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Audiobook13 hours
The Three: A Novel
Written by Sarah Lotz
Narrated by Melanie McHugh and Andrew Wincott
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Four simultaneous plane crashes. Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?
The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.
Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival...
The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.
Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival...
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Reviews for The Three
Rating: 3.413659797938144 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
388 ratings48 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It keeps you entertained. Some of the best narration I've heard with the different character voices.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I really enjoyed the book but the ending was sort of a let down. I felt like it reached a conclusion but I still was wanting to know more about the children. I understand that it is suppose to make you wonder and leaves a bit of mystery, but I think it could have been dealt with a little more than the small amout it was given.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Waste of time. Boring. Too obvious. No twist. It is what you think.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book could have used some editing for American idioms. The American characters sometimes said things that would be very odd for anyone raised in the U. S. Some of the accents were so bad that they served as distractions. The story was entertaining enough.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Didn't like it, it makes Christians sound like a bunch of nutjobs, some of them might be, but not to this extent.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engrossing, thought-provoking, and infuriating. While the two performers didn’t pronounce words correctly, I tried to look over them. I gave it only four stars because of the ending.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This book isn’t the best. It has an intriguing premise but the journey to the end is not worth reading through all the lack luster testimonies or transcripts that pull together to create this story. The book is very ambiguous at the end and poses too many questions that are not answered. However, at the same time this book is not the worst. It does get under the skin a bit with the eerie tones that some of the characters give off like a horror book should. The voice actors really do a great job that make the slower parts bareable.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Truly terrifying book. Especially her prediction of the future. Some plot lines abandoned.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Writing in the style of social media posts, articles and voice mails became extremely tedious for an entire book. The story was interesting but would have preferred it to be told in a standard format. Made it to the end but was willing it to finish
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting book with a captivating plot. One of those endings that leaves a lot open for interpretation. I'm not much of a fan of those types of endings, but the journey there is great. The voice acting is amazing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic. loved the entire thing. look forward to more. Great narrators and great story telling by the author
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I loved this, but it fell apart at the end in my opinion.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was such a fantastic book, I enjoyed every minute of it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was really good! I wasn't sure I would finish it in the beginning since it's written differently from any thriller I've ever read, and I just couldn't get into it at first, but as I read more, things started getting more and more interesting. I could definitely tell those 3 kids were not normal children, and it made me wonder who or what they were. I can't imagine what their families would have gone through! They got one family member back, but he or she was way different than before the crash and had lots of behavior problems. I thought the end was really interesting. It's been hours since I finished it, and I'm still thinking about it!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I have never heard my own name spoken out loud so frequently. It felt weird.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Worse book I have had the misfortune to spend money and time....?
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5interesting premise, particularly relevant given the grim year of air crashes we have had, which then got lost in meandering subplots, and failed to really get resolved. Was left wondering what the point of it all was.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I liked the format of this novel, consisting of newspaper reports, interviews, conversations from an Internet forum and information from other sources, which have been collected by a journalist who has already written one successful and controversial book about the child plane crash survivors known as the Three, who are believed by some to be the horsemen of the apocalypse.I enjoyed it more than Day Four, although that book does clarify what is actually going on.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was an intriguing book that kept me reading until the end. The children were very creepy, but it didn't fully explain what happened by the end which annoyed me. Overall though it was a good book and I will read the second book.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I definitely liked this story but WHAT A LOST OPPORTUNITY! this book had a fantastic premise and it completely fell flat at the end.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I really enjoyed the book. The format was different but in a good way.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I have the same complaint about this book as I do about its successor, "Day Four." Although mildly entertaining, the entire premise is treated too superficially. If only the author had concentrated more on the three survivors of the plane crashes and developed their stories, it could have been much creepier. Instead, the conclusion is left too much up in the air and unfortunately continues in "Day Four" with equally unsatisfactory results. I won't be reading any more of this author's books.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Before I ultimately write my own review, I like to run down the list and skim some of the others, just to get a feel of what's being said, as well as the overall consensus. It's interesting how many people ripped into this book for the exact reason I loved it.
This is not a book told in a conventional manner. It's collections of Skypes and tweets and transcripts and excerpts. The story is never direct. Instead, it's teased out, with clues dropped in one section, only to be explored in a completely different area. It's got an international cast.
And it's fascinating as hell.
I absolutely loved this book. I laughed at one review below where they wrote, in bold, I want my motherfucking mystery. I laughed at a second who wondered why this book was considered horror. I laughed, because had they read any of the novel, they would have clued in that there's mysteries wrapped in mysteries, and the horror, while quiet, is subversive. It creeps up on you without you ever hearing it.
So. I loved the characters. I loved the narrative device used to draw out the story. I loved the actual story. I loved everything about this novel.
Sarah Lotz, I now have to read everything you've written. Thanks, because I haven't even caught up on all the stuff Lauren Beukes has written, because she had the same effect on me after reading Broken Monsters.
