Queens of the Wild

Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation

By: Ronald Hutton

Narrated by: Gary Paul Williams

A concise history of the goddess-like figures who evade both Christian and pagan traditions, from the medieval period to the present day

In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the fairy queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed over the centuries.

Looking closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition—Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses. He makes the compelling case that these goddess figures found in the European imagination did not descend from the pre-Christian ancient world, yet have nothing Christian about them. It was in fact nineteenth-century scholars who attempted to establish the narrative of pagan survival that persists today.

©2022 Ronald Hutton (P)2022 Tantor

Another informative book by Roland Hutton

As usual, Roland Hutton turns to primary sources to provide accurate insight into links between ancient and modern paganism. The loss of stars comes from the narration. The inflections and cadence of the narrator are distracting at times. Overall, it is worth putting up with if you are interested in the information presented

Poorly edited narration

The book is fine, the best that could be said about the narration is that the words are clear. The pacing is so odd I assumed that this was an AI effort. The listed performer seems to exist, so my fall back theory is poor post-production editing.

Fantastic historical work; worst narrator I’ve ever heard

Ronald Hutton needs no introduction. His scholarship on this subject is always thorough and very accessible.
The narrator, however, sounds like a screen-reader or AI. I actually thought it might be AI, though a mispronunciation of “hegemony” makes me have to consider that it could have been an actual human. I have listened to books that I plugged in to paid screen-reading programs, and the effect is identical to this narration—no emotion, no sense that the words mean anything to the reader. I’ve heard bad narration in my time, but this is truly the worst I’ve ever encountered in a lifetime of audiobook listening.
Buy the hard copy book and spare yourself the narration. I’m only still listening because it’s currently free with my subscription. I can’t even absorb much of the information when it’s so monotonously delivered, so doing a second read is genuinely required.

AI narrator

there is no possible, earthly way this was narrated by a human being. the book is excellent, the "narrator" is robotic, incapable of understanding punctuation, and so painfully stilted that it utterly ruins the experience. truly appalling.