The Malice of Fortune

By: Michael Ennis

Narrated by: Adrian Paul, Carlotta Montanari, John Lee, Fred Sanders

Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Against a teeming canvas of Borgia politics, Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci come together to unmask an enigmatic serial killer, as we learn the secret history behind one of the most controversial works in the western canon, The Prince....

When Pope Alexander dispatches a Vatican courtesan, Damiata, to the remote fortress city of Imola to learn the truth behind the murder of Juan, his most beloved illegitimate son, she cannot fail, for the scheming Borgia pope holds her own young son hostage. Once there, Damiata becomes a pawn in the political intrigues of the pope’s surviving son, the charismatic Duke Valentino, whose own life is threatened by the condottieri, a powerful cabal of mercenary warlords. Damiata suspects that the killer she seeks is one of the brutal condottierri, and as the murders multiply, her quest grows more urgent. She enlists the help of an obscure Florentine diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Valentino’s eccentric military engineer, Leonardo da Vinci, who together must struggle to decipher the killer’s taunting riddles: Leonardo with his groundbreaking "science of observation" and Machiavelli with his new "science of men". Traveling across an Italy torn apart by war, they will enter a labyrinth of ancient superstition and erotic obsession to discover at its center a new face of evil - and a truth that will shake the foundations of western civilization.

©2012 Random House Audio (P)2012 Michael Ennis

Critic reviews

"Epic.... This is a dense narrative, permeated by the sights, sounds and smells of Renaissance Italy, and one that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, with which it is sure to be compared." ( Kirkus )

"Absorbing and intelligent.... Fans of superior historical mystery writers such as Steven Saylor and Laura Jo Rowland will be enthralled." ( Publishers Weekly)

"With its vivid, well-defined array of characters, The Malice of Fortune captures the glorious and gritty details of Renaissance Italy in a propulsive story. Ennis has achieved a great accomplishment, historical fiction that places us right into the characters' present." (Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club and The Technologists)

Two Mediocre Hams Read Silly Story

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Oh, let's say a coherent story not dependent on ever-escalating scenes of gruesome violence against women, for starters. I'd sort of expected more Machiavelli -- you know, The Prince -- and less over-the-top genre murder.

The plot is ho-hum, the characters unbelievable and shallow.

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

Let me count the ways --

Female was unintelligible and the male's various voices turned me off to key characters, Da Vinci, especially. What a pity.

But peeve-above-all is this -- presumably these characters are narrating in their own languages, i.e., "Damieta" is reading from her own letter. So WHY these clownish and unintelligible Italian accents?

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Boredom

Any additional comments?

I'm with Steven -- never again buy a book that hasn't yet been reviewed. Lesson learned.

So Much Work

What did you like best about The Malice of Fortune? What did you like least?

The story is so good, but Carlotta Montanari's reading was very challenging for me to follow, and so not very engaging.

I love the idea of having the story read with an Italian accent, but often, an unusually accented syllable or strange vowels means that I have to try to figure out what she said, and lose the thread of what she is saying.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

It was someone difficult to follow the plot since the narrator's accent was so thick. I would rather not work so hard to understand the story.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?

The male voices worked really well. I wished the female narrator was a native English speaker, or had a softer accent. I usually follow foreign accents easily, but this one was a lot of work.

What on Earth is she saying? The nobbles.........

The female non-Englsh speaking illiterate narrator destroys this possibly interesting book. What a disaster! Who on Earth chose this woman to read in a language she does not understand? "The nobbles........" I think was supposed to be "nobles." I could not coninue. " The nobbles....." " the nobbles....." Argh. Shame. A total waste of a credit.

What did she say?

What did you like best about The Malice of Fortune? What did you like least?

Carlotta Montanari ruined the book for me. She destroyed the English language. It seemed clear she is not used to reading English and didn't always, if ever, understand what she was reading. I just couldn't understand her and had to stop listening. She is one of the worst readers I have heard so far.

The Narration Lost Me

I really like the premise of the story and so wanted to listen to this book. However, I quit after five chapters. Carlotta Montanari's Italian accent was so distracting that I simply could not follow the book. Accent's are great for character dialogue, but not narration. Why the Publisher/Ennis chose this method of narration is beyond me. Be sure and listen to the sample before you purchase. I should have. I wish I could get my money/credit back on this one.

For Lover's of Italian History

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially knowing that much of the story comes from the papers of the actual characters. I will say however, that to follow the plot, one must have more than a passing acquaintance with Italian history.

As for the narration, I was less enthusiastic. I know nothing of Carlotta Montanari's background, but I found her very difficult to listen to, not because of her accent, but because it sounded as if she were reading English not completely understanding what she was reading. Adrian Paul on the other hand, did an excellent job as long as he was reading the part of Machiavelli. I hear Italian spoken everyday, as well as English spoken by Italians, and I think his accent was quite authentic. Once he switched to other characters, however, whether da Vinci or Cesare Borgia, the characterization was pretty bad and was quite distracting. The production would have been far superior had they hired a few more actors.

Awful narrator

I tried to like this book, it had a great concept and it's a genre that I like. The story was fine but I just couldn't tolerate the narration by the Italian woman reader. Because her accent was so strong you had to concentrate all the time just to get the words she was saying. Plus she had zero animation in her voice, maybe because it wasn't her native language. If had gotten to the later parts read by someone else I might have liked the book more. As it was, I just couldn't stand it and quit in the first segment. Absolutely don't buy this one.

Narration is tough

What did you love best about The Malice of Fortune?

I came to care about the characters and the underlying mystery once my ear adjusted to the accents!

What other book might you compare The Malice of Fortune to and why?

Can't think of any I would compare it with-maybe The Name of the Rose?

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Although the idea of using Italian readers to provide atmosphere is laudable, the accents (especially of the female reader) were so thick that it took some time to adjust. The male reader used some really odd voices to differentiate characters-DaVinci was particularly odd and funny.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Don't know

Any additional comments?

The story itself is quite interesting and the atmosphere of Renaissance Italy is exciting once you get past the accents.

absorbing story, so-so narration

What did you love best about The Malice of Fortune?

The relationship between the three main characters, Damiata, Macciavelli, and DaVinci, is very interesting. All three are brilliant, passionate, and driven.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

The plot was interesting, although it relied to heavily on gruesome murders to advance the story.

What three words best describe the narrators’s voice?

The narration was only so-so. I could have done without Adrian Paul's bogus Italian accent, and his attempts at the voices of DaVinci and Cesare Borgia. He should have either not attempted it, or the producers should have added cast members.

THe Narration is Impossible to Understand!

The Carlotta Montanari portion of the narration has such a heavy pseudo-Italian accent that I can barely understand it. The story may be interesting, but it is just to hard to concentrate ALL the time to get the meaning of the words. Why not just read it in unaccented English?

This technique of using the accent of the language that the character would be using at the time makes no sense, because the person is speaking English, which they would not because they would speak their own language. But, they are speaking not their own language, but English, which they do not speak, so why ACCENT it at all.

It is used often when the characters are not English, but they would NOT be speaking English, so why accent it at all. Makes no sense to me.

I can't judge the story since I could not tolerate listening since the Italian woman was going to be narrating all the way through to at least Chapter 6. Had to give up.