’ve come to love. Add in ominous visions by Lee, and the mysteries surrounding Tamsyn, the village of Dark might never be the same again. The plot went in a million different directions and not many of them made much sense or were easy to follow. So much so that if you didn’t pay 100% attention to the story for every second you’d be confused. And if you’d ask me I probably won’t be able to tell you much more than maybe just the general idea of the book, no details and not on my life will I be able to re-tell how everything was connected and what really happened. And I literally finished listening to this book not 10 minutes ago.
So would I recommend this book?
I honestly don’t know. In part I think that depends a bit on where the next book starts off, how much it will build on what happened in this one. And judging by the previous books, you are probably going to need to read it for reference if nothing else. But I would say, if you are like me and often have other things on the go while listening to audiobooks, you should read this book and not listen to it. Not that the audio is bad, Tim Gilbert is still a great narrator for this series. There’s just so much going on that I think you’ll benefit from reading instead of listening. Where you can just take a second and think about everything that happens, or go back to re-read a section before moving on. Hopefully you won’t be as confused as I’m feeling right now – feeling like you need to go back to the beginning just to find out what was really going on.
RATING: 
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