Reserved for the Cat

Elemental Masters

By: Mercedes Lackey

Narrated by: Mirabai Galashan

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Based loosely on the tale of Puss in Boots, Reserved for the Cat takes place in 1910 in an alternate London. A young dancer, penniless and desperate, is sure she is going mad when a cat begins talking to her mind-to-mind. But her feline guide, actually an Elemental Earth Spirit, helps her to impersonate a famous Russian ballerina and achieve the success she's been dreaming of. Unfortunately she also attracts the attention of another Elemental Spirit - a far more threatening one - and the young dancer must once again turn to her mysteriously powerful four-legged furry friend.

©2006 Mercedes Lackey (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Great story, poor narration

The narrator almost ruined the title for me, loved the story but will avoid books read by this woman again

A Great Book, But Unimpressive Narration

Would you try another book from Mercedes Lackey and/or Mirabai Galashan?

I love this author, and this series in particular. You can tell she does a lot of research to create a historically accurate setting for her tales to juxtapose the magic, which she also seeks to ground in lore and fact. The narrator, however, is not my favorite. Her accents are terrible, and there is always a sense that she has not read the story in advance. She stumbles over foreign words and those she does not know (it's always easy to tell when she doesn't) and often puts the wrong emphasis on syllables in a word or words in a sentence, as if she is reading without full comprehension. She's tolerable and not the worst I've ever heard by any means, but it's hard to lose oneself in the story if the narrator isn't guiding properly.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Mirabai Galashan?

Only if she does another in this series, because the books are good enough to put up with her slightly clumsy style of narrating.

Was Reserved for the Cat worth the listening time?

Yes, despite the narrator. I love this book enough to own both a physical copy and the audiobook, and always enjoy re-reading or listening to it again.

A great tale! I thoroughly enjoyed it !

The storyline with humor, mystery and many surprising twists and turns. Very enjoyable colorful characters

epic!

the Puss in Boots story done up in an awesome, entertaining manner. great series, and I am looking forward to the next one.

As good as coffee and French pastries.

I loved it

The magic and history perfectly blended that you almost believe it's real.

Performance ok

Didn't love her voice for Jonathan. it was high pitched and almost whiney in tone, I always imagined his voice bring lower and smoother when I read the book.

Do not like the narrator

This book is typical of the series and quite an enjoyable tale however the narrator was seriously lacking. Not meaning to be absolutely insulting to her but is English her second language? Forgive me but it certainly took away from enjoying the story when I was left wondering why certain phrases were recited in a certain way.

A good one for Lackey's "Elemental Masters" series

I love the humor to this one, and the manner in which the title is evoked from the story itself is masterly! A nice evocation of "Puss in Boots!"

narrator

Narator needs more action, emotion and volume in her voice. I wanted to listen to this book but was not able to do so.

Great story but bland narration...

This was one of the earliest stories I read by Lackey, and I was fairly entertained by it. Hence why I chose to revisit it in audio form. That said, the fact that I liked the story itself was the only thing that made me get through the bland narration. Character accents are infrequent, and there was so little attempt to differentiate the voices half the time I had trouble telling who was speaking. What's more, the tone for one of the males characters made him sound female. As for the story, I still like it, though some might be put off that there's not a lot of action in it; mostly travel and conversation. If you like the series, definitely give it a listen; though lobby for a better narration.