Lucy has dreams. Intense dreams, powerful dreams, about a monstrous "thing" hunting her, that are so real that her waking hours are spent wondering if she's asleep. This has been going on for a few months now, leaving her a walking wreck, feeling constantly hungover, almost failing her various classes and down one boyfriend.
What's worse is that the dreams have started chasing her into the daytime. Having spent a night running around in armour, fighting off the encompassing darkness, she wakes up gripping the sword from her dream. Birds, and more, follow. Naturally, she's both concerned she's going insane, and worried she isn't, because if she's not, she's suddenly living in fantasy land, and it's possible her life expectancy will be very short.
I downloaded all of the episodes before I started listening, which meant I didn't realise when I transitioned from the first series (last year) into the second (ongoing). They tend to be short as these things go, at about a quarter hour each, which helped with that. The story also ramps up significantly after the first series, expanding into a much wider problem.
With an hour and a half for the first series, it's more like a sectioned radio play than what I would think of as a traditional episodic podcast series. Given that, I think you're better getting the six episodes and giving it a binge.
The tale is mostly told through Lucy's eyes, but we see bits and pieces from her friends and flatmates, and as you can imagine, they're not very sure what's going on. It's split between full cast dialogue and Lucy's audio dream journals, but it mostly heads towards dialogue.
The story is nicely twisty and turny, and there are a fair few moments that are absolutely perfect reveals. They have an excellent tension and had me going "oh you cheeky bugger", which is always a good sign.
There's a certain amateurism in some of the sound choices, with the volume having a few unfortunate spikes that had me groping for the volume knob. However, that's balanced with impressive music (it's being made in a music school, so I'm not terribly surprised) and interesting sound effects related to the use of Lucy's journaling device.
It's also nice to have something set in Ireland, specifically, near Cork. The accents there are rather charming (patronising of me, I know, but we like what we like), and I enjoyed having a full show's worth.
I'm certainly going to keep listening.
Tagged: Audio fiction Horror Cast Dramatised Urban fantasy Serial