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The Boatman

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The Boatman

By: Alex Grecian
Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso, Sean Patrick Hopkins
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HE WILL FOLLOW YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH.

Shortly after cruise ship the Maria Calypso embarks on its latest voyage, the passengers and crew notice someone in pursuit: An elegant figure wearing a white suit who somehow keeps pace in his rowboat.

No matter how hard the crew pushes the engines, they can't escape The Boatman ... and it isn't long before sinister and mysterious events begin to unfold on the Maria Calypso.

What will it cost to learn the true nature of the man who hunts them—and will the price to keep on living prove to be too dear?

©2026 Alex Grecian (P)2026 Alex Grecian Horror Suspense Thriller & Suspense

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Listener received this title free

Let’s just say I’m not a fan of boats and that hasn’t changed with this book. I feel like it’s best to go in blind; I had a lot of fun trying to figure out where it was headed. I do wish there had been more character development. This could have been a full-length story in my opinion.

I can’t say enough good things about the narrators: all the characters had distinct voices, accents, inflections and emotions. There was also some parts in different languages, so that was also a surprise.

A Wild Ride

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Listener received this title free

1: The taut story Grecian presents waste no time and gets right to it. When all things considered with the plot, this makes total sense. It kept me engaged throughout (with one caveat exception mentioned below).

2: Black hooded robe, sharp crescent scythe in hand, skeletal bones shimmering in the moonlight…it’s the Grim Reaper. It’s Death itself, right? Not in Grecian’s story. No. Death comes in the form of a good-mannered and dapper gentleman dressed in a white suit and hat, always smiling while slowly and methodically pursuing its prey, making Death even more frightening upon its appearance. Until at least the last quarter of the story.

3: The tension, the paranoia, the desperation of our characters on the cruise ship who are being stalked by The Boatman. Much like a world filled with zombies or an endangered crew in Antarctica, it’s the isolated human characters who display the horror for us to witness.

4: One important question. What’s worse: inevitable Death or immortality? Trying to outrun Death is a futile act, but living forever in pursuit of that futile act proves to be more detrimental than anyone could image. Whether it’s harrowing economic and ecological conditions reducing populations into extinction or witnessing loved ones perish in both life and relationships, sometimes it’s better to be dead.

5. The headstrong and determined June Dennison character (as played wonderfully here in the audiobook version by Patricia Santomasso) who faced unsurmountable odds but persisted in the face of it all right down to her final decision to take control of her own destiny.

Caveat

While both Santomasso and Sean Patrick Hopkins give top-notch performances in the audiobook version, this is a novel, and with it comes attributions like “June said” and “Walt said” and “he/she said” which can bog down an entire scene with multiple speaking characters. That’s the difference between prose and a script. The attributions come with prose territory. Unfortunately, it was distracting in several scenes. One narrator would have sufficed in this case. Still, very good performances despite it.

Comparisons

FINAL DESTINATION film series (2000-present) – Trying to outrun death is futile.
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH by Edgar Allan Poe (1842) – Death will even try to educate you.
THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921) – Death. It’s an occupation with a turnover rate.

I often link music to various media I consume. In this case, I couldn’t help but hear Chris de Burgh’s “Don’t Pay the Ferryman” (1982).

And then the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared
And people calling out his name
And dancing bones that jabbered and a-moaned
On the water

And then the ferryman said
"There is trouble ahead
So you must pay me now, " ("Don't do it")
"You must pay me now, " ("Don't do it")
And still that voice came from beyond

"Whatever you do
Don't pay the ferryman
Don't even fix a price
Don't pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side"

Five Reasons for THE BOATMAN by Alex Grecian

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Listener received this title free

Rereading this book via audio added to my level of enjoyment, and that was sky high to start with! Once in a while you find a book where the audio actually enhances the story, and this turned out to be exactly that circumstance. Patricia Santomasso and Sean Patrick Hopkins did a phenomenal job with this already phenomenal story. How can you lose? It's a quick story, only about 2.5 hours and I was once again fascinated by this tale. My original review can be found below.

If you could outrun death, would you try? What would that even look like? Alex Grecian gives us his version in his new novella The Boatman.

The premise is kind of ridiculous, really. Passengers on a cruise ship eventually notice that a man in white has been following them in what looks to be a rowboat. No big deal, right? He'll soon be left behind. Except he's not. The passengers soon realize that something is very wrong. No matter how fast or slow they go, the boatman eventually reappears behind them. Someone comes up with the theory that it's death itself chasing them, and I came to believe they were right.

I still think it sounds like a ridiculous premise, but it reeled me in just the same. What appears on the surface to be silly has a real undercurrent of social commentary. Or at least that was one of MY takeaways. Age old questions about the fear of death and the chance at immortality come into play. There were also a few epistolary sections featuring environmental news, most of which was not good. Somehow those innocuous-seeming sections helped build the tension in the narrative overall.

This is my first Alex Grecian book, but I'm interested in reading more. He was able to create tension, build dread, and inspire empathy in me, and he did it all in just 150 pages. All of this had me turning pages, (or tapping my Kindle screen), like a maniac-especially for the last quarter of the book.

This was a weird/dark fiction tale and even though it sped by, I'm going to be mulling it over for a while. What started off as seemingly silly turned into a tense ride with an up close look at humanity.
Do you dare to see??

Highly recommended! 4.5/5 stars, rounded up.

*ARC from publisher/Audio ARC from narrator

Phenomenal!

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While a lot of books have two or more narrators of different genders, most books have the men doing the voices for the female dialogue in their chapters and vice versa for the female narrators. This isn't one of those books. It gets the full dramatic treatment with Patricia Santomasso lending her lovely voice to all the female characters, even in dialogue, while Sean Patrick Hopkins puts his talent to good use voicing all the men. While the book has a full cast of interesting characters, the narrators really shone when interacting with each other in the roles of the married couple around whom the story centers. Since the narrators are married, they brought a lot of nuanced emotion to those scenes that I thoroughly enjoyed. The story itself was an interesting take on immortality in a very unique setting that easily lent itself to eeriness. While I was listening, I found myself contemplating the cost of living forever, if it would be worth it if it meant being so terrified of death that I wasn't really living, and at what point would the tedium overcome my fear of ending forever. I really enjoyed the thought exercise and loved that this book asked me to engage with it that way. If you like books that make you think about your human experience and deliver the story via the medium of stellar audiobook narration, definitely give this one a listen!

I loved the audiobook performance!

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