The Sanctuary Sparrow

The Seventh Chronicle of Brother Cadfael

By: Ellis Peters

Narrated by: Patrick Tull

In the middle of the abbey's evening services, an angry mob pursues a young boy into the sacred peace of the sanctuary. Terrified and in tatters, he clutches at the altar-cloth, grasping for mercy in the only sure place he might find it. He is accused of robbery and murder, but Cadfael senses his innocence and sets out to prove it.Solve another medieval mystery with Brother Cadfael.©1983 Ellis Peters (P)1993 Recorded Books, LLC

just like seeing a movie

I loved it. It was an excellent story. The reader, performer was wonderful. I'm planning to continue with the next story.

No one can do it like the English

On, to Chronicle Eight! I mean to read them all, and I heartily recommend them. The writing is dense with delicious details that flesh out the life and time to which the wonderful narration transports you.
Murders to solve! Subplots and clues abound. Let us go forth with haste!

Love Cadfael AND the narrator!

I love that Cadfael is a monk/detective and it's based in the 12th century.

Not Peters’ best work, but still good

Somewhat predictable. Character development was a little lacking. Nice scene setting and ending was just okay.

Subject

Not even one thousand years can alter the emotions of this story. Perhaps it needs another thousand years. But even then…don’t hold your breath… maybe truth is just truth.

Great entry in the Cadfael series

This book is classic Cadfael - a boy wrongfully accused of murder, young love, and Cadfael and Hugh Berringar coming together to solve the murder. The story starts with a young minstrel pursued by a mob and he just makes it to the monastery church where he claims sanctuary. Cadfael believes the boy and mounting evidence begins to confirm the boy’s innocence. It turns out a young servant girl in the home where the robbery occurred was sweet on him and so that blossoms into love. Cadfael and Berringar eventually solve the mystery, with a rather surprising result, and this leads to a perilous finale. I enjoyed the characters and th plot kept moving nicely, and this was a great addition in the Cadfael series. Patrick Tull was an okay narrator but he tends to leave very long pauses between paragraphs and sections. I always have to adjust the playback speed up when Tull narrates.

The perfect series for comfort reading

The year is 2021. A plague devastates the countryside. My healthiest coping mechanism is spending as much time as possible in the town of Shrewbury in the 1100s - particularly in the herbarium at the monastery of St Peter and St Paul. Patrick Tull is a great narrator for the Brother Cadfael books, and Brother Cadfael books are the perfect mystery series for when the world feels like it’s falling apart. Good wins, the bad are treated with fairness and gentleness, and every storyline wraps up as tidily as you can hope for. Each story manages to be engaging, but with the comfort of a mystery series where you can start to predict and guess. You don’t have to listen in order, but I recommend it.

More of a stage performance than a reading

Occasionally the pregnant pauses, the dramatic pronunciations and presentation took away from the listening. I’m sure this reading style will be very appealing to many. It was distracting to me. I had to rewind to re-listen to a section when I realized I was distracted and no longer listening properly. That said, I will still listen to the rest of the series if it’s available. The story was excellent.

Lousy narrator

I understand Bro. Cadfael was Welsh, however, these accents only made it more difficult to hear the words.
Patrick Tull seems to speed up when people are talking and then slows down for the narrative. So, between his pace and strange accents these books were hard to listen to.