Ruler of the Realm

The Faerie Wars Chronicles, Book 3

By: Herbie Brennan

Narrated by: James Daniel Wilson

It is Henry's third visit to the Faerie Realm, but this time in a rather different guise and to a rather different kind of place. Holly Blue is Queen and Lord Hairstreak appears to be proposing a truce between the Faeries of the Night and the Faeries of the Light.

Meanwhile, Prince Pyrgus has stumbled across some mysterious crystal flowers with an apparently formidable secret weapon, and there are rumours of a demon invasion led by Beleth, the Prince of Darkness.

Queen Blue, wary of her uncle's uncharacteristic generosity, pays a visit to the Spicemaster's labyrinth in an attempt to divine the possible future of the Realm. She is warned to beware someone close, little realising just how careful she will need to be.

©2006 Herbie Brennan (P)2006 W F Howes

Good but...

it was annoying that they changed the narrator. Gerard Doyle is the best, and had already done the first two books. In this last one the new narrator changes the names with a different name of pronouncing them. Quite annoying

“The End…?”

After putting down the first book in middle school, I picked it back up a few years later.

The first narrator was amazing. The second was great too, but after two whole books its a tough transition between the tones and name pronunciations. Besides that-no beef with Mr. Wilson.

HOWEVER, the ending of this book bothers me. Annoys, irritates, ruffles my feathers and scratches the record. A literal record scratch audibly followed by all rights reserved would have been more dignified and deserved. This book’s ending reads off like a rushed fanfic on A03, and if that’s what Herb wanted all the power to him but maaaaan.

I figured forty different things before the final chapter would occur. The whiplash I simply shant recover from.

I enjoyed the whole series though, so there’s that.

disappointed with different name calling

I love these books so much I have read them and own them and had to get them in audio form. I was disappointed to hear the narrator had not listened to the past narrator's 1st 2 books as they both pronounced names differently and that's very not cool for the readers I feel like the narrator's should have been on the same page.

Difficult to Judge

It's a bit difficult for me to judge this one. I like the characters and the story is complicated and cleverly woven which holds your interest. What surprised me was that after weaving such a complex tale, Brennan suddenly, truly abruptly, ends the story. It almost felt like the climax was just completely cut out. And I actually went back to see if I'd not been paying attention. It was very odd and quite unsatisfying, almost like dropping your ice cream half way through. You've had too much to want another cone, but not quite enough all the same. Having said that, I can see that there's room for more in this series and I would read them if there were.

My second beef wasn't actually with the story and has no reflection on the book itself. I listened to this one in audio book format. The first two were narrated by Gerard Doyle, who is an excellent narrator. For whatever reason, they switched to a different narrator, James Daniel Wilson, for the third book. Now it would be unfair to hint that Wilson isn't a good narrator, because he is and I would gladly listen to other books he narrated. However, it bugged me to no end that he changed some of the pronunciations for this third novel. It took me a while to figure out that the new character wasn't actually a new character, but one of the main characters, Pyrgus. Wilson's pronunciation was completely different and that threw me. In my opinion, everyone would have been better served had he stuck to the same pronunciations in this volume as in the others. It took me personally half the book to get used to it and I find it difficult to rate this book because of the change. I don't know whether I'm rating fairly or not. However, since I have to rate it somehow, I'll give it a 3 out of 5, but keep in mind that it might be better with the same narrator or read on paper.

Narrator ruined this book for me

The first book was good and the second book was ok, Gerard Doyle is one of the best narrators and brought them to life and made the first book a joy to listen to and the second book better then it was. This book was kind of hard to listen to as it appears that James Wilson never listened to the first two books to get an idea of the way Gerard Doyle brought the characters to life and the pronunciation of the names, the whole time listening to the book I found myself turning the book off or yelling at the author because I could not stand the way James Wilson brought some of the characters to life (voices, emphasis of feelings & pronunciations of words) it was a complete struggle with the new narrator.

The author seemed to not really have an idea of what he wanted to do as he kept floundering back and forth with the characters emotions, attitudes, and total characteristics it would have been a lot easier to get through that character personality unrest as in the last book if it was Gerard Doyle but with James Wilson it was just torcher.