Diva

Excellent Overview

Revisado: 10-05-17

These lectures are pitched at exactly the right level for someone who is interested in history and wants to find out more about the middle ages but doesn't need depth and intensity of any specific area of study. A great jumping-off point to pursue areas of interest that arise. The delivery is entertaining but highly informative. The entire course is absolutely fascinating and has opened up a whole new area of interest for me.

Highly recommended.

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Enjoyable listen but a bit slow

Revisado: 08-29-17

This is an unusual, somewhat shocking, story, well-told. Great characters with some sharp dialogue but it was a bit too drawn-out for my preference. Could have reduced the length by a couple of hours and got a really tight, focused novel. There was a little too much internal dialogue/deliberation and could have been improved by more "show don't tell".

The narration is excellent by both narrators - something that a) is so important and b) sadly very rare. What a wonderful, refreshing change!

Overall an enjoyable listen and worth the credit.

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Excellent narrator raises the star count

Revisado: 06-04-15

Overall I enjoyed this one. Mainly, I have to say, because of the outstanding performance of the narrator. For me the narrator is SO important and I have been so disappointed with so many narrators in the past that, these days, I tend to select a book to spend my money on based on the narrator. I have never been disappointed with this narrator. A very talented actor/reader.

The book itself had an interesting premise and there was plenty of action/excitement. The romance was relegated to second place behind the action so I wouldn't call this a romance in the traditional sense. I do feel, however, that the story could have been condensed into two thirds of its length and still have delivered. It was a bit protracted for my liking. But then, there was more time to listen to the narrator and that was never a hardship.

Worth the credit for me.

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Not a great listen for me

Revisado: 01-14-15

Having read the other reviews, I wonder if I was listening to the same book. This one really didn't do it for me. There is a very emotional romance element but the entire book revolves around Alexander keeping a secret from Olivia. I just couldn't understand why a) Olivia being an intelligent woman just didn't figure it out ******possible spoiler*******: surely human beings' facial features, voices, mannerisms, etc don't change that much from childhood to adulthood *********end of possible spoiler********* and b) the reason that he didn't just come clean and tell her wasn't convincing or clear enough for me. I found myself wanting to just shake the senseless characters into next week, and then I stopped caring.

The narrator is quite good but the story was just not convincing. Not worth a credit for me.

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A Delightful Gem

Revisado: 12-17-14

It's funny, it's sad, it's exciting, it's fast and furious. There's even a bit of romance. It's full of quirky Brits (I'm a Brit and I can affirm we can be quirky !) This book has it all. It is a bit of a departure for me from my usual genre but I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.

I agree with another reviewer, however, that the narrator fell a bit short. She does some good accents where appropriate which helps to differentiate the characters but she doesn't have a "male" voice and it is often not obvious when she had switched from female to male characters. Other than that, though, her performance was compelling.

If you like history, adventure and mystery with fun and excitement, this book is worth a listen.

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Terrible Narrator - Ruined Listen

Revisado: 08-05-14

Despite the fact that this book sounds like it should be really good I couldn’t finish it because, YET AGAIN, the narrator is terrible. Seriously, who selects the narrators? Authors cannot possibly be unaware that a bad narrator is going to completely sabotage their book. Can they???
OK, this narrator has a sexy, gravelly voice – but he does not know how to read aloud. Seriously!! It’s like listening to a computer-generated read. The narrative is clipped and monotone. Where there IS emphasis, it is completely on the wrong word or part of the sentence. Mostly, it sounds like the narrator doesn’t understand the words he is reading.
Strangely, however, he is not at all bad on the dialogue. He does decent voice differentiation and can get the right emphasis so that it doesn’t sound like he is reading a foreign language. This just adds to the frustration, however. Maybe he is an excellent stage actor? Perhaps he should stick to that!
There are so many really good actors/narrators out there – please, please, whoever selects the narrators, have a care for your listeners. We might not be listening to Tolstoy or the Brontes but we HAVE spent our hard-earned money. Surely we should be able to expect a quality narrator?

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Too Sweet For Me - a cozy

Revisado: 07-14-14

It's probably not fair for me to low-rate this book, since I knew when I bought it that it wasn't really my thing. I like more "gritty", military or spec ops romances (Stephanie Tyler, Suzanne Brockmann, etc) but it was on sale and read by my favourite narrator so I thought I'd give it a try. It is very, very clean and innocent, although not Christian. There seemed to be a cast of thousands which I had trouble keeping straight and none of them were particularly interesting or colourful, in fact stereotypes abound in this book. There were a couple of interesting historical insights (like how the town had to prepare for the coming of the railroad) but, at the end of the day, there is nothing new in the story and the ending was cringly predictable and trite.

Now, I would normally pay money to listen to Patrick Lawlor read the ingredients on a cereal box but even he seemed to be uncomfortable with the material somehow, and this wasn't one of his best performances although his Irish brogue is a delight.

The book doesn't set out to be anything more than a light, pleasant romance and that's really all it is. It is definitely suitable for all ages and sensibilities but it lacks passion, and not just of the sexual kind. It meanders gently through a simpler age but it leaves you unfulfilled and indifferent to the age and the lives you just shared for 9+ hours.

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Jill Sorenson is back!

Revisado: 04-06-14

After the disappointment of Aftershock Jill Sorenson is back on form with this one. We first met the main characters in Aftershock and that story is referenced a few times in this one but this book is far superior to Aftershock. It features the broad, fresh canvas of the wild outdoors (rather than the claustrophobic stagnation of Aftershock) and is much more exciting and faster-paced for that. The author paints some wonderful visuals of the park and you can almost smell the fresh air. If Sam is a bit stereotypical/two-dimensional then the interesting, "shades of grey" character of Jay/Xavier more than makes up for that.

Like Aftershock, there are shades of the TV show Lost in this book also - a dead pilot on a plane, the plane falling on people, tracking villains across the "jungle", etc (at one point I almost expected a polar bear to show up!) but it all adds to the visuals and excitement.

I remain slightly disappointed in the choice of narrator. She is fairly monotone and never really ratchets up the excitement or changes her very deliberate way of reading.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book and am eagerly awaiting the next Jill Sorenson offering.

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Terrible Narrator - couldn't finish it

Revisado: 03-24-14

Would you try another book from Stephanie Tyler and/or Zoe Hunter?

I usually love Stephanie Tyler but the narrator is so bad on this one that I couldn't finish it. It's a shame as the story sounds as though it could be good but I will have to read it instead.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Different narrator - one who understands how punctuation affects how a sentence is read.

Would you be willing to try another one of Zoe Hunter’s performances?

Absolutely not. There is no consideration of punctuation or context. The emphasis is on the wrong words in the sentence, if any at all. I cringed through 20 minutes and had to abandon it.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Don't know, couldn't get passed the first 20 minutes of terrible narration.

Any additional comments?

Please authors/publishers take care in who you choose as narrator.

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Great Narrator

Revisado: 03-01-14

I enjoyed this one more than some of the earlier KGIs, partly because I much prefer this narrator. I bought this book partly because I have enjoyed this narrator's work on other Maya Banks books. Also, though, the story is exciting and the characters interesting. I have enjoyed some of the earlier KGIs but the narrator made all the difference for me on this one.

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