Storm of the Dead

Forgotten Realms: The Lady Penitent, Book 2

By: Lisa Smedman

Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg

Drow god vs. Drow god! When Lolth and Eilistraee, two drow goddesses, compete for control of the dark elves of Faern, more than just the drow are caught in the middle. Though the drow will survive their game, what's at stake is the very nature of what it means to be a dark elf.

©2007 Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Poor reading, editing

The story is pretty good so far. My issue with this installment, just like my issue with the first, is with the narration. The narrator’s voice lacks any kind of gravitas. Her voice changes for the different characters seem extremely forced. There are many strange pronunciations of words and the obvious, jarring edits where a completely different woman’s voice adds in lines that were obviously missed in the original recording. Not sure why the original reader couldn’t record the edits but I expect better from an audible production

interesting story, terrible narration

Narrator has a weird cadence almost like she's reading to kindergartners.

Also features cartoonish level overacting in nearly every bit of dialogue.

Narrator constantly mispronouncing words.... "headless" of danger instead of "heedless" of danger... stressing the wrong syllable in "conversant"... can't even pronounce "penitent" correctly and that word gets used over and over.

Its outright bad, not what would be expected of a professional narrator. It seriously really distracts from what would otherwise be an interesting story.

Horrible narration

Why does it seem like the narrator is getting worse as the series progresses? Constantly mispronouncing words, using the wrong words, and just awful voices. And for goodness sake, it’s the title of the series, it’s “Penitent” not “Pentanent”!!

it didn't improve

The clumsy cadence and mispronounced words are just too distracting. If I weren't reading along with the narration, I would have given up.

the story

I love this Trilogy I read it in paperback 10 years ago or so and had no problem listening to it for a second time. well written and fast moving. if you love the drow and forgotten realms don't forget this one.

Great Story. Horrible Narration.

Loved the story and characters so much. The drow are my favorite race in all of Faerûn so I try to read anything and everything having to do with the dark elves. The narrator is the only downside. Not only does she mispronounce words she also interupts the story by butchering the flow of sentences and paragraphs. Many of the side characters sound like lost ignorant idiots. If you can ignore all the narration issues the book should be enjoyable. Just remember there are 3 books in this series and she narrates them all.

I wish I had purchased the book and not the audio

story was great overall, but the performance absolutely dreadful, had to listen to it a bit faster, just so I can get through it, despite being interested, the narration was absolutely atrocious. If I see her name on anything else, I probably will avoid it then the narrator, not the author.

A mixed review, good book with bad narration

Storywise this initially felt like a typical second entry to a forgotten realms saga dealing with self-contained characters, so as someone very interested in Drow lore, I didn't have very high hopes, especially considering this saga is a direct continuation to "war of the spider queen" Which dealt very heavily with Lolth and the Drow pantheon. Luckily I was very wrong, it's still doesn't dive in as deeply as that previous saga, but there is a genuinely good amount of exposition near the end of the book that made it a very worthwhile listen.

The characters in this entire saga are unfortunately quite a bit weaker than those in "war of the spider queen", even though it reprises a few secondary characters from that book series. The main standout for me was Q'arlynd, who was the surprise MVP in the last book too.

My biggest complaint remains the same from the last book, the narration in this saga is some of the worst I've ever listened to from Audible, and it's all low-hanging fruit. I absolutely love when audiobooks have both a make and female narrator, and appreciate when they go through the effort to learn the proper pronunciation of terms and names unique to dungeons and dragons, and forgotten realms as a whole, however I understand multiple narrators is expensive and not everyone is going to go through that extra effort to help our immersion. The issues I have with the narration start with the poor audio quality, it did seem to improve from the last book, though I may just be getting used to the echo, this definitely doesn't sound like someone using a proper set up to record audio, it sounds more like they were talking in a small room. As for the narrator herself, I really don't understand how she can properly pronounce words in one sentence, then mispronounce the same semi-common word later in the same chapter. I would normally say the recording could have benefitted from quality control of any sort, but even the narrator has to have known that she just said a word differently than how she said it earlier in the story. The end result is inconsistent and comes off as feeling rushed, with literally 0 room for retakes. Her tone and cadence seem to be improving, so I'm even more confused how she could sound so confident when mispronouncing terms left and right. Again, this seems to be improved from the last book, but it was still very noticeable to me. The book was certainly a side-story, but this weak narration compounded that feeling, making it a harder listen than it should have been.