Daughter of the Drow

Forgotten Realms: Starlight & Shadows, Book 1

By: Elaine Cunningham

Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg

Length: 15 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Beautiful as she is deadly, Liriel Baenre flits throught the shadows of Menzoberranzan, city of the dark elves. Amid treachery and murder that are the drow's daily fare, she feels something calling to her...something beyond this dusky world far removed from the sun. Yet as she ventures toward the surface and the lands of light, enemies pursue her unceasingly.

And one enemy may offer her the only hope of salvation.

©2003 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

A different look at the Drow

If you've only read RA Salvator's work with the drow than you owe it to yourself to check out Daughter of the Drow. Lyriel the main characters is a witty, devious and enjoyable character whom actually revel's in he culture even as she slowly learns to reject its evil. These delightful contradictions and intrigue make this story extremely enjoyable. The story is extremely fun, well paced with an great supporting cast of allies and enemies for Lyriel and over all a real delight.

The story is set in the heyday of 2nd edition D&D's Forgotten Realms but it works well as a stand alone and any fan of fantasy should be able to get into and enjoy this series with no prior knowledge of the setting or D&D in general, however if you do read the other Drow centric book it acts as nice little companion piece.

However as good as the story is the current recording is of very low quality. The reader doesn't have very good audio quality, the editing is a pit choppy and the actors choice of inflection is rather unusual which might prove distracting to some listeners. If they can fix the audio issues I'd say this is a must buy for any fan of the Drow and the Forgotten Realms.

A surprising performance

I don't need to say much on the story. Its a great look at the drow taken from the perspective of a female and Cunningham does a wonderful job at telling it. The female lead is well crafted and a decently believable character of someone that grew up in a cut throat society. I will say if you aren't super familiar with the Forgotten Realms, you might need to google some creature names to understand what some monster is. There seems to be an expectation that the reader is somewhat familiar with the Forgotten Realms, which I appreciate. The performance of Rosenberg is what I think really comes through and was kind of surprising. I've gotten use to a lot of narrators now a days that barrel through a book like they need to get it done and on to the next one -- this isn't the case here. Rosenberg takes her time in reading and it comes off like how you would read a story to a child. She does a decent job of changing up her voice for different characters. There are only 2 complaints I have with the performance though. First, the recording's rough draft and touch up phase were very obvious. The rough draft recording is the majority of book and sounds good, but when they went back and fixed up some bad readings the settings for recording weren't the same and sound worse. The jumps between these two are very jarring. Second, the way Rosenberg reads some lines is kind of jarring based on what the text says. She might read something in a chipper tone with no inflection but then the text says "she said exasperatedly." I only consider this a problem because sometimes the narrator actually does try to match voice to what the text says and then sometimes doesn't. This jumping between following the content of the text and not, simply tarnishes what could have been a spectacular performance. Overall its still a 5/5 I think.

Goood!!

Its a great story although the narrator mispronounces some words. Fantastic book if you like R.A. Salvatore material

Strange tone

Did not enjoy this narrator. Found her
cadence, tone, and where she placed emphasis in a sentence detracted from the story.
love the lore in this universe, but couldn't get far with this narration.

Fun story, bad reading.

The story was fun to listen.

The narrator was terrible. she added inflection in parts that made no sense, she placed paused in that lasted too long or were in strange spots. The worst part was the pronunciation or words. Even simple words were pronounced so strange it took me a few seconds to figure out what she was saying or I had to go back and re-listen.


Good book though.

Good book, but the narrator ruins it

The person who reads this audiobook reads it with a weirdly prim and over-energetic voice, and reads fairly slowly. It’s like she’s reading to a baby and crisply pronouncing the heck out of every word to help the baby learn to talk.

At first it was funny to hear descriptions of drow violence read in a childrens’ storybook voice, but the voice got more and more grating the longer I listened. And the pace of the reading is slow, so there are hours and hours of it to listen to.

I made it through two hours before I gave up and returned it. I’ll finish reading it in written format - I like the story and the characters, but I just can’t take any more of the narrator’s voice.

If you are learning English and looking for something slow with very enunciated words to practice your listening, this would be great for that. But if you’re reading for fun, get the Kindle version instead.

Don't Waste Your Time or Money

Would you try another book from Elaine Cunningham and/or Dara Rosenberg?

I would try another book by Elaine Cunningham. In fact, I purchased this audio book having already read the series. I had hoped to enjoy the story again.

How could the performance have been better?

The performance could have been 1000 times better by having someone else perform it. Dara, bless her soul, needs to find a new line of work. She is an absolutely awful performer. She must fidget like a leaf on the wind when recording. Her voice is always seemingly moving towards and away from the mic. Moreover, her English leaves much to be desired. Whether it is the rather odd way she pronounces some words, e.g., "SKIM-a-tar" instead of "scimitar," or the way she misreads words so that instead of "accessing" a room the character ends up "assessing" the room, her ability to read the text is truly cringeworthy.

Was Daughter of the Drow worth the listening time?

No. It was absolutely not worth the time.

Any additional comments?

The story is good. It is worth listening to. However, the performance is so bad that I am going to try to get my money back. The time I wasted while I listened and hoped that Dara would find her stride, I can never get back. I only hope that I can help prevent other people from suffering as I did. The story is good. I hope that they will rerecord it with a competent and skillful performer. That will make all the difference.

Story is good, but the narrator is terrible.

Would you be willing to try another one of Dara Rosenberg’s performances?

Maybe in the same series, but overall I think the narrator makes too many major mistakes. There are many pauses for no reason, and fantastically bad pronunciation of common words. And she consistently changes pronunciation of the main character's name in the first few chapters of the book.

Just a couple things.

Dara's inflections felt off and pronunciations were inconsistent throughout book, but otherwise good work.

Great audio

I thought the narrator did an amazing job and kept me entertained throughout the entire book. Definitely recommend