Deborah

All good but the narrator.

Revisado: 12-28-24

This story line is OK, but a bit confusing at times with introduction of new(ish) characters without a lot of background. Like lots of other listeners, I DO NOT like the narrator. It's not that she's bad, per se, but that she doesn't voice the characters, giving them life and differentiation from each other. She is mostly just reading the book out loud to us. I can get that experience by buying and downloading a copy of the book and reading it myself.

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Change of narrator is hard to get used to

Revisado: 05-10-24

Having listened to all of the previous Scarpetta novels read by C. J. Critt, I found the change of narrator to be a little jarring. Granted, in general terms Kate Reading is a smoother overall reader than Critt and she has a very pleasant speech and delivery. However, I've felt all along that since this series storyline has the main characters based in Richmond, Virginia, that Kay Scarpetta herself should have a bit southern drawl since she's spent at least some of her life in Florida, and most of the other characters also should have at least some hint of a southern accent. I lived in Richmond for about 8 years as a teenager and I can promise you that native Virginians, including Richmonders, have a distinct southern drawl in their speech. I found Critt's use of a New York-y sounding accent for Captain Marino particularly weird. Kate Reading seems to be using a sort of "standard English" approach to the speech of all of the characters. To me it makes the narration somewhat bland and the characters less "real" to the imagination.

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This is a comment more than a review

Revisado: 03-17-23

I enjoyed the book very much except for the narration. I didn't notice this in earlier books, maybe because there weren't any children in those books. In this book, however, there are a number of young (adolescent) and very young children as characters. Although generally I've been happy with Holter Graham's narration, he has a definite problem with creating a believable child character. Whatever he is doing, it ends up sounding very nasal and not at all child-like. Holter seems to have a naturally deep tone (bass-baritone I would say), so it probably is pretty much out of his range. I know it must be very difficult to voice all the different characters in any book, but in this case it was very distracting, even annoying, to me.

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A difficult leap from KA's usual

Revisado: 03-17-20

I too am a big KA fan and have read almost everything she's written. I could write a long review, but just let me say: I agree with just about everything in Kindle Customer's review from 12/3/19. This novel takes place in the Fantasyland universe, where the world in which the book takes place is actually a mirror world to ours. You have to think about that when you're reading this book. If this is what's happening in the Fantasyland world, what's the parallel in ours? Hmmmmm…..that thought could be pretty frightening if you take it too far.

This is not for everyone. It's extremely brutal in some ways, in terms of some of the sex scenes as well as the fight scenes that come later in the book. So, choose with care. If you're a KA fan, you'll find this quite different from her usual, although the romances between the 8 main characters are very similar to the relationships in the other Fantasyland novels. Read Kindle Customer's review - it does a really good job of describing what I'm mentioning here.

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Enjoyable historical romance

Revisado: 01-14-20

I'm a fan of Lauren Willig, and I did enjoy The Forgotten Room. I haven't read anything written independently by Beatriz Williams or Karen White. That said, this is "just OK" for me. The story is engaging but not particularly complex, and I didn't like the modern-day female character. She seemed somewhat immature and unfocused for the most part, especially for a research historian.

I have to say that I agree with Quick Exit's comments about the pronunciation. One of the narrators (I don't know which one) was horribly lacking in terms of care taken when pronouncing non-English names and words and it was grating to the ear. "Holbein" pronounced "hole-bean" instead of "hole-bine" and as Quick Exit noted, German Lieder pronounced "lie-der" instead of "leader," as well as several other words and names whose specifics escape me at the moment. She did manage to pronounce "Strauss" correctly when referring to the manuscript of a supposedly unknown Strauss waltz that is central to the plot. Other than that her narration was OK but not stellar. The other narrators did very credible jobs in their portions of the story. I'm also not a big fan of multiple narrators; it's a bit old-fashioned now I guess but I prefer a book narration done by a single voice.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Great extension of the Kate Daniels story arc

Revisado: 02-19-19

Ilona Andrews are my absolute favorite authors in the urban fantasy genre (and no - that sentence is not grammatically incorrect). I've been hugely entertained and enjoyed every series they've produced, and this one is no different. In contrast to some other listeners I love Steve West's narration. I don't mind at all that he doesn't attempt to make the women's voices "female" sounding, as that can backfire badly. And his voice is a lovely deep, masculine baritone that reminds me of Sean Bean - in fact after listening to the first 10 or 15 minutes of the book I had to come back and look up the narrator's name to convince myself that it wasn't Sean Bean. Maybe it's the accent even more than the voice quality but whatever it is, to me it fits Hugh's story perfectly.

