Overproduced and Gory

This is a two-dimensional Marvel story about the King of Wakanda, his guards, his family, and multiple villains ('The Radioactive Man', 'The Black Knight', 'Klaw', 'Batroc'). The character behavior is consistent, descriptions of combat are adequate, and (once it gets going) the pacing of battles is creditable. Unfortunately, there are some problems:
First, Jesse J. Holland dedicates the first third of his book to character development and isn't very good at it (T'Challa is either ridiculously moral or a bloodthirsty murderer).
Secondly, the violence is both cartoonish and gory (sentence-to-sentence: characters dodging supervillain bolts of energy and blood spurting from severed limbs). This book is legitimately R-rated.
Third, there are way too many villains for a 6½ hour story. The audiobook has the feel of 'Spiderman-3' - with bad guys getting in the way of each other.

Lastly, the normally judicious sound editors at Marvel Audio go far overboard with background music and sound effects. Loud footsteps, explosions, and cheering crowds noticeably detract from all scenes (dialogue and action). It's overwhelming.
In addition, the voice-acting is professional - but accents are sometimes headshakingly silly and dialogue is often too quick to follow. Performances are notably subpar.

Altogether, this audiobook only merits 3.5 stars out of 10. It's "okay" for an adult comicbook geek like me, but poorly-crafted, scatterbrained, waay too violent for kids, and burdened with intrusive sound effects and music. Rather than offering a fun audiobook with a cinematic atmosphere, Holland & Marvel Audio created a recording that is hard to tolerate at times. Spend your Credit elsewhere.

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