It's nice to see intelligent horror making a comeback. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four planes crash simultaneously in different parts of the world, three children survive and behave strangely afterward, and conspiracy theories run rampant, including a cult of Christians who believe this signals the End Times.This book had quite an interesting structure: a nonfiction book-within-a-book made up of interviews, newspaper articles, chat logs, and the like that gradually unfolds the aftermath of Black Thursday, as it quickly came to be called. This story is rife with ambiguity: Is there really something off about the surviving children, or are folks just going nuts and trying to make sense of a senseless coincidence? I am comfortable with the ambiguity, although I think the end of the book does offer a pretty clear resolution, if you read between the lines. For the most part, I read through this at a fast clip, wanting to see how things would turn out, but I do think the unusual structure lent itself to a tad too much repetition and the whole thing could have been edited down without losing much in the process. Some of the scenes included didn't seem to advance the plot all that much. Those were minor flaws; this for me was a very readable thriller, and different enough from the norm to keep my attention.The author is South African, and careful readers will note that her Americanisms aren't entirely accurate, but we'll forgive that as well.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Horrible book. Don't waste your time. The narrators voices are like finger nails on a chalkboard!
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5(3 1/2 stars)
On the same day at different sites around the world, four airliners crash, their only survivors between three (relatively unscathed) children. A miracle? Or are these children not what they appear? Ghosts? Aliens? Harbingers of the biblical apocalypse? Or even something else.
This is a pretty clever book. Actually, it's written as largely a book-within-a-book, containing the text of an "event book" by a journalist who documents interviews, articles, and testimonies of those affected by the airline crashes--and their three survivors--in the months afterwards. And what the book essentially portrays is how the same event with its mysteries and ambiguities can be interpreted in quite divergent ways depending on the "baggage" any particular interpreter is bringing to it. At the same time this portrayal is being painted, however, we readers are set in the same position: what do we expect from the book? A horror story? A socio-psychological tale of how people react in crisis? Indeed, in the end we are led to question how objective the journalist was in her reporting--how much did she skew her reportage due to her own inclinations?
The book had me guessing and turning pages . . .
As for my criticisms: given the tilt the story takes, it contains elements of a liberal's paranoid fantasy of how religious fundamentalists are bound to take the upper hand and impose their repressive ways. Myself a liberal, I question the premise. Fundamentalists always have and likely always will occupy but a slight minority of any population, and given the escalating secularizing trend in the USA particularly, I doubt a "Christian caliphate" is in our future. Evangelicals may win battles, but they themselves are too schismatic among themselves to win wars.
Secondly, the author is South African, and though she general does a good job conveying an American vernacular, she does slip occasionally. Americans don't say they're going going to do something "straight away." Also, they take elevators, not "lifts." But the editor's probably to blame here, allowing such errors to get through.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Three children survive three plane crashes on the same day. A sign of the end of the world?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I absolutely loved "The Three." The writing style, the format, the plot and the way Lotz tells readers bits and pieces throughout the whole book...I didn't want it to end. As of now, this is definitely worthy of the title of the best book I've read in 2014.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A novel without a central character, we get a close relative of each of three wildly unlikely survivors of separate plane crashes, and those who for one currency or another try to invest the survivals with meaning. Mostly concentrated on mapping the three to the apocalyptic horsemen and the fallout from doing so, these bits form the novel within the novel, which would have been left stronger without the final bit of direct narrative.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Three by Sarah Lotz first and fore-most delivers the chills and terror that I was expecting. It opens with a terrifying detailed account of a plane crash in Japan. We then learn the stunning news that this was just one of four plane crashes that happened that day. One in Japan, one in America, one over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal and one in South Africa. Amazingly there were three survivors; children, found alive at the site of three of the crashes. These young children become known as “The Three” and become the subject of intense press speculation. Are these three simply “miracle” survivors, or, as some believe, are they aliens who have taken over the children’s bodies. There is even a sect of evangelical Christians who have decided the children are three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and that the Rapture is soon to follow.When details of the children’s unusual behaviour emerges and some of those closest too them start to shun them, it becomes very clear that these children are not normal – but is it trauma from the horrific crashes that they lived through, or are they, indeed something very, very different. The author chose to tell this high concept paranormal thriller in a non-fiction style in the form of transcriptions of interviews, copies of e-mails and excerpts from newspapers and magazines. For the first third or so of the book, I enjoyed this different format, but after awhile I realized that all this jumping around, following so many different characters and opinions kept me from being totally absorbed by the story.The Three is indeed an engrossing horror story but it also very cleverly reveals how some stories capture global attention and are spun in many directions by the media and it also clearly reveals that there is an inherent unreliability to every witnesses account. The author gives us, the readers, plenty of information and wisely leaves it up to us to put the pieces together to reach our own conclusions.