Hugh personifies the bad, bad, really bad guy who turns out to be just humanly bad and deeply damaged and confused. There were hints of this toward the end of the Kate Daniels series and they're realized excellently in this book. His struggles with his attachment to Roland and at the same time his growing disillusionment and realization of what his life was really about is handled perfectly. There's a real depth to his grief, realizations and struggles that's believable even when you don't always like the way he handles it. I have some trouble with Elara on the other hand. She seems at times somewhat adolescent in her anger and hatred of Hugh. For all her supposed deep attachment and concern for "her people," at least in the beginning of the story (and I'm still less than halfway through the book) she exhibits absolutely no attempt to really understand Hugh or consider what struggles he might be enduring. Perhaps she's as damaged in her way as he is? I'll have to finish the story I guess before I can figure that out.

I have a hard time imagining this as a stand-alone story line. There are so many references to and even appearances by the characters from the Kate Daniels story line that I think any reader would be missing a lot if they hadn't read that series.

I'm looking forward to listening to the other books of this story line.

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Too much gore for me!

Revisado: 04-19-18

This book was not for me. I lasted for quite a while and was intrigued by the plot and supernatural elements. There are a lot of weird plot twists and characters and a lot to figure out about who the characters really are and what's really going on. Unfortunately, it got to a point where it was just really too deep into the horror and too bloody thirsty for me and I had to stop listening. I'm a little sorry to give this book such a low rating, because in fact I think the writing was quite good and the narration was very good, too. But I have to say...Reader Beware if you're not really into the horror, blood-and-gore type of story.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Enjoyable start to a long-running series

Revisado: 04-19-18

I've been putting off trying this series for a while. I don't know why, but the plot synopses I'd read didn't appeal to me although I've read a lot of this genre. Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot - not a fantastic read but a good story line, interesting characters, not too predictable (except of course for the fact that the heroine survives every plot twist no matter the danger). It definitely has possibilities for character and story development in the series.

But I have to say that one of the things that I enjoyed most is the narration. I've been addicted to the Darynda Jones "Grave" series for a couple of years, which Lorelei King also narrates. Charlie Davidson is a certain type of character and requires a distinctive voice. Lorelei's narration works perfectly for Charlie and just as perfectly for the Mercy Thompson character. So this is a "cross-recommendation" for anyone who's read Darynda Jones to try this Patricia Briggs series and vice-versa.

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Unusual production is problematic

Revisado: 10-24-17

The Golden Compass is a well known and respected work such that I think I don't have to review the book itself. It's fun and has a lot of well-imagined characters and adventures and is well written.

However, this recording is unusually "produced" for a recorded book. Philip Pullman acts as the narrator, reading all of the descriptive and background material, while a whole cast of actors fill in the dialogue of the characters. In my opinion, Pullman does a great job as the narrator, but I have some problems with the accompanying cast. I tried really hard to give this new approach to recording a book a chance, but in some ways it just doesn't work for me. One of the first jarring things is that the dialogue portions sound as if they were recorded in an entirely different room (which they probably were) and then spliced into the narrative.

Another of my problems is the performances of some of the characters, particularly the central female character, Lyra, who sounds either like a pre-teen girl or a woman trying to sound like a pre-teen girl. The voicing seems to me artificially light and high in pitch. That would seem to be appropriate for the character, but the problem is that almost every speech starts out sounding somewhat normal but progresses quickly to become breathless and even strident as the character apparently gets more excited. I found this more and more annoying as the performance continued. Especially given the prevalence of child characters and the lower-class British accents used, I frequently felt as if I was listening to a recording of Oliver (without the music of course)! To me it's overly dramatic, particularly for a reading which is NOT a real performance. My point, I guess, is that I don't want to be listening on tape to a live performance of the work. I want to be listening to a reading of the work, and this production crosses that line and not altogether successfully.

This recording might appeal to a younger generation of people who are more accustomed to watching live performances of written works than actually reading the works from cover to cover in book form.

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A little disappointed...

Revisado: 11-09-16

I read all of the Seven series and enjoyed them very much. This first book in this series fell a bit flat for me, though. First of all, the author did something weird in this book with the main character, and the narrator's interpretation of the character just emphasizes her basic unattractiveness as a person (and I'm not talking about physical beauty here). And the way Nicole Poole personifies the main character in this book with her voice is...well...just weird. It makes her sound like a ditzy, weak, somewhat less than intelligent woman. Her voice cracks and sort of squeaks when she yells or gets very emotional and it's hard to listen to it. Of course, some of it is just the way the character is written and Nicole's narration emphasizes her lack of strength. She sounds pitiful and frightened half the time, resentful and childish the rest of the time, and then starts castigating herself for being those things. Then all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, she fights back (usually not very effectively). She doesn't seem able to grasp the situation she's in or have any idea of how to deal with a transition from one type of society to another one with completely different rules. This is not the strong type of female character I'm used to in Dannika Dark's books.

I have to say, also, that I'm not a great fan of the "magic" type of paranormal story, and although this is a bit of a different take on that, I'm not sure it will stand up to a long exploration of the society of the Mageri. Nevertheless, I will probably try the second one in the series to see if it gets any better.

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