Ladies of Mandrigyn

By: Barbara Hambly

Narrated by: Teri Clark Linden

Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

A brilliant mercenary must lead his army against the forces of the most powerful wizard alive

Gifted with courage, strength, and the intelligence to know when to fight, Sun Wolf is the greatest mercenary in a land overrun by war. With his first lieutenant, Starhawk - a woman more deadly than any man - at his side, he has laid waste to countless cities, taking the best of their treasures for himself, and distributing the rest among his bloodthirsty crew.

Then a woman comes to him, an emissary from the town of Mandrigyn, a lush port city recently sacked by a powerful, mad wizard of unmatched abilities. She offers Sun Wolf untold riches for the use of his army, but the captain is not fool enough to wage war against a magician. He refuses her offer, but that is not the end of it. The women of Mandrigyn can be very persuasive.

©1984 Barbara Hambly (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Good story not so good reader

I love the majority of this authors work. This was no exception. The characters were interesting and develope well. My problem was with the reader. She read the narrative like she was addressing grade schoolers. Very young grade schoolers! Her saving grace was the good job she did with the dialog. I hope she gets better.

Book good, reader annoying

Reader is stiff, overly precise and generally annoying. Not my best experience with an audio book. Bad enough that if I had known I would not have purchased.

Bad narration

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

Better narration!

What did you like best about this story?

The book.

What didn’t you like about Teri Clark Linden’s performance?

It sounded like there was pause at end of every word. Little less pronunciation and more feeling would have made this better.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Loved the book just not the narration, will not buy any other with Teri Clark Linden as the narrator.

Most stilted and over enunciated narration

This is an amazing book which I have already read and was looking forward to listening to. Just the opening lines convinced me that the narration might not be tolerable and I should return it. I'm going to give it a little longer and see if the narrator can change my mind. I have enjoyed Teri Clark Linden in films and was surprised at her reading style. Perhaps she was directed to read in this manor. It is flat with almost no personality or emotion. Perhaps an over emphasis on clear enunciation lead to a loss of emotional inflection?

I'll update my review accordingly. This amazing author deserves high quality productions of her novels.

Update: it doesn't get better. I played for some friends and they thought a bot was reading it.

Performance needs work...a LOT of work.

I don't know what audience Teri Clark Linden was aiming for, but it sure as shooting wasn't me. Her slow, hesitant delivery is devoid of any personality or narrative flow. It's like she turned "Ladies of Mandrigyn" into "See Spot Run". She should go back and study the greats, like Barbara Rosenblat and C.J. Critt. Until then, she should stop wasting my time and money, pretending to be a real narrator. Sorry to be harsh, but I take my audiobooks seriously; so should she.

Great story

Listen at 1.05 and the narration is bearable. Story overcomes the bad narration if you can pick it up on sale

reader makes it unbearable

like being read to buy a kindergarten teacher who couldn't be bothered to read the text ahead of time.

Great book... if you ignore the narration.

I read this book for the first time 20+ years ago and loved it. The story is damned good.

To cope with the mechanical and pretty abysmal narration, I suggest setting the speed to 1.5 and sometimes restarting a chapter to be able to re-emerse yourself.

Barbara Hambly deserves more than this for her good work. This narration will discourage more people from being able to experience her worlds. I'm disappointed in whomever made this choice.

To Barbara and her characters - thank you for enriching my life.

Bad for Hambly

Normally I love Barb Hambly and in this case it might just be the awful narration that I can’t get past. Can’t even get into the story enough to rate it (well, it turns out that I can’t submit without rating it so it’s a guess) because the amaturish narration is so bad.

Great Story, Subpar Performance

The narrator has pleasing pitch, but a stumbling, almost Shatneresque rhythm that breaks up sentences, inhibits the flow of the story, and is so unnatural as to be hard to listen to. While I recognize that fantasy stories have a great deal of strange words and names in them, the proper recourse us not a stilted narration that pains itself to carefully pronounce each word as if it was edited in during post-production.