About in the middle.

The other books in this series - the Belgarian, the Mallorean, Belgarath the Sorcerer. I love this series by the Eddings and Polgara's story fills in a lot of gaps.

The performer's voice was pleasant, but her pronunciation of some of the names was jarring. I think she should have listened to some of the other books to be more consistent in the way these names are normally pronounced. A major difference was the word "Mallorea". She pronounced it "mal-o-RE-a", when others read it as "ma-LOR-e-a". Everytime the word came up, I was jarred out of the story.

Too long for one sitting.

Probably. Dina Pearlman has a very nice voice, but her narration for male characters seems a little odd to me.

She has a VERY nice voice. Not quite exactly what I wanted for Polgara, but pretty close. She seemed to to get into character nicely.

It's a little hard shifting gears from the previous books all read by Cameron Beierle to this narrator. Beierle had his faults, but his narrations are the best so far. But all in all, the reading and character voices were well done. She kept it fun, the way it should be.

However, I seriously wish the narrators would put in the time to get the name pronunciations right. I really don't understand how they can mangle some of them so badly. Here's something "straight from the horse's mouth" I found after a 15 second Google search.

First of all, the story is great. I actually prefer this to Belgareth, but then, Polgara was always a favoured character of mine. And I have to say, the narrator did a perfect job with her, did a great job of adding some emotions to her voice (especially the dry and sardonic aspects) and got some great accents, especially the Wacite peasant brogue.

That being said, there are two gripes. One big, one small. As others have said, she constantly mispronounced place names. It wasn't enough to ruin the book, but I did cringe every time she said "Mallorea".

The second is what she did to Ce'nedra. If she'd had a bigger part in the book, I'm not sure I could have kept going. It was the kind of voice I might have been alright with for, say, Queen Leila... but not our favourite tiny dryad.

For me, though, those were minor and unlike most, I really liked her voice. But those mistakes did lower my rating to a 3, instead of a 4.

Yes, the the basic story line is very interesting. However, in this book, Polgara is extremely self-centered and egotistical. It's much more than the banter shared between Polgara and Belgarath in the other stories. The character admits to the behavior in her auto-biography, but shows no remorse or regret for it.

No, the book is just a bad book for the genre

They chose a female narrator since much of the book is in the first person voice of Polgara. However her pronunciation is off on many key words. Not only off of how I have pronounced them for years, but totally off from the narrator of the other novels. It sounds like a different world, with some words almost unrecognizeable. The emphasis is on the wrong syllable.

If you are narrating a book in a series or a world, narrated by another narrator, you need to listen to a couple of the other books to understand the characters and pronunciation. Adding your own style is disruptive and distracting.

As with Belgarath the Sorcerer, this book's narration was an abomination. My absolute favorite set of books, and listening to Cameron read the Belgariad and the Mallorean, I was absolutely astounded at the poor choice of narrators for these later two books. Once you got past Cameron's introduction (he has a funny way of saying spokane washington) he did great. These later two were awful.

I loved the books when I read them 10 years ago, I was so excited to see them here I purchased them with out reading the reviews. I so regret that move, I agree with the others that the narrator is not able to capture the personality of the characters. Please review before you buy.

This was a difficult listen, I kept going back to understand what I could have possibly missed. It did not hold my attention.

I found it difficult to stay on track with all the characters, they were not well developed

Yes because it is a different type of book and keeps you interested.

When she was put into a position where she had to learn how to dance.

I thought her voice matched the type of story.

Not sure.

I thought the narrator's voice matched the story just fine.

The Belagiad and the Mallorian are two of my favorite series, I have read them many many times and have listen to them 3 or 4 times.

This is great follow up filling in the blanks.

No.

She has completely mis-judged Polgara's character and reads with a sweet voice.

The death of her senechal, Kilean.

It should have been narrated by a man. Most of the characters appearing in the book are male and it would have made more sense. There are good male narrators out there who can pull off a rich woman's voice and throw a better variety into the rest of the cast. Plus it would have helped when supposedly huge brawny men bellowed out instead of listening to a woman's sweet tinkling effort.