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I loved this, including the author's narration.

Revisado: 08-21-23

I loved this book. The author narrates it himself and I ended up really enjoying his narration. He does not do all the different voices like a professional narrator might, but he has a lovely, cozy voice. His cadence is well suited to a book primarily from the POV of a clergyman, since he is so comfortable with the tones of scriptural quotation and pastoral conversation that are so central to the interactions between characters in this book. I wish there were a recording of the first in the series and I hope Rev. Coles will record any future installments.

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Really bad choice of narrator

Revisado: 08-03-23

I found myself engrossed in the story, but Ellen Archer's attempts at all the accents are so awful I couldn't go on. I am an American and *I* could tell how bad they were. She mangled not just the distinctions among the Scottish, Irish, Yorkshire, and other accents, but basic, common features of UK Englishes that anyone with a moderately good ear, let alone a voice acting professional, should be able to master. As others have said, she had a very pleasant voice and nice intonation and I'd happily listen to her do a book where she didn't have to attempt any dialect or accent, but this was a disastrous mismatch of book and narrator.

I checked my local library for this series and found to my delight that they have THIS SAME TITLE read by the wonderful Steven Crossley. I returned this recording and checked that one out. I'm not sure why Audible does not have that recording, but I hope they can get it.

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Warning: this is NOT a new book.

Revisado: 02-10-23

When I saw there was a new Merrily Watkins book from Phil Rickman, I immediately spent a credit on it. As I listened, it began to seem familiar, and then I realized it was already in my library. They've apparently re-released the existing recording. I wish Audible would figure out how to match up earlier and newer issues of the identical book so items like this would show up as already in your library if, in fact, they are. Fortunately I was able to return it.

All that said, I continue to enjoy the series.

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Penny needs editing; Bathurst needs coaching

Revisado: 12-21-22

I agree with many previous reviewers here that this was baggy, repetitive, and preachy. I found myself saying, "I GET it already!" and I'm someone who basically shares Penny's politics. The plot picked up in the second half, but I wish Penny had let an editor actually edit her, to help her prune out the preaching and tighten up the whole thing. There were some plot details that were just sloppy that could have been solved by an alert editor and fact-checker. Was this edited at all? Do successful authors even get edited late in their runs? Very frustrating.

As for Robert Bathurst, I think he's done a pretty creditable job up till now as a replacement for Ralph Cosham. But here his mangling of an array of Canadian characters was pretty egregious. He seems to have one notion of what a North American sounds like—exaggeratedly rhotic, with the version of the cot-caught merger one hears in California—that has NOTHING to do with what anglophone Canadians sound like, to say nothing of francophones speaking English. It got more and more grating.

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Narration hard to hear at times

Revisado: 11-20-22

This is mainly about the narration. Fiona Shaw is a wonderful actress and I understand why she stepped in for Lesley Manville. I appreciate her efforts to bring some continuity in voicing and characterization to the performance of the characters from previous books. But when Shaw drops her voice to a breathy murmur for the narrative voice and for Joyce's voice particularly, she becomes very hard to hear. I know that there are a lot of fans of this series who are even older than I—closer to the age of the characters—and they must be having even more trouble hearing. If Shaw is to continue to narrate the series, I hope she and the director/producers will look at the question of volume and clarity.

As for the plot, I enjoyed it more as I went along. I would really rather spend more time with the core characters and not with assorted additional underworld figures. I have not enjoyed either of the sequels as much as the first book, though I am attached enough to the main cast to keep reading.

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