The Grail

Area 51, Book 5

By: Robert Doherty, Bob Mayer

Narrated by: Martin Gollery

Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The Grail is another knockout from New York Times best-selling author Bob Mayer writing as Robert Doherty.

The Holy Grail - is it the key to a miracle...or a terrifying truth? The Great Wall of China, the immense carvings on Easter Island, Egypt's pyramids, UFOs: What is the chilling connection? The answer, unearthed by an elite band of soldiers and scientists based at Area 51, is rewriting human history - to include the aliens who shaped it!

Now, in this heart-pounding novel, Area 51 personnel embark on a top-secret search for the Holy Grail, a glittering artifact with the power to save the world...or lead to its destruction.

Special Forces officer Mike Turcotte has paid his dues in battle and in blood. Now assigned to Area 51, he fights the toughest enemy of his career: the alien race who arrived on Earth millennia ago and have returned to claim the planet.

Mike has dodged bullets and faced weapons of mass destruction to give humanity another day of reprieve. But when his lover, scientist Lisa Duncan, falls into evil hands, Mike must decide which prize means the most to him - the woman he loves or the legendary Grail. It's a decision that could damn him...or damn us all.

©2012 Bob Mayer (P)2012 Bob Mayer

Change of Narrator

I have been enjoying all of the Area 51 books. I struggled with this book because of a change in narrators. seemed to be way more of a distraction than I expected.

Good story but the narrator ruined it.

I don't even know if I fully heard this entire story because the narrator was SO BAD that I always found myself tuning out. Is this actually a person? Or maybe a computer? The inflections were all wrong, words were pronounced incorrectly, he paused strangely after every third word or so, so you thought the sentence was over, but it wasn't, so it started up in the middle all weird. The narrator so completely distracted me from this story that I just played it every change I could get just to get it over with to get on to the next book with a different narrator. He pronounced all the character names so differently than the other narrators that I thought maybe we had new characters that were introduced that I just missed somehow, and then everyone had different accents (or NO accents!) than the previous books; UGH, it was JUST TERRIBLE! Hopefully the next guy will be better. They really need to re-do this book with a different narrator, because it's probably significantly affecting the ratings on this book.

Who was the one that directed this narration?

The book is great. Narrator horrible. I hope they have not used him for other books.

Avoid this Narrator!!!!

A good story can become a great audiobook in the hands of a talented narrator. This one proves that the opposite is also true - a terrible reader can destroy a story. Monotonous pace, nearly no inflection, and inconsistent pronunciation of names combine to make this a chore to listen to. Nearly every character voice is done the same way, so the male African archeologist sounds just like the female Chinese professor. And to top it off, there are many instances where the reader stops and restarts reading. Editing, anyone?

The story itself is very good, but the performance makes it barely tolerable.

worst narrator EVER!!

What did you like best about The Grail? What did you like least?

Its a good story. Through out the series Bob Mayer makes several technical mistakes, ie. F-16's cant take off from an aircraft carrier, the Pave Low is an MH-53, not an HH-53, there were many others, you would think a guy who used to be a green beret would know these kind of things. However this is something I can live with, its still a good story. I don't like how the author seems to minimize religion.

Those are only the MINOR issues over come by a good story line. You remember the robot voice from the '90's answering machine, I would rather have that thing read the book. This guy has to be the worst narrator EVER!!

A robot would read this book better

Would you be willing to try another one of Martin Gollery’s performances?

ABSOLUTELY NOT! He is very monotone; and actually seems bored reading the book. What an awesome way to RUIN a great story. And his attempt at different voices.... Well Martin's droning simply puts me to wishing I could drag my fingernails on a chalk board to hear something less grating.

Narrator is among the worst I've ever heard.

I don't think I've ever heard a worse narrator. Studders and mispronounced words in multiple ways in the same few minutes and had no style at all. He needs to be fired. If I ever hear him again I'll delete the audio book and ask for a refund. Truly terrible. Read this one and skip the audio.

Worst narration in history.

The audio books series up until now has been great. I almost didn't finish this entry though due to it having the worste narration possible. The reader is dry and emotionless and adds in all sorts of strange pauses and inflections where they don't belong. It's so distracting that you just can't get into the story. Picture if Steven Segal and William Shatner had a baby. That baby then grew up to read audio books. Out of the hundreds of audio books I have listened to this is by a long shot the worst narration.

Great Addition to the Series, Narration could be better.

I've been making may through this series, as I've read them before. The narration could be better. The deliberate emphasis to pronounce every word begins to draw the story out and at times makes it feel like a depressing classroom lecture. I had to speed up the playback. Compared to previous narrators, there is a lack of emotion when reading the character's lines. I still enjoy the story and the development of the plot. and I plan to continue through the series.

Narrator takes a dive . . .

I've just finished this volume, and like the first four books in the series, Mayer's seeming intent to use practically every known paranormal event as fodder for his cannons has continued brilliantly. He even manages to invite Sir Richard Francis Burton into the mix, as though Mayer has perhaps just read _The Strange Affair of Spring-heeled Jack_ ! I normally don't review books like this one. It's light reading, very entertaining if you have a good grasp of the paranormal world, its cover-ups and conspiracies, as well as its numerous sources, symptoms, causes, and effects.

But I really need to warn other readers. If the performance quality of the narration is a major factor for you, prepare to be outraged and let down. It's not so for me; I just ignored it and enjoyed the story. The narrator from the first four books, who was just ok, is gone. He's replaced by a slightly illiterate and robotic text reader who, when he doesn't know how to pronounce a difficult word, just makes up an approximation, at the meaning of which the listener then has to guess. He stops mid-sentence, pauses, then starts over, finally, mercifully, reaching a period. It's so bad it detracts from the story, which is my definition of the worst in narrators. Proceed at your own peril!