Motor City Fae

Book 1 of Urban Arcana

By: Cindy Spencer Pape

Narrated by: Terry Donnelly

Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Detroit artist Meagan Kelly has had a strong sixth sense all her life, but that doesn’t mean the gorgeous stranger’s crazy story—that she’s a half-elf, half human heiress—is true. But Meagan can’t deny the evidence of her own eyes—he’s Fae. A tall, blond, handsome, pointy-eared elf—and a man she just can’t get enough of.

Ric Thornhill’s assignment just got a lot more complicated. The more time he spends with Meagan, the harder it is to see her as a political tool to prevent an all-out war between humans and Fae.

Now Meagan’s in a race to master her newly released powers in time to prevent the conflict, convince a jealous Queen not to strip Ric of his powers, and find out if she can build a life that straddles two worlds.

©2010 Cindy Spencer Pape (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

voices...

I would have loved to listen to this.. but will grab the book. The voices have very little infliction. Drove me crazy.

I really WANTED to like this story...

What would have made Motor City Fae better?

Someone else narrating.

What was most disappointing about Cindy Spencer Pape’s story?

I really could not get past the narrator's voice to be able to get into the story, which I think had the possibility of being at least adequate.

Would you be willing to try another one of Terry Donnelly’s performances?

If it was a totally different genre and was read for a much, much younger and flightier character, possibly.

What character would you cut from Motor City Fae?

I couldn't even get that far.

Any additional comments?

I really enjoy fantasy series as I listed to a huge amount of audio books during commute time. I'm going to attempt the second book because it was read by someone else, AFTER I review the other comments first!

Save This Story!!!

GET A NEW NARRATOR PLEASE!!!! The story wasn't half bad. But the narrator totally ruined it. Have you ever heard a black man from Detroit speaking with a Scottish accent????
GEEZZZ!! In fact everyone sounded the same, bored!!! The female lead sounded as if she could have cared less about anything. The tonal quality was so bad, I just wanted the story to be over. The story itself sounded interesting but the narrator ruined it.

Audible get someone else to read this book. Save it please!!

I cannot hear the story for the narration

The story, in a nutshell, is about a woman living in current time in Detroit, MI. The narrator is, I'm guessing, a woman from Ireland, or at least having an accent that, to me, sounds it. The speech patterns involved (word emphases and voice patterns and rates of speech and awful accents) are throwing me off; listening is proving to be an effort rather than 'a fun read'.

On top of the accent and speech patterns, and whether it is culture or the producer's idea, the woman protagonist sounds whiny. The male protagonist comes across somewhere between supercilious and arrogant. There is very little definition of voices other than aforementioned tones. I've found it difficult to figure out who is talking and the author wasn't good about adding 'he said' 'she said'. NONE of the characters are people I particularly want to hang around with.

When I can filter out the narration, the story seems pretty average; adopted child turns out to be half Sidhe princess and the male half is full Sidhe hunting for her to keep the bad guys from overthrowing the Queen, whom no one seems to like anyway. Perhaps in print, when in my head they can sound Midwestern or sexy or baritone or werewolf-y or whatever I'd care. And yes, I did pass on this book several times after listening to the 'sample'; but after reading a review of the PRINT version, I forgot why I'd passed on the ORAL one. YMMV, of course,

Could do with a better narrator!!

Would you try another book from Cindy Spencer Pape and/or Terry Donnelly?

I would try another book by this author only if it has a different narrator. I could barely get through before I finally gave up, she gave such an emotionless performance.

How could the performance have been better?

Had it been a better performance I might have enjoyed the book.

Narration Killed the Story

This book was a relatively decent fantasy romance novel, but the narration made it challenging to get through. The heroine of the story sounded like a rather annoying cartoon character. And the male lead was supposed to have British accent, but the accent he had was unidentifiable. I liked the idea of the story more than the execution. There was a love/lust-at first-sight romance, an intrigue with the heroine being the target of assassination attempts, and the introduction of the main character to the fae world. Unfortunately, character and story development were lacking due to an over-emphasis on the sexual part of the relationship between the two main characters. However, because it was difficult to listen to the characters talking, some of my perceived lack of character development may be due to the poor narration.

Narration is as bad as the reviews say.

I'm horrified that the narrator--and, apparently, the producer--think this is an American accent. It's slow like a southern drawl but flatter than North Dakota. I know that Cindy Spencer Pape writes strong, smart female characters, but this narration reduced her into a bored and boring idiot. I increased the speed to 1.3, but even with that I couldn't get more than halfway through.

I'm giving the story 3 stars because it's probably alright, but I'll never know because I won't subject myself to more of it.

* I've heard the same narrator in other books. She's not awful, but please--never let her do "American" again!

The narrator was so awful...really really awful.

Could be a good story, but couldn't get past the narrator to get into it. May read in print instead