![]() Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Martin magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. Lastly, I'd like to point out a couple of examples of narrators who I think have consistently done an amazing job and, in my opinion, represent the gold standard for narration.THE BOOK BEHIND THE SECOND SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO. ![]() This narration didn't work for me, but I'd hate to put anyone off trying it and making up their own mind. The first books were recorded before the success of the show, is there more editorial oversight with the later recordings?Īfter all that venom I'd like to balance it out a little by reaffirming that I know narration is incredibly difficult to do well and a tremendous amount of effort and passion goes into making it happen. My GF recently suffered through ~6 hours of Game of Thrones on a long car journey and was similarly horrified by the performance, but a sample of 2 isn't much to go by. I find myself much more immersed when reading the book than when listening, noticing wordplay and subtle links between events more readily.ĭoes anyone else find the Roy Dotrice's reading so bewilderingly disgusting? Its been interesting switching seamlessly between the audiobook and the kindle book this last week. I tend to listen to audiobooks when I'm driving, doing chores, walking or in bed, and as such am usually partially distracted. I love audiobooks, and because of them I read easily 4 or 5 times as many books as I would otherwise but I do not think, for myself at least, that I engage as deeply with them as reading a book. This is the first time in (just checked) 4 months 8 days of continuous listening that I've felt compelled to go and buy the book and read it instead.Īllow me to ramble off point a little here too. I'd be interested to know what you think, and where you are from. I am English and perhaps more familiar with British regional accents than international readers may be, so the discrepancies may be more jarring to my ears. ![]() The accents he does are really not well done, again they are ribald caricatures of various British regional accents and it leaves the reading feeling more like a pantomime than the epic stage that it should be. Sadly around 1/3rd of the narration is squelchy ham. Roy has a really nice voice, and when he is reading "straight" I can't fault his narration. Its almost impossible to engage with a character and their motivations when they are voiced as a halfwit.Īgain, I understand, differentiation is hard. Most of Roy's "supporting cast" are voiced as dribble chinned simpletons which is a real shame when so many of the characters are so nuanced. Which leads me onto my next point, the over-acted characterisation. The spittle dripping caricatures are horrifying and distract far too much from the characters themselves. Distinguishing characters by voice is hard. I honestly do not understand how that got past the editor. Roy seems to differentiate characters by speech impediments and utterly, paralysingly disgusting, saliva swashing of varied intensity. I was surprised to find out recently that Roy Dotrice has a world record for the highest number of characterisations in an audiobook, an impressive feat! Except, it isnt. ![]() I've had to stop listening to it multiple times because some aspects of his narration are utterly revolting. However, Roy Dotrice's narration really makes my skin crawl, literally. The book its self is fantastic, really brilliant and I should have started reading them years ago. I mostly prefer to read scifi and fantasy so ASOIAF should really have been at the top of my list, but I was being stubborn. I started Game of Thrones last week after years of avoiding it for no particular reason. I know some people love the narration and I'm not attempting to argue that they are wrong.Īudiobook narration preferences are a very personal thing and for any narration you can generally find pretty polarised opinions, and so, here are some of mine. I'd like to preface the following by acknowledging that this is both a rant and simply my opinion.
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