Good story - worst narrator ever!

The story is interesting and different from the usual sword and sorcery books which is why I put up with the execrable narrator. I was expecting her to suddenly yell 'and LASHINGS of GINGER beer' at any moment.
The cadence of the narration was awful with frequent emphasis on the wrong words and a real jumble of downright dumb accents poorly realised. The first book was narrated by a much better narrator and I am sorry that they changed for this volume.
I can only hope that they change again for the third volume or I don't think I will be able to put up with it and will never hear the end of the story, although I will probably buy it in written word because, again, the story is really good!
I suggest Ms Pitkin would make a great job of narrating the Famous Five books.

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3 people found this helpful

Sad let down by poor narration

I’ve been enjoying Jeff Wheeler’s trilogies and decided to catch up on the back catalogue.
The first of this trilogy was great, good storytelling, interesting new places, peoples and cultures with a good hook to keep you interested.
I was surprised when the second book changed narrator, and sorely disappointed. So many of the characters voices are indistinguishable - except Annon who always starts with a real bass tone.
Love your stories Jeff, but not sure I can persevere through the final book with this narration.

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Great story, absolutely terrible narration

Like other reviewers have noted, the narration of the first book was amazing and it’s a shame it was changed in this book. The narrator has no imagination. No matter the scenario the characters’ tone and manner of speech are all the same. A few horrible attempts at various accents until she gave up trying. All male characters have the same slow, grating, high pitched old hag voice, regardless of any context. I think the only exception is Annon’s voice, though even that is inconsistent. And all female characters either have a childish, soft spoken voice or the same old hag one as the male characters. DISAPPOINTING. Really puts you off this wonderful story.

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good book

Really develops well as a story, though a tad predictable at end which you can forgive as a lead in to the third book.

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1 person found this helpful

Good story, poor narration

story continues in the same vein as the first in the series and maintains interest throughout but really struggled with narration.

Really hard to tell which person is speaking, pauses in awkward places and all males seem to have the same inflection and base emotion but accents do vary... as best I can tell one character has a mixed accent of French/Russian!

will make it through but if the first book was narrated like this I don't think I would have been hooked enough to even get through the first!

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2 people found this helpful

Needed a copy editor!

The story is good, Sue Pitkin gets the intonation wrong a lot though, making it difficult to listen to.

This would really have benefitted from the attentions of a good copy editor, or even a proof reader. Repeating words twice in a sentence & misquoting famous sayings demonstrated a lack of attention to detail.

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2 people found this helpful

good

story is great but alas like others have said in other reviews the narration in this one is not up to the usual standard
book 1 was narrated by the guy that did the gentlemen bastards books so the bar was set really high for book 2 in this series
this narrater is pitchy squeeky and seems to use angry voices for no aparent reason
the start of each chapter starts with a passage from the archivist and altho its the same archivest she narates it in diff voices for some unknown reason this makes it confusing when depending on audio
also the prince in book 1 was a levelheaded softly spoken intelligent character but in this narration he seems to say everything in a really angry way
the same for his meek adoring cousin who for some reason gets a wicked witch voice
it seems that angry voice is the default setting in this narration so it is not a good pre bedtime listen as it will not soothe you
pitchy and scratchy
i really hope this series becomes availabewith someone like the female narater of the other books by mr wheeler
she was great

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1 person found this helpful

Magic assembled

Very well written book with many unexpected twists
And turns beautifully read with great empathy, wonderful
Narrator

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awful change of narrator

yet another great series ruined by changing the narrator,not only from male to female but one who's only character voices are a soft spoken cultured voice and I high pitched wizened old cackling voice that is like fingers on a chalk board ,which not only confuses you to as who is talkin as they all sound the same,female,male ,young,old it's all the same,in general I enjoy a woman narrating but on this occasion,such a disappointment

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3 people found this helpful

Great story but.

Love the story but really struggled with the voice actor and telling apart some of the characters.

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1 person found this helpful