The Devil of the Provinces

By: Juan Cardenas, Lizzie Davis - translator

Narrated by: Asa Siegel

After a series of failures, a biologist returns to his hometown to live with his grieving mother. But in this gripping crime novel that upends the genre's conventions, strange events unravel what he thought he knew of his past, his present, and himself.

When a biologist returns to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly bizarre present: the unsolved murder of his brother, a boarding school where girls give birth to strange creatures, a chance encounter with his irrevocably changed first love. A brush with a well-connected acquaintance leads to a biotechnology job offer, and he's gradually drawn into a web of conspiracy. Ultimately, he may be destined to remain in the city he'd hoped never to see again—in The Devil of the Provinces, nothing is as it seems.

©2023 C.A. Parker (P)2023 Tantor

Pompous and devoid of plot

This is a book which thinks itself to be the smartest in the room, but in reality is meandering and empty, cloaked in flowery language. Bizarre stylistic choices and impossible in-story character decisions. I thought it might get a bit better 2/3rds of the way through when the setting had finally been finished, but it quickly nosedived again into a confusing mess. And then it just ends. No resolution and only a hasty acknowledge that life continues. I do not recommend you read this book.

The performance was also extremely monotonous. I’ve heard multiple AI-generated audio tracks which would have significantly out-emoted this reader.