- Title:
- The Roilden Stones of Elf Mountain
- Author:
- Anna del C. Dye
- Release:
- September 23, 2020
- Format:
- Audiobook
- Narrator:
- George C. Tintura
This is a book I’d say has some Lord of the Rings inspiration. The band of characters who go on an adventure together is referred to as “the fellowship”. Overall, the adventure is interesting, the characters are likable and their interactions are believable. My personal flavorite character is the mute warrior who is introduced at some point in the story. It captures what a pain in the ass it is being a mute and how difficult it is to communicate. Though the characters in this story (and any story I’ve ever seen with a fellow mute) are way more accommodating than people actually are.
The biggest failing of the books is the way the dialogue is written. There’s way too much “character name said” nonsense going on every time characters in a group are talking. When conversations consist entirely of “character 1 said.” xxxx “Character name 2 replied.” yyy “Character name 3 added.” zzzz “Character name 1 said.” it makes the dialogue utterly insufferable to listen to because (character name) said, exclaimed, added, etc. is used like punctuation.
The audio of the narration was just garbage. It sounded like the narrator was talking through a fish tank. I normally listen at 2.55x speed but I had to slow it down to 1.5 and managed to creep up to 2.05. Anything faster than that and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He did a great job with voices. It was always easy to tell who was taslking. The final annoyance with this audio I have is how he says the wh sound. He says hhhhwhite and hhhhwhen or whhhhen and it’s insufferable. There’s only 1 h in these words and he puts waaaaaay to much emphasis on it. It’s distracting.
I definitely recommend this book. But you’re probably off better with a physical or Kindle copy. The (character name) said stuff wouldn’t be as annoying because you wouldn’t have the benefit of a narrator’s voice to tell you who’s speaking. I get the impression books with that type of writing are made into audiobooks as an afterthought.
NOTE: This copy was provided to me free of charge as a digital review copy. The opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone, I was not paid or requested to give this book a certain rating, suggestion, or approval.