Daughter of the Drow

Forgotten Realms: Starlight & Shadows, Book 1

De: Elaine Cunningham

Narrado por: Dara Rosenberg

Beautiful as she is deadly, Liriel Baenre flits throught the shadows of Menzoberranzan, city of the dark elves. Amid treachery and murder that are the drow's daily fare, she feels something calling to her...something beyond this dusky world far removed from the sun. Yet as she ventures toward the surface and the lands of light, enemies pursue her unceasingly.

And one enemy may offer her the only hope of salvation.

©2003 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

A different look at the Drow

If you've only read RA Salvator's work with the drow than you owe it to yourself to check out Daughter of the Drow. Lyriel the main characters is a witty, devious and enjoyable character whom actually revel's in he culture even as she slowly learns to reject its evil. These delightful contradictions and intrigue make this story extremely enjoyable. The story is extremely fun, well paced with an great supporting cast of allies and enemies for Lyriel and over all a real delight.

The story is set in the heyday of 2nd edition D&D's Forgotten Realms but it works well as a stand alone and any fan of fantasy should be able to get into and enjoy this series with no prior knowledge of the setting or D&D in general, however if you do read the other Drow centric book it acts as nice little companion piece.

However as good as the story is the current recording is of very low quality. The reader doesn't have very good audio quality, the editing is a pit choppy and the actors choice of inflection is rather unusual which might prove distracting to some listeners. If they can fix the audio issues I'd say this is a must buy for any fan of the Drow and the Forgotten Realms.

A surprising performance

I don't need to say much on the story. Its a great look at the drow taken from the perspective of a female and Cunningham does a wonderful job at telling it. The female lead is well crafted and a decently believable character of someone that grew up in a cut throat society. I will say if you aren't super familiar with the Forgotten Realms, you might need to google some creature names to understand what some monster is. There seems to be an expectation that the reader is somewhat familiar with the Forgotten Realms, which I appreciate. The performance of Rosenberg is what I think really comes through and was kind of surprising. I've gotten use to a lot of narrators now a days that barrel through a book like they need to get it done and on to the next one -- this isn't the case here. Rosenberg takes her time in reading and it comes off like how you would read a story to a child. She does a decent job of changing up her voice for different characters. There are only 2 complaints I have with the performance though. First, the recording's rough draft and touch up phase were very obvious. The rough draft recording is the majority of book and sounds good, but when they went back and fixed up some bad readings the settings for recording weren't the same and sound worse. The jumps between these two are very jarring. Second, the way Rosenberg reads some lines is kind of jarring based on what the text says. She might read something in a chipper tone with no inflection but then the text says "she said exasperatedly." I only consider this a problem because sometimes the narrator actually does try to match voice to what the text says and then sometimes doesn't. This jumping between following the content of the text and not, simply tarnishes what could have been a spectacular performance. Overall its still a 5/5 I think.

Goood!!

Its a great story although the narrator mispronounces some words. Fantastic book if you like R.A. Salvatore material

Good book, but the narrator ruins it

The person who reads this audiobook reads it with a weirdly prim and over-energetic voice, and reads fairly slowly. It’s like she’s reading to a baby and crisply pronouncing the heck out of every word to help the baby learn to talk.

At first it was funny to hear descriptions of drow violence read in a childrens’ storybook voice, but the voice got more and more grating the longer I listened. And the pace of the reading is slow, so there are hours and hours of it to listen to.

I made it through two hours before I gave up and returned it. I’ll finish reading it in written format - I like the story and the characters, but I just can’t take any more of the narrator’s voice.

If you are learning English and looking for something slow with very enunciated words to practice your listening, this would be great for that. But if you’re reading for fun, get the Kindle version instead.

Don't Waste Your Time or Money

Would you try another book from Elaine Cunningham and/or Dara Rosenberg?

I would try another book by Elaine Cunningham. In fact, I purchased this audio book having already read the series. I had hoped to enjoy the story again.

How could the performance have been better?

