Bon Ami

Superb writing and narration

Revisado: 04-19-25

I loved this book and did not want it to end. The writing is exquisite, the narration is wonderful, the story is fascinating. All of the narrators are excellent, but most of the book is spent with Elisabeth Rodgers, and she is extraordinary. She is one of those narrators whose other books you start searching for while you're listening to the present one! I am happy to have discovered her. Highly recommended.

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Riveting and heartbreaking

Revisado: 12-11-24

I loved this. I recently finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, all 36 hours of it, and I loved that, too. This is a beautiful and intense story and the narration is terrific. This narrator has only done 5 books. WHY??? He is one of those jewels who you forget about completely because they become the book. Absolutely the ONLY quibble I have with any part of this is that the narrator mispronounces "etcetera," and that word is used rather a lot. It throws me out of the story. But I get sucked right back in, not to worry. You've never read anything like this, in a good way.

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36 hours may not have been enough

Revisado: 12-03-24

It is hard to know where to start. This is a marvelous book and the narration is superb. It does not get better than this in the audiobook universe. If you're up for a long listening experience, it might be worth a cross-country trip just for an excuse. The world created by the book, skillfully shoehorned into our own, is a fabulous work of the imagination, very convincing, and hard to leave. Richard Armitage's narration . . . to listen to 30 or so hours of a book and STILL enjoy it every time Mr. Norrell speaks, because of his accent and manner of speaking . . . he is one of the rare narrators who manages to hold onto 50 distinct voices and never gets on the readers' nerves. His women's voices are particularly well done.
I had my doubts whether anyone other than Dickens could hold my attention for this long, and this one sure did. Highly recommended.

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Wonderful futuristic romp with heart

Revisado: 09-25-24

I loved this book. Engaging characters and story, interesting take on the future, wonderful writing. The narration is terrific, and I am really picky about narration. Speaking of my pickiness, absolutely my only quibble with the narration is that he mispronounces a lot of fairly common words, which is jarring. I noticed this multiple times, well over a dozen. It was odd. Otherwise it was fabulous. Highly recommended.

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Absolutely riveting

Revisado: 09-08-21

This book is extraordinary and the author, as narrator, is marvelous. Beautiful writing, cutting wit, very fresh takes on this very old story. The missives of Penelope, less and less-patiently waiting for Odysseus, are very funny and are delivered to perfection by the author. It is RARE that an author is an equally adept narrator. The women come so solidly to life and are cemented in my mind. Cassandra just breaks your heart. It's well-crafted and the writing is terrific. You cannot go wrong here!

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Solid and very absorbing

Revisado: 05-24-21

This is a tight, well-written public health thriller about the next pandemic. Solid characters, great premise and execution. Yes, it is depressing, but it helped me wrap my head around the last year+. I appreciate authors taking this on. The narrator is excellent and I like that she doesn't try to imitate men's voices, but reads them in her own voice.

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Disappointing

Revisado: 04-16-20

I loved Station Eleven and will try anything Emily St. John Mandel writes. I found this disappointing. I felt almost no connection to the main character, and didn't really care about anyone in the book. Vincent comes off as a strangely empty character. The book feels disjointed, more like a collection of loosely-related stories. There was no drive or urgency to the story, and I was not drawn into it. I'm stopping about an hour and a half before the end because I realize I don't care about these people.

The narration was mixed. Accents were sometimes good but often inconsistent. The narrator has a nice manner. The men spoke in higher voices than the women, which was odd and made dialogue hard to follow. And please, please, please. Nuclear is not pronounced "nucular." There is one "u" in the word. It is pronounced as it is spelled. Same with etcetera. The second letter is a "t," not a "k."

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Not my favorite Lily King

Revisado: 04-06-20

I've read everything else of Lily King's, and am a major fan. This book did not interest me, and I didn't finish it. She is a wonderful writer and there's nothing wrong with the writing. I found the plot mundane and the protagonist not interesting enough to overcome the plot. I highly recommend her other books, especially Euphoria and Father of the Rain.

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Returning this because of the narrator

Revisado: 03-14-20

Why would you cast a man who sounds like he is in late middle age for a young character? The voice, and Hoffman's narration, completely ruin the audio for me, so I'm going to read it. I love the book so far and don't find it confusing at all. The primary narrator has a very halting delivery that destroys the meaning of the words and has no flow whatsoever. I could live with an older man's voice if the narration were good, but it isn't. I've tried to get past it but can't. It's made even more difficult by the juxtaposition with Dion Graham's narration, which is mesmerizing and lovely. Then we go back to Hoffman, and it is simply too painful. I'll read the book!

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It’s a lot of fun

Revisado: 01-15-20

I’m kind of surprised that I stuck with this. There’s a good deal of tech/engineering explaining, and I normally don’t have a lot of patience for that. But it doesn’t overwhelm the book, and the rest is so fun that it didn’t matter.

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