Huge grasp of world events and their Importance

Voices were often very difficult to follow. Readers often didn’t seem to understand what they were talking about

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fascinating, but spoiled by some of the narration

Some of the narration was the worst I've ever heard. Surely, someone must be in charge of ensuring that narrators can pronounce incredibly famous names? Or that they can read as if they understand the words they are saying. This is not about accent, they all had great voices, but really, so frustrating when the sentences sound like they've finished have way through, or that they have no punctuation.

if it hadn't been a SSM book, I wouldn't have struggled through to the end.

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interesting book - narration very patchy

i enjoyed the book. It is by nature sprawling and lengthy, but a hugely impressive attempt at something that's probably impossible to do well.

Like many reviews here I was disappointed by some of the narration. Much is excellent but three or four of the reader are very amateurish and quite spoilt their sections for me. Two appeared to be both reading the text for the first time and also new to english. Very disappointing, as presumably the large cast was brought together to add to the listening experience rather than detract from it.

there were also some odd decisions on when to switch from one narrator to the other - sometimes right in the middle of the action. Most odd and very distracting.

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Fantastic story marred by poor narration

Simon Sebag Montefiore's other books on sprawling, centuries-spanning histories (Jerusalem, The Romanovs) are among my favourites. From a writing perspective, this doesn't disappoint. Few do big history as well as SSM.

The issue with the audiobook is purely down the performance of the readers. One reader in particular covers an inordinate amount of the book, from beginning to end. Just as I found myself really engaging with a particular story, this narrator would suddenly pop up again and again to ruin it with a monotonous, machine-like delivery and bizarre pronunciation choices.

Great story though.

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worth the time

Partly the craziest ride I've ever been on, and intriguing parts of human history never shown in the classroom. Loved it mostly, but due to its wastness, the tempo was a bit too much. I often had to stop reading to check foot notes 😂

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Enjoyed it but some schoolboy errors

Original and entertaining way to tell history - through the personalities and families of those whose lives and decisions affected great events. Really brought characters alive . Several narrators added to variety , but some were not easy to understand and either pronounced names and places in a manner I couldn’t follow or totally mangled some words.
What irritated me were basic errors that should have been spotted. Just three that spring to mind -
How could Pitt the younger have a duel with another MP in 1898 when he was long dead by then ?
Lord Mountbatten’s father wasn’t from an illegitimate marriage - it was morganatic and legal and non of the children were illegitimate
Mountbatten didn’t die in 1981 .

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1 person found this helpful

Interesting book weakened by some weak narrators.

Excellent and impressive summary of world history. Would have enjoyed more if the author had not been so fascinated by detailed descriptions of murders, executions, rapes, torture, incest etc.
Some of the narrators are far below the expected standard.

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Failed by the narration

This is a without doubt a prodigiously gargantuan work! It runs to the same length as the first 3 of Edward Gibbon’s six volumes of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire v which are read unabridged on Naxos Audio, but Gibbon has been vastly better served by the superb Naxos narrators than by the fifteen chosen here to read The World. I can see why someone thought it a good idea to have narrators from around the world given the content, but the result is a shambles.
The whole is such a kaleidoscope of tumult that to have voices - with various English accents frequently difficult to hear, with varyingly misjudged pace, inappropriate nuance and even varying pronunciation of key names - is I’m afraid a failure. The highly professional and experienced Leighton Pugh ,who has a huge catalogue of narration including the similar length Diary of Samuel Pepys for Naxos under his first class belt, is the exception of the fifteen here. I wonder what he thinks of this production.
It was particularly essential to have a highly competent narrator for a work as vast as this. The accompanying pdf here on Audible with its detailed bibliographies for each section shows just how massive a work this has been, probably impossible to have incubated without Montefiore making the most of Lockdown. As he rollocks along from 95,000 year old footmarks showing that a human being had carried a child in her arms, to Zelnsky no less, the narrative is so densely packed, not least with names, that it is frequently bewildering and dizzy. To have sub standard stressful-to-listen-to narrators on top makes for a real struggle for the listener .
I think the best way to get through this would be to read the book a very little at a time over many weeks – there is just too much to digest through listening straight through. I confess that I got as far as India and then sampled some of the later parts. I will come back to it over the next few months as reading the book is not an option for me, and listen l to a little at a time. Montefiore’s writing is vigorous, sharp, insightful, and even witty - he deserved a better production.

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1 person found this helpful

Long durée history joy - narration disaster!

Oh dear. It begins, It is great. Then it gets worse in varying degrees. Then you give up despite the slaughter and sex across the ages, Sebag style. The narration is utter pesh as we say in Scotland, substituting a consonant for a vowel. Read the book. Such a shame.

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Poor narration

Enjoying this, but enjoyment marred by very idiosyncratic reading. Great to involve diverse readers but is there any quality control on pronunciation ?

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6 people found this helpful