• Midst Toil and Tribulation

  • Safehold Series, Book 6
  • By: David Weber
  • Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
  • Length: 28 hrs and 23 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (2,028 ratings)

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Midst Toil and Tribulation  By  cover art

Midst Toil and Tribulation

By: David Weber
Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
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Publisher's summary

David Weber's New York Times bestselling Safehold series of military Science Fiction adventure, which began with Off Armageddon Reef, continues with Midst Toil and Tribulation

WAR AND FAMINE

Once the Church of God Awaiting dominated all the kingdoms of Safehold. Then, after centuries of stasis, the island kingdom of Charis began to defy the edicts of Mother Church—egged on, some say, by the mysterious warrior-monk Merlin Athrawes, who enjoys the Charisian royal family's absolute trust.

What vanishingly few people know is that Merlin is the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which aliens destroyed Earth...and that since awakening, his task has been to restart the history of the long-hidden human race.

Now, reeling from the wars and intrigues that have cascaded from Charis's declaration of independence, the Republic of Siddermark slides into chaos. The Church has engineered a rebellion, and Siddermark's all-important harvest is at risk. King Cayleb and Queen Sharleyan struggle to stabilize their ally, which will mean sending troops—but, even more importantly, preventing famine. For mass starvation in Safehold's breadbasket is a threat even more ominous than civil war...

©2012 David Weber (P)2012 Macmillan Audio

What listeners say about Midst Toil and Tribulation

Average customer ratings
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  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • 1 Stars
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Miserable and awkward mispronunciations!

I enjoy the story, but none of the readers seem to understand ZH sounds loosely like a J. The readers are all pronouncing it like a Z only!

This reader failed with Adjutant pronounced incorrectly with accent on the wrong syllable! Demesne pronounced incorrectly! De-mez-nee! Ack! Ugh!

Cheesss-Holm! Cheesss-Holmians!

This was a great story but the reader just was frustrating.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

awful narration

it's always upsetting when narrators change but 4 times in one series is too much.

the story is still great but the narrator can't pronounce any name the same as the previous 3 did, he sounds whiny and petulant, and can't do a woman's voice to save his life. I'm honestly considering not listening to anymore of this

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

I'm losing hope.

I see that nearly every reviewer has complained about the narrator. I too have complaints about him. It’s bad enough that he didn’t familiarize himself with the pronunciations of names and places in the previous books. But he also mispronounced English words. The most jarring one for me was “demesne”, which is used several times. He pronounced it dih-mez-nay. The correct pronunciation, which anyone can hear for free from Dictionary dot com, is dih-meyn.

However, I don’t care to put all the blame on poor Kevin Collins. He should have had a team to help him. I put more blame on David Weber and Macmillan Audio. I recently read a blog post by Lois McMaster Bujold in which she mentioned that she had just gotten off the phone with Grover Gardner who narrates her Vorkosigan series books. They talk before each new book so that he knows how she wants things pronounced. Why didn’t Weber/Macmillan do that? It seems like it would be so simple and easy. The fact that they don’t bother to do it, and don’t bother to create some continuity in narrators, seems to indicate that they don’t care about us, the listeners.

I have another gripe that seems to stem from the same disregard for those of us who purchase our books in either the Kindle or the Audible form: MAPS. In the front of each hard cover copy of the book, there are maps. If you can’t follow the action of the story on a map, much is lost in these books. Events are occurring in many places that are far apart from one another. That is why the maps are there for hard copy readers. But WE are left out in the cold. I have seen, on the main page for some Audible books, a notice telling the listener a web address they can access in order to see tables or photos that are in the print book. It seems like it would be so simple for Macmillan or Weber to post the maps for this book online, but they didn’t bother.

It makes me angry and sad.

Now to the story itself: I don’t know. I felt sort of depressed, angry, repulsed throughout the book. Some of it was because of the map thing and the narrator thing. But some of it was from all the torture and hatred. At least Weber didn’t go into the details of the torture in this book like he did in the last one, but it gets mentioned on practically every third page. All that hate just didn’t make for a fun read.

And some of it was a sense of hopelessness that this story will ever go anywhere and accomplish anything. As I finished the first book, I naively expected the second book in the series to take place some hundreds of years in the future after the changes Merlin had set into motion had time to mature and change the society. But no, each book seems to give us the events of a single year, and still it seems that it will take hundreds of years for the necessary changes to take place. I won’t be around for hundreds of books in this series, and neither will Mr. Weber. Will his descendants hire ghost writers to finish the series for him? If so, I won’t be reading them.

Well, I’ve got to stop. If you have read and liked the previous books in this series, you probably want to read this one too. Just don’t get your hopes up too much.

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93 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A bit of research prior to narrating maybe!?

What made the experience of listening to Midst Toil and Tribulation the most enjoyable?

I am one hour into it and and not enjoying anything about the monotone reading with words and names pronounced completely opposite previous narrations...

Can we PLEASE bring back Oliver Wyman now?!

Would you be willing to try another one of Kevin T. Collins???s performances?

Not unless he is the only reader in a series. He obviously didn't bother to listen to previous books to pick up consistent pronunciation and accents.

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30 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Sigh. But I keep reading...

Like most of the Safehold books (and, in fact, like pretty much everything David Weber writes these days), this is an excellent 500 page book hiding inside a 1000 pages of blather. (or, since this is the audio version, it's an excellent 14 hour book that you need to listen to 28 hours to find.) We do have lots of blowing things up, but also way too much of Merlin wringing his hands and flagellating himself, while there isn't nearly enough development of some of the other characters. But like so many others, I seem to be addicted enough to keep reading.

The narrator for this book, Kevin T. Collins, is the 4th narrator in the 6 books to this point. And, sadly, I'd have to say it isn't one of his better efforts. It's not _bad_, but way too "dramatic" when it shouldn't be. But at least the pacing is, mostly, pretty good.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

awful narration

good story editor should be shot for allowing the narrator to do zero preparation in keeping some continuity to pronunciation of names for the 5th book just lazy all the rest of the 10 are pretty good despite changing narrators throughout . I've listened to the series a few times and every time I hit this book I have to fast-forward through large portions so I don't got my head against the wall it's just grating.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

holly crappy story tell

The book and story are good but the narrator is the worst I have ever heard. This guy can't even pronounce the names properly. He should have listened the other people before him to say names and place to get them right. I find my self yelling at the radio because he cant say people and place names right, and he almost turned me off the series. But i want to know how the series turns out. This book should be rerecord with some the persomform the first 2 book.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Bring back the 1st Narrator.

This narrator often mispronounced names, titles and had bad accent. He seemed very unfamiliar with titles ie; Adjutant. Obviously NO military experience. This setied requires some military understanding.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Its true. All of it.

This guy...
I just cant...
It hurts to listen to...
Please make it stop...
Oh God...
Fucking hell is this 15 words yet?

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Inconsistent pronunciation

New narrator was rough. He should have listened to the previous readings to be consistent about how the words were being pronounced.

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