The performance could have been 1000 times better by having someone else perform it. Dara, bless her soul, needs to find a new line of work. She is an absolutely awful performer. She must fidget like a leaf on the wind when recording. Her voice is always seemingly moving towards and away from the mic. Moreover, her English leaves much to be desired. Whether it is the rather odd way she pronounces some words, e.g., "SKIM-a-tar" instead of "scimitar," or the way she misreads words so that instead of "accessing" a room the character ends up "assessing" the room, her ability to read the text is truly cringeworthy.

Was Daughter of the Drow worth the listening time?

No. It was absolutely not worth the time.

Any additional comments?

The story is good. It is worth listening to. However, the performance is so bad that I am going to try to get my money back. The time I wasted while I listened and hoped that Dara would find her stride, I can never get back. I only hope that I can help prevent other people from suffering as I did. The story is good. I hope that they will rerecord it with a competent and skillful performer. That will make all the difference.

Story is good, but the narrator is terrible.

Would you be willing to try another one of Dara Rosenberg’s performances?

Maybe in the same series, but overall I think the narrator makes too many major mistakes. There are many pauses for no reason, and fantastically bad pronunciation of common words. And she consistently changes pronunciation of the main character's name in the first few chapters of the book.

Just a couple things.

Dara's inflections felt off and pronunciations were inconsistent throughout book, but otherwise good work.

Great audio

I thought the narrator did an amazing job and kept me entertained throughout the entire book. Definitely recommend

Never ever buy anything read by Dara Rosenberg

What did you like best about Daughter of the Drow? What did you like least?

The story is awesome. Elaine Cunningham wrote a beautiful story depicting life in Menzoberranzan and the underdark. The characters are well developed. The story is very satisfying.

However, I had to stop listening and purchased the book to read it on my own. The recording is awful!

What didn’t you like about Dara Rosenberg’s performance?

Dara Rosenberg has a lolling up-and-down voice that is not pleasant to listen to. She breaks up sentences in crazy ways that makes the listener pause to figure out what she just said. I can't think of how it can be more annoying.

If I write the way she reads, it turns out like this. These are some literal examples.

"There is a world where elves dance beneath the stars. Where the footsteps of human folk trace, restless paths in ever widening circles."

"For the drow, could walk among her dark cousins, without feeling horror. And earning a swift and terrible death."

"And occasionally, the sea of activity parted, to permit passage of a drow noble. Usually, a female riding in state, upon a slave carried litter, or a magical, floating drift disc."

"The drow could read the magical time piece, even in full darkness. For their keen eyes, perceived the suttlest heat patterns, with a precision and detail a hunting falcon might envy."

Dara has a difficult time remembering which voices she used for which characters. Sometimes, she doesn't realize the character is talking until. Then when she catches on, she uses a different voice. It's not at all entertaining.

Also, the engineering is horrible - you can hear every edit because they didn't match levels properly. This really wouldn't have been difficult to do if the engineer had any passion at all for the work. Mispronunciations include simple things like macabre pronounced "micabray"; zenith pronounced "zanith"; and a few other super-obvious mistakes that the engineer should have caught during the recording.

Sorry Dara, but it's extremely difficult to listen to you. Maybe acting/reading lessons would help.

Was Daughter of the Drow worth the listening time?

Not with this narration.

Any additional comments?

Audible, please, please do some quality assurance on your books before we buy them. They're expensive and I was not at all satisfied with the narration.

The Narrator's delivery truly awful.

I've read this book before and the story is a good little fantasy story. However here, the narration delivery becomes so torturous - I had to put the story down, unfinished.

About 1/4 into the story the narrator fully slips into a rhythm and cadence that gives inflection completely independent of the sentence structure. And at about halfway through this novel It's like the words and sentences are passing, but the narrator gives no inflection to what is actually being said. The beat and emphasis is on a whatever word happens to land at a rhythmic point, and it becomes insanely distracting.

I know fantasy novels dialogue can be difficult and awkward for many narrators - but this is bad.. Really, really bad. This slips into full autopilot reading about 1 step above an automated computer voice that has no idea what is being said.

This story really deserves to be reproduced with a different production team.