Being a part of Bibliophile’s Workshop’s many different blog tours,“ will give you the opportunity to read various novels, spanning many genres and writing styles, along with helping share new, promising titles with readers all across the internet.
Growing Up Dead Audiobook Blog Tour Monday, April 27,2014 – Ends Saturday May 2,2015
Information About the Book:
SPECIAL BLOG TOUR GIVEAWAY: There’s a chance to win one of three complimentary digital downloads of the Audible.com Audiobook edition of Greg Wilkey’s Growing Up Dead.
Keep your eyes peeled for two cover images of the sequels in Greg Wilkey’s Mortimer Drake series below that both carry links to a special Rafflecopter Widget, from where you must complete different tasks in order to earn entries, to increase the chances of possibly winning an audiobook. All winners are chosen randomly, so your cumulative number of entries does not automatically qualify you as a selected winner. It only increases the probability that you may be one of the chosen winners.
Fortunately, the contest is open to everyone, worldwide, since we are giving away digital editions of the audiobook, not physical CD or cassette copies as those do not exist. The contest ends at Midnight, May 2nd 2015, and the three winners will be promptly informed via email, bearing the very exciting news that they are one of the lucky winners of this dramatic audio-recording from Auspicious Apparatus Press of the first book in Greg Wilkey’s four book Mortimer Drake series.
Click either the two cover photos of the two sequels to Growing Up Dead, to access the Rafflecopter Widget, allowing you to enter for your chance to win the Growing Up Dead audiobook!!
Day #6 Reader Perspective of Growing Up Dead, by: Candice Gariepy
When I first heard about this new audio book I couldn’t wait to sign up to “read” it. I have never really been one for audio books, having spent most of my life preferring the feel of pages in my hands than listening to someone else’s voice read the book to me. I found myself willing to try something new and immediately signed up for the chance to hear the work of a fellow book coven member. I couldn’t believe how excited I was to hear the first words spoken through my headphones as the book came to life before me. It was a slightly humbling experience to realize that I had been missing out on something pretty cool by not indulging in audio books all of this time up until now. Having listened to my first book I can see now why my husband finds them so appealing.
Growing Up Dead follows the life of a 14 year old boy as he discovers that he is not the ordinary kid he always thought he was, that his parents have been hiding one WHOPPER of a secret from him and that his family tree has a bit more nuts in it than most. You would think that just being 14 would be challenging enough for any kid, right?
I found myself engrossed in the story from the beginning despite the slightly vague dialog between the characters during the prologue. I couldn’t help being curious as to what or whom they may have been referring to and what it had to do with the progression of the story. I found my question being answered as the story progressed. I found that the story moved pretty easily from chapter to chapter and that the interaction between the characters was fairly believable. I will admit that not being a teenaged boy ever in my life (I’m a girl), I had to rely kind of heavily on the author’s perspective for clues as to how a teenaged boy or boys might act despite having quite a few male friends myself through school. Given that I did have those male friends it made picturing the interaction that much easier for me. I actually found myself several times rolling my eyes at their antics or laughing aloud at the description of their behavior. I had always heavily relied on my own imagination to fill in the gaps left by the words on the page as to the levity or gravity of the situation described in ink before me, however, listening to the words described gave me a brand new appreciation for the author’s perspective.
Mr. Wilkey’s take on the vampire origin was a refreshing one for me as it is an idea I have never come across before in all of the books pertaining to vampires I have ever read. Most authors whose vampires I have read about have usually originated through some sort of virus or parasite that has taken over the host in some way or another. While terrifying and brilliant ideas in their own right, I have only come across a select few whose vampire origins have been truly unique. Anne Rice, as we all know, has her vampires based on the idea that an ancient spirit with a thirst for human blood was the source of her vampires after it entered the bodies of a dying King and Queen who went forth and through bites infected others, spreading out the spirit into others. Lyndsay Sands, who is another highly popular author of vampires, has her vampires originate from the fallen city of Atlantis where their “vampirism” is actually the result of what was supposed to be a medical procedure that crossed bio-mechanical engineering with medical science. Her immortals (as she refers to them) were Atlantians who were injected with nanites that were designed to heal the human body of any infections or maladies that it might have before being absorbed naturally into the subject’s bloodstream and flushed out of the body. However, the Atlantian scientists failed to take into account that the human body is constantly under attack from sunlight and just plain aging that the nanites never shut down as they were supposed to and continued to multiply so that they could care for their host. The nanites need blood to perform their tasks and the human body only produces so much blood at a time, hence the need for a semi steady supply. Before Atlantis fell the patients with the nanos were given transfusions, after the fall of Atlantis the nanos had to find other means to get the blood they needed. You can guess where the legend goes from there. In both cases, the vampire origin centers around a purely new idea. Mr. Wilkey has done the same with his by centering them on a single myth from Greek Mythology.
I had to applaud the author on his choice of myth for the vampire’s origin. Of all the myths, I found the one concerning Persephone, the Queen of the Dead, to be rather fitting especially with the spin that the author put to the myth itself to make it work for his story. Like most who have read the myths, when I heard the liberties he took with it to make it work for his story I immediately thought to myself “That wasn’t part of the myth!” I had to remind myself that this was the author’s interpretation of the story, and as a work of fiction, the actual myth itself did not have to be there in it’s entirety for it to work for the author in question. With that in mind, I continued listening to the story. I found that when I allowed myself to let go of my prejudice’s concerning the myths’ use and its content change (That wasn’t part of the myth or other such thoughts) that the use of the myth in question was rather appropriate in its own way.
As the story continued, I found that only a couple of things confused me and I had hoped that the author would quench my confusion with more details about the subject matter in question, but sadly I was mildly disappointed as it was not mentioned again with any real detail. In the story, Mortimer is told that he may be in fact be what the author referred to as a Dampyr, (apparently a child who is the result of a mating between a pure blood vampire and a human), but no more information is really given on the subject outside of him being told that Dampyrs are apparently feared by the rest of vampire world as a threat to the other vampires as per one of their legends. It is also mentioned in the story that such a blending has never taken place within either recorded histories, vampire or human, so it made me wonder how such a legend came to be amongst the vampires if one has never existed to base a legend on? I may be alone in my confusion concerning that matter.
Despite the mild hiccup concerning the Dampyr issue, I found the rest of the story to be very entertaining, the descriptions to be very intriguing and the vampires’ origin to be distinctly unique. I found myself asking almost the same questions that Mortimer had concerning himself and Persephone and couldn’t help wondering just how many of those questions would be answered within the next 2 or 3 books. I was literally disappointed when the story ended, having thoroughly enjoyed every moment (minus the momentary confusion). I am looking forward to seeing where the story takes young Mortimer and what Mr. Wilkey has in-store for him and his friends next.
Thanks everyone for reading all the posts that comprised this week-long blog tour, thanks to all our guests for partaking in interviews, and the other work done by several others!!
A Bibliophile's Reverie 