Audiobook Disasters: Incarceron in L.A. Traffic

The biggest audiobook disaster, hands-down, is my experience with Incarceron.


PROBLEM ONE
Narrator had an Eliza Dolittle accent.  But only during the dialogue.

She would speak in her natural American voice during the narration, then out of nowhere emerged a combination of Cockney and, um, Pirates of the Caribbean.  The Disney ride, not the movie.

PROBLEM TWO
A world built so complexly that listening to someone explain it - in a butchered Sweeney Todd accent - while focusing on bad SoCal drivers IN REAL LIFE leads to a completely lost listener (and sometimes driver - luckily I have a GPS).

IT GOT SO BAD THAT...

Everyone knows by now how extraordinarily spoiler-averse I am (I can't even finish reading jacket flaps). 

It took me 3 tries to get past Incarceron's first chapter.  And that was only after I finally read every spoiler-laden review on Goodreads AND the first chapter in person at Barnes & Nobles.

Befittingly, I was imprisoned in 2 hours of Los Angeles traffic one day after work and the only audiobook on hand was Incarceron.  In fact, all my music wasn't on my iPod for some reason.  So it was me, Eliza Doolittle with her rain-in-spain accent, and a parking lot called the 105 freeway.


I now provide you with Sophia's version of Incarceron, as heard by a brain boiling in the microwave of a car:

(I would warn you of spoilers, except my version departs wildly from the actual plot...)

• A guy, possibly unhuman, wakes up tied to some road - no idea what time it is and it sounds like it's indoors, though I don't know why there's a highway underground.
• It's a trick, he's actually not tied up, and this car full of humans comes by and then suddenly the road turns into a metal laundry chute.
• Cut to the outside world, which for some reason is stuck in the 1800's.  The girl's dad, who owns the metal underground world, comes back with some fat prince for the girl to marry.  Fat prince's footguard and the dad step on a set of disappearing stairs and you can hear their disembodied voices as they explore the house.
• Back in the prison, Finn (the guy) and his blood brother, some white guy named Kai, visit Jabba the Hut of the underworld who's got a Princess Leia tied to his chair, except it's a dog.  There are a bunch of goblin-dogs hanging around this cave.  
• Some chick dies but they call her something weird.  Like prophet or something.
• Cut to outside world - there's some evil queen.  And a legend about a lost prince.  Oh my gawd, it's Finn.
• Back in the prison, Finn starts talking to a bunch of red eyes and then discovers the mouth of the prison, which is apparently a creature, and it looks like a bunch of scrap metal and shoes and discarded laundry.  I pictured the cover.
• Somehow there's a key.  The chick Claudia steals a key from someone's office, and she has a gay butler.  I might have just imagined he was gay to make the book more interesting for myself.
• For some reason white Kai has the key and he's chatting up Claudia who's being all prissy and wants to talk to Finn, even though I missed the part of her meeting him to begin with.  (I probably had to get on another freeway at that point.)
• Claudia watches her dad walk across the garden, which she can see all the way from her window for some reason.  He opens a gate in the wall, like the Secret Garden, and that takes him to Incarceron.
• Down in said Incarceron, the boys are escaping.  Suddenly a basket lowers over a river and inside is a moleman wearing steampunk goggles who says, "Get in!"

By now I'm dehydrated, I have to pee, I'm brain-dead.  And luckily I'm home.

(Note: I told Krispy and Alz this version and they've cleared me up. The actual plot doesn't sound any clearer.)