The Phoenix Unchained

Book One of The Enduring Flame

By: Mercedes Lackey, James Mallory

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times and USA Today best-selling authors Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory first teamed up to write the Obsidian Trilogy, which was set in a wondrous world filled with magical beings, competing magic systems, and a titanic struggle between good and evil. That world proved so popular with the creators and readers alike that Lackey and Mallory have returned to it again, with The Phoenix Unchained, Book One of The Enduring Flame, the opening volume of a new epic fantasy trilogy.

After 1,000 years of peace, much magick has faded from the world. The Elves live far from humankind. There are no High Mages, and Wild Mages are seen only rarely. Bisochim, a powerful Wild Mage, is determined to reintroduce Darkness to the world, believing that it is out of balance.

Tiercel, a young Armethalian nobleman, is convinced that High Magick is not just philosophy. He attempts a spell and draws the unwelcome