Patrick

If you've been listing to the previous audio books in this series, prepare for disappointment. It's really a shame Nana Visitor didn't read this last book; she really had the vocal characterizations down pat and brought the characters to life. Plus, her enjoyment of the tale really shone through.

However, unlike Nana Visitor, this new narrator's proper speaking voice really fails to deliver the "country voice" of many of the characters. Thus, it often sounds forced and serves as a constant distraction throughout the book.

In addition, the narrator's vocal characterizations fall flat and without dialogue attribution, it's often difficult to distinguish between characters involved conversations.

A dull, distracting reading awaits you in this audio book.

This program is from 1967. You must use the downloadable manual that accompanies your purchase.

The audio portion doesn't prepare you in anyway; it simply starts off with an english speaker who says "Unit 1, part 1. Number 1. Word: A."

Then a spanish voice says, "Papa. Papa. Papa."

Then the english speaker returns to say, "Number 2. Word: B."

Then a spanish voice says,again, "Papa. Papa. Papa."

Then the english speaker returns again to say, "Number 3. Word: C."

Then the spanish voice says,again (this time throwing in three more 'Papa's), "Papa. Papa. Papa. Papa. Papa. Papa."

That's a direct transcript of the first 40 seconds of the audio book. The next 21 minutes are exactly the same, with graduting to repeated phrases instead of singular words... and its like this for the 8+ hrs of PART 1! At no time does the audio book, tell you the meaning of the words and phrases.

There is absolutely no instruction found within the audiobook.

Save your money/credits and purchase a different language program.

I wish I had...

Dune is a sci-fi classic, so this review pertains to the audiobook version. They have a cast of different readers who perform the voices of the various characters along side the reader who narrates. But throughout the book, in new chapters, the cast of readers are suddenly absent, leaving the narrator to do all the voices, only to have the cast of readers eventually return in the following chapters. The effect is a major distraction: characters without accents suddenly have one; characters suddenly speak in a completely differnt tone, accent and manner. The is especially true with the character of Baron Harkonen, who at times has a deep menancing voice in the neighborhood of James Earl Jones, then other times, when the narrator is doing all the voices, the villian speaks with a higher, reedy, quicker voice and acquires a more pronounced British accent.

The simplisitc writing makes this seem like a Young Adult book at best. The dialogue hollow, and sometimes cliched. I had some problems with the way characters reacted/handled things...seemed pretty unrealistic or silly at times.

If you have plenty of time to waste and nothing else to select from Audible.com, then choose this title.

The loss of Frank Muller's ability to ever professionally read for audio books hurt this audioseries more than I realized.

Guidall does Eddy's New York accented voice just horrible...and does Suzannah's voice only slightly better.

While the book in its actual print version is awesome, a gripping, entertaining read, the audio versions after Book IV are severely lacking under George Guidall's narration.