This three-and-a-bit-hour audio-play is an "Audible Original" (ie, a piece that is specifically written and produced for Audible). It's by Paul Skillen and Aaron Gray, and came out in 2023. The key voice actors are MyAnna Buring, Rakie Ayola, and Paul Mallon, but there's a much bigger cast, and the sound effects are very impressive.

We open with a confrontation between Ida, formerly an executive with Nyberg Shoreline, which constructs offshore wind turbines, and corporate lawyer Michelle, who is probing an incident in which Ida was sent to a Northern Irish fishing village to ease tensions between the company and the local community. An unexploded bomb had been found near the windfarm construction site, and when Ida ordered a team to take a boat out to investigate, only two men returned, utterly unable to speak of what they'd seen, which was apparently way scarier than any UXO.

Ida now lives in isolation on the Swedish coast, and Michelle wants to winkle the truth out of her -- not realizing that she's courting danger in the process.

The story loops backwards and forwards between the present -- Ida and Michelle -- and the events leading up to the mystery.

I'll avoid spoilers, as the unknown and unpredictable are very much the point. But it's definitely chilling and suspenseful. You start out thinking it's going to be another corporate-versus-community story, with environmental overtones. Then it goes in a much more other-worldly direction, with overtones of horror.

Yes, it reruns the "something-awakened-in-the-depths" trope, but it's very different, asking interesting questions about rights and consent, and cooperation and co-optation. There's a great plot twist towards the end, when your feelings about Ida and Michelle do a U-turn. And if you listen through to the end of the credits (which you always do, right?), there's a glimmer of hope that this dark story will eventually be brought to light.

This was great for listening to on the bus journey from Kota Kinabalu to Tenom (and I don't understand why some people complained about the sound levels -- if it can beat the bus, it's good).

And the images it created in my mind have stayed with me, and kept me wondering... Which is the great advantage of audio. I'd probably never have watched anything like this. But audio lets you do your own editing and picture-making, which is less immediately confronting, but more memorable in the long term.