J Brandon.

Meh

Évalué le: 2019-02-28

It started off with promise but was largely boring and melodramatic. By the time I got 2/3 through I was having trouble sticking around, and the narrator sounded very much like he was too.

Absolutely incredible!

Évalué le: 2019-01-30

A wonderful work of genius and one of the best things I’ve ever read or listened to in my life. An amazing narrator reading the work of an amazing writer.

Worth listening to, overall, but there are real issues...

Évalué le: 2019-01-27

It’s a testament to Hobbs’ writing skills that I managed to make it through to the end of this, the second book of the trilogy. Of course she’s also the one who created the issues that made it a little hard to get there. The book faces some fairly big problems, including some major holes in its plot that make it hard to suspend disbelief. The characters are so bound by myopic ignorance and frustrating codes of chivalry that the story is basically a longwinded account of what they ‘cannot’ do. Every turn they make we run up against another farfetched reason for not taking the obvious path. Is this book meant to be a philosophical study of chivalry? Like the first book in the series it drags on and on, with incredibly little real movement till the very end. It’s like being locked in a closet for 29 hours. Still, it’s a nice enough closet that the time passes reasonably pleasantly despite the frustration of being there.
I’m sure she has better books. It’s obvious she’s got talent. Unfortunately it sounds like most of the audio renditions of her other books aren’t very good, and due to some vision problems I can’t read them anymore. Too bad.
I’m not hooked enough to face going back into that closet for round three.
The narrator is very good IMO.

Brilliant writing and narration

Évalué le: 2019-01-20

I understand this book won’t suit everyone as it is quite dark and cynical, as well as deep and intelligent. But I loved it very very very much. The narrator just absolutely nails it. I couldn’t imagine anyone doing a better job of Jorg than James Clamp did here.
Discovering this book yielded many rewards for me. Not only the Broken Empire series itself, but also Lawrence’s other works, the Tower of Babel series (absolutely incredible), as well as several other books that Mark Lawrence recommended. I’m so glad I stumbled upon this book!

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This is fantasy genre?

Évalué le: 2019-01-12

A DNF for me. I’m going to return it to Audible. After I dozed off for two hours with this audiobook droning in my ear and later realized that I had missed absolutely nothing of import, I started wondering what the point of me listening to this book is. I can sleep fine for free. Halfway through now and I think I’d rather spend the next 8 hours listening to something else.
It’s quite well written and the main character is reasonably sympathetic. A story of a somewhat insecure yet very capable 18 year old who suddenly becomes emperor of the elf kingdom after his father and older brothers all die in an accident. After that he proceeds to learn the workings of the palace bureaucracy, deals with servants, food, clothing, performs minor functions, eats dinners, makes various mundane decisions re matters of state and household duties... yawn...zzzzz... Maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste but I’m not sure why I would want to hear about it? Or maybe something starts to happen in the second half of the book? It’s too late for me now. I want to be entertained.

If you take an account of daily events in the life of an emperor, and say that he’s ‘half goblin’, and the rest of the people are ‘elves’, and make the occasional reference to the fact that the people in the story occasionally move their ears to express emotion rather like dogs, (his ears dropped, her ears shot up, etc) does this mean it’s a ‘fantasy novel’? Maybe something fantastical happens later, or happened while I dozed off, but as far as I could see, this is just a straight up account of some humans going about some very boring activities.

One last complaint- the emperor is addressed by the title of ‘Serenity’, and that word is also used as an acknowledgement in place of ‘yes’ when talking to him. This happens near constantly in every conversation. So the book seems to go like this ‘ blah blah blah ‘Serenity’ blah blah ‘Serenity’ blah ‘Serenity’. I’m not sure if the author actually intended it to read like this and if this is meant to have some sort of peaceful calming mantra effect on the reader, hearing the word ‘Serenity’ every minute or two, but I found it a little tiresome.

Nevertheless- after saying all this, I do think the author has talent and I would probably read something by her again. Would like to see her write something with more of a plot.

The narrator was good.

