The Langoliers: One Past Midnight (Four Past Midnight) [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Stephen King (Author), Willem Dafoe (Reader)

Book Description

Series: Four Past Midnight | Publication Date: September 23, 2008

The first of a four-part audio series from Stephen King's best-selling book, Four Past Midnight. On a redeye flight from Los Angeles to Boston, only 11 passengers survive—but landing in a dead world makes them wish they hadn't.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When passengers aboard the American Pride flight to Boston awake to discover that most of the other passengers have disappeared, fear and panic ensues. After managing to land the plane, they find the world abandoned. While Willem Dafoe is a powerful actor, that ability doesn't necessarily guarantee a great audio performance. His choices for character voices are sometimes too caricatured and occasionally inconsistent. He also makes a great deal of mouth sounds (opening his mouth, clicking tongue, etc.). In general, he narrates well, but his noises distract somewhat from King's novella. The added musical soundtrack also detracts from this 1990 production (issued on CD for the first time), since often it's King's words with an accompanying silence that make the most intense experience for listeners.
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Review

“[Dafoe’s] perfect for King’s prose.”
—AudioFile (AudioFile )

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Penguin-HighBridge; Unabridged; 8.75 hours on 7 CDs edition (September 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159887747X
• ISBN-13: 978-1598877472
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #668,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Books on CD > Authors, A-Z > ( K ) > King, Stephen

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Latest Audio CD Version, January 8, 2009

By 

Michael J. Cahill - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Langoliers: One Past Midnight (Four Past Midnight) (Audio CD)

Willem Dafoe's reading is not very good,half the characters he portrays as whine-y and annoying.
The quality of this conversion is slightly above poor, it's better than the Itunes version or mp3 tape versions but it too low for highway driving. Hopefully the other Stephen King re-releases by HighBridge audio will have better sounding audio. This was not quite the upgrade it should have been.
Amazon doesn't tell you this but here is more info:
Unabridged; 8½ hours on 7 CDs

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best King Stories, July 24, 2011

By 

N. Kunka (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Langoliers: One Past Midnight (Four Past Midnight) (Audio CD)

This is one of my favorite King stories because it's really imaginative. What if you fell asleep on a plane and woke up to find it empty? Panic. That's what.

King as always does a great job managing supernatural and natural threats. It's always bad enough that King drops his characters into a seemingly hopeless situation, but there's always one guy with a screw just a hair loose that comes uncorked by the experience and creates a whole new set of problems for the beleaguered survivors.

This story isn't deep or profound, in fact there's little to be said other than that it's a wonderful bit of escapist fantasy.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A bit boring..., November 15, 2009

By 

S. Cheng - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Langoliers: One Past Midnight (Four Past Midnight) (Audio CD)

I think it is one of the worse stories by Stephen Kings. The setting is interesting but it just gets worse and worse as the story goes. Many side stories (such as Brian's wife) in this novella are redundant and have done nothing but weakened the main storyline. The novelist, Bob, is absolutely annoying. Especially when he tries to explain the obvious to everyone... I think this shows a general weakness of Stephen King's hard SF stories. His explanation is usually not very interesting nor believable. The quality of narrating is average as one review pointed out. It is hard to distinguish voices of different male characters. And Nick Hopewell's voice is nothing but British accent. I think the narrator did at least try at the beginning, it seems he even gave up trying to imitate an accent near the end.