The Enchantment Emporium

By: Tanya Huff

Narrated by: Teri Clark Linden

Length: 14 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

The Gale family can change the world with the charms they cast, and they like to keep this in the family. Alysha Gale is tired of having all her aunts try to run her life, both personally and magically. So when the letter from her Gran arrives willing her a "junk" shop in Calgary, Alysha jumps at the chance. It isn't until she gets there that she realizes her customers are fey. And no one told her there's trouble brewing in Calgary - trouble so big that even calling in the family may not save the day.

©2009 Tanya Huff (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Fantasy buffs will find plenty of humor, thrills and original mythology to chew on, along with refreshingly three-dimensional women in an original, fully realized world." ( Publishers Weekly)

Nice escape.

Fun characters. Classic good versus evil with a little love and family thrown in. Fun

The Enchantment Emporium

Tanya Huff greatly expands the concept of Maiden, Mother, and Crone, to say nothing of seventh sons, horned gods and very intelligent dragons Also the next time I go to a second hand store I will be very careful where I put my hands. In this emporium enchantment is to be taken literally.

I will buy and listen to any book with Tanya Huff's name, and I am so gland I chose this one.

Excellent

This is one of those stories that gets read more than once. It’s fun and clever, with a great plot and very distinctive characters. I think this might be my 3rd time through, but my first as an audiobook. There is an exciting world in this book, full of people I want to hang out with. Even the Aunties.

Fun listen.

Really enjoy this author. This is probably my 5th listen to this series. Starting the second book later today.

Buy the book, not the recording

I love this book and have read it many, many times. I purchased the audiobook so I could listen to it on a roadtrip, but the narrator is just horrible. For example, there are several occasions where the narrator reverses the voices in a conversation, most memorably in a conversation between Allie and David near the end of the book. As it is written, it's perfectly clear. As it is recorded, it makes no sense at all. Odd words are emphasized in many, probably most, of the sentences in the book. Pauses are inserted where there's no cause for them. This is honestly the worst narrator I've ever heard. For this book, buy the hard copy.

Love the book, don't care for the narration

I really enjoy this urban fantasy and have read the book more than once. While the story is about a very different family that happens to have unconventional sexual mores, it is not at all explicit. The narrator did accents fairly well, but read the book rather than narrating it. Her intonation was often flat and she emphasized the wrong words, often making it harder to understand the meaning. She also mispronounced a few words, which I would have forgiven if she had actually done more than a flat reading of the story. Towards the end she even mixed up the male and female voices for half of a conversation. A couple of times her accents carried over into the next person talking. While I love the story, the narration was a big disappointment.

Good story, very poorly read

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The only thing I would change about the book is the narrator.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narration sounded as though the book had just been picked up by a high school student and read without any preparation. The narrator didn't seem to know what the sentences being read were about, or who was supposed to be speaking, nor any sensitivity to the humor in Huff's writing.

In which we discover the Canadian Accent

I'll say right out that I loved the story. Though previous reviewers have been negative about the essentially manipulative and incestuous nature of the Gale family, it should be noted from the start that the family is set up as being Not Human. They are presented as having their own internally-consistent behavioural code. The reader (listener) is left to make up his or her own mind about it. I don't think I'd ever want to deal with them in real life, but reading from a safe distance is really fun. The story is engaging urban fantasy with a great sense of humour.

Unfortunately, the narrator, through no real fault of her own, kind of makes it impossible for me to listen. Until I'd got about halfway through, I couldn't put my finger on what was irritating me, and it wouldn't really have mattered if the book were set in the US or had been written by an American - but that's really it. The narrator speaks American. The pronunciation of certain words was consistently off - the name "Graham" is in the States pronounced "Gram", and by most Canadians as "GREH-am", for example. In the name "Calgary", the second syllable is usually only barely skipped over, and "Cal-guh-ry", as in this narration, is a highly unusual pronunciation.

These, I could live with. But the EMPHASIS -onthewrongwords- DROVE -meinsane. Maybe someone else wouldn't have noticed, but the narrator CONSTANTLY stressed the wrong words in a phrase - likely only "wrong" from a Canadian standpoint, but hell, the book is Canadian.

I don't really blame the narrator. If I (a born-and-raised Canuck) didn't realise it until halfway through the book, how could she? Otherwise, her narration is really good. She differentiates the characters' respective voices in really interesting and novel ways, and her diction is clear and precise. This is just a warning to the other Canucks out there - if that's likely to annoy you like it does me, you might want to give this one a miss.

If it won't, dig in!

My favorite book ruined by bad narration

Would you consider the audio edition of The Enchantment Emporium to be better than the print version?

I have read The Enchantment Emporium upward of 200 times, so I thought I'd get an audio version to listen to whilst I do other things. However the reader is awful. She randomly speeds up, slows down, sounds like a talking moose and has absolutely no idea what the words she is reading mean or how they flow to make sense. She *tries* to do voices but is very inconsistent which just makes it more confusing. And she doesn't sound the least bit Canadian. The closest she ever got was a bit of Minnesota in the Aunties. If I couldn't practically recite the book from memory I doubt this version would make any sense at all. And even knowing it by heart, I just don't think I can listen to more than the first chapters of Ms. Linden's high, nasal butchering of this book.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Teri Clark Linden?

Anyone who can actually do the book justice.

Any additional comments?

The Enchantment Emporium is an urban fantasy about a family of magical women. This is the first of a trilogy but stands alone by itself with no cliff hangers. I love Ms Huff's prose and the Gale women are awesome.

Unexpected and enjoyable

The beginning started slow. There was a great deal of information that caused the slow beginning. Once the story started to develop the importance of the information provided in the beginning becomes clear. A well thought out and planned story with everything answered at the end.