Sumi

Meh

Reviewed: 02-22-25

Under developed characters with a lot of literary tropes, which is ironic because the book goes on about avoiding tropes used by other well renowned authors or books.

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Compelling Story with stilted narration

Reviewed: 03-05-22

I love Alison Weir, her histories are well researched and detailed but I find the narration painful. Odd accents for foreign ambassadors, everyone above the age of 18 sounds like a crone (even a 28 year old Elizabeth I) and all men speak with a pregnant pause between each word. I bought this book years ago and couldn’t remember listening to it so turned it on again, and now know why I never made it through. I still have 5 hours to go and I’m wishing I had a paper copy instead.

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Audio Play. Not a book.

Reviewed: 02-27-19

This is not a book, this is a play.

There is no narrative and this is entirely driven by dialogue and sound effects.

Glad this was free.

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The Star doesn’t shine so bright

Reviewed: 12-31-18

I find that I’m losing interest in the series and debating whether to waste a credit to move on to the next title. (I fell asleep while listening and didn’t bother to go back to pick up the chapters I lost, because I was able to catch up in the first five minutes of waking up. That tells me I didn’t miss much.)
The character development is lack luster and I had a very hard time connecting with a character who grew up a loved and cherished billionaire’s daughter in Switzerland and whose biggest adversity in life was having a bossy “twin.”
The premise of the story, about finding the birth parents for adoptees of the aforementioned eccentric billionaire is great, and the development into the character of Miah in the first book was well done, but this Star is a black hole.
The narration, while better than the second book, still has some problems. Namely the voice given to Rory. While I understand it may be hard to interpret how to give voice to a deaf child, shouting staccato phrases isn’t the way to do it.

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Bad Narration, few glitches, generally good

Reviewed: 12-28-18

In summary - buy the hard copy book, not the audible version; for more details please read the full critique.

In general, I notice how bad a narration is when I start repeating the phrases I've just heard and I begin performing them to prove that they could have been delivered better. I did that a LOT during this audio book. I'm not even an actress, just someone who knows a good narration.
I don't speak Norwegian, and can't judge whether the words were pronounced properly, but what I can comment on was the disparity between narrative and dialogue on the name "Anna." In the context of plot, the name was pronounced how it would typically be expected in American/British use, however when the name came up in dialogue the pronunciation was stilted and sounded like "Ah...NAH!" Yes, with a pregnant pause and an emphasis on the second syllable making it sound like a sesame street learning session on phonics. It was even more pronounced when the character was supposed to be a man, making every male character (who already had a faux deepened and gruntingly breathy voice) sound like a neanderthal. Men, and male characters, are capable of just as much depth/range of emotion as women. Please don't use narrators like these again who perform men as one dimensional amoeba.

There are issues of glitches (perhaps only in the copy I downloaded) but approximately the first 15 minutes of Chapter 19 were a cut and paste of a section from Chapter 18. This happened again in Chapter 29, however i didn't scroll back to figure out how much was repeated, and from where. It did take me out of the story though.

In regards to the actual story; after the plot finally diverts onto Ally's independent narrative it was quite interesting and captivating. I did find it quite tedious that we had to rehash the exact same conversations that were in The Seven Sisters, often the text being pulled verbatim, just heard from Ally's point of view, rather than Miah's, which does make me wonder whether this will be done 6 times, but after slogging through the 'refresher' the story becomes a unique telling. I truly hope the remaining books finds a way to cover the initial plot event from the perspective of each woman, as it is well documented that individuals experiencing the same event will have different memories, and applying the same text (and therefore emotion) to those events is lazy writing.

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Fun story with a substandard performance

Reviewed: 12-15-18

The overall storyline of this book is fun, inventive and engaging. Sure there were a few flaws, as the author seems to have an inability to describe the mentality of a 16 year old boy’s thoughts consistently and there are many times when the reader is left wondering if the narrator is actually 10, but overall these were minor infractions compared to the narration.

The main character is an American, and much of the book takes place in the UK. They chose an American narrator who cannot do accents to the point of distraction. His old Welsh characters sounded East Indian and half way through he would forget they had an accent and they’d just be American again. His inflections for women were all wrong making the title character sound idiotic and soporific, and his interpretation of children is...to...pause...before...each...word.
There are natural voice actors in the world, the person reading this book is not one of them. It ruined the audio book. Read the text instead.

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Another Success by Kate Morton

Reviewed: 11-03-18

I look forward to Kate Morton (audio) book releases for the wonderful development that transports the (listener) reader through story lines interwoven through time, and this book was no disappointment. This plot reaches beyond her past standards of mystery and intrigue with one of the narrators; although outside her typical grounding in the corporeal world, this book still held to the physical world with nods to fantasy.
Joanne Froggatt (Anna from Downton Abbey) was a delight to listen to, and her occasional American accents were well done, so not a distraction. On the whole, there were even times when I wondered if she was narrating every voice because there was such distinction between characters (which in my opinion, is a delightful thing in an audiobook).

Overall an enjoyable listen that transported me and passed the time.

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Page turner of an audible story

Reviewed: 07-16-18

Overall the story was well crafted and I couldn’t wait to hear where it went next. The only thing I found distracting was the male narrator whenever he was giving voice to Mia. The female narrator was wonderful and I didn’t find any distraction when she was narrating The Gardener, or any other male characters, and the male narrator was fine when he was narrating Victor, or even the more mature ancillary female characters, but his treatment of Mia made me wonder if he has ever encountered a teen/young adult woman.

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Bernard Cornwell fan

Reviewed: 02-24-18

I’ve long been a fan of Bernard Cornwell, and his version of Arthurian Legend is a gritty realism of the time period. It strips away all the chivalry that was added during the romanticism, and he brings the reader back to the reality of the hardships of early life in Britain following the fall of Rome. This is not a courtly telling of knights in shining armor, so if that is your expectation you may want to pass.
Jonathan Keeble does a good job, although some of his character voices are a little “over done” and don’t fit the personality of the character, but not anything that makes it unlistenable.

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2 people found this helpful