A decent story but the narrator wasn’t to my taste.

Évalué le: 2018-12-28

I listened to this one because author Mark Lawrence recommended it and he hasn’t let me down yet. However, I feel I would have enjoyed this book a lot more in paper form. I found the narrator’s style irritating and subpar. A loud blaring American accent - overly dramatic and corny. The type of accents you might hear in video games and soap operas.

I’m surprise anyone would like or recommend this.

Évalué le: 2018-12-15

This appears to be an attempt at a simple minded juvenile ass-kicking adventure story reminiscent of a 4th rare Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the writing is so terrible and the plot so weak and far fetched that no amount of effort could help suspend my disbelief. I found the narrator pretty damn awful too. Pre-teen boys might like it?

Disappointed at the quality of the writing. Teenagers will probably like it.

Évalué le: 2018-11-06

TGR’s narration is really excellent, but I found the writing awfully juvenile. The story of a member of the lowest faction of society, taken in by the underground resistance, enlightened about the big lie, and trained to infiltrate the upper class. He’s accepted into a high level academy for training of the elite ruling families. Sounds like a good enough plot, if a bit generic. But the plot line pretty much flatlines right there as we spend hour after hour following the frat-boys and frat-girls of the academy playing war games, a la the hunger games. There’s a cheesy Greco Roman mythology theme- trendy right now I suppose. The story drags on and on and on pointlessly. Pointless because the characters are so two dimensional that I couldn’t muster a shred of interest in them. Or eventually, in the book. Hit an audio glitch with the three hours remaining, breathed a sigh of relief, abandoned it, and went on to a different audiobook.

My 13 year old reads a lot of books like this and he liked this series a lot.

Good story. but I found the narration terrible.

Évalué le: 2018-10-30

Finally done this book- what a relief! I bought this one a couple months ago. My girlfriend and I listened to it for about 10 minutes and gave up on it as we absolutely could not stand the voice of the male narrator. Skipped ahead to give the female one a listen and didn’t like her either.
I went back to it a couple weeks later, after reading a lot of positive reviews about it. Many people have had the same issues as I have with the narration but encouraged others to try to ‘work through it’.
I gave up on it again after slogging through another ten hours of it. Then a month later I decided to give it a third try. Only because of the positive reviews.
From the start of the book the voice of the male narrator is very off-putting. His voice is somewhat reminiscent of a 1950’s newscaster with severe constipation. His weird intonation and way of stretching out the vowels into double syllables with a falling tone is extremely disconcerting and gives everything a stuffy pedantic feel. His clichéd accents range from plain bad, to totally cringeworthy. Most popular in his repertoire are various attempts at ‘English’ accents. There are also a couple variations of ‘wise Indian chief’, and an absolutely vile ‘Australian’ style accent that gets pinned to one character. Drama is expressed by reading as if with jaws clenched tight, jerking out the words with what is meant to sound like passion, I guess. I struggled throughout the book to not feel complete loathing for the narration.
The female narrator is less offensive, though she also has a much smaller share of the narration to mess up. She, as well as her partner in crime, made it obvious she was getting paid by the hour and watching the clock. Reminded me of my school librarian reading to a bored grade six class.
An especially low point is close to the end of the book, when the plot lines Intersect. She pronounces the name of the main villain completely differently than has been pronounced for the entire previous 40 hours of the book. Really? The two narrators didn’t even bother to put the time in to collaborate on how to pronounce the characters? There are only a handful of them. Geez...

It’s too bad- it’s a decent story and I would have enjoyed finding out what happens next. The story of the character Kaladin is especially compelling. Maybe I’ll get the paper versions sometime. I really can’t stomach any more of these two narrators and I’m soooo relieved I’m finally done.

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Somewhat nerdy sci-fi, well narrated.

Évalué le: 2018-09-19

Got this book from Audible. To be honest it wasn’t my cup of tea and I didn’t make it all the way through this audiobook. I think certain fans of sci-fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc will like it. I found it a little overly nerdy/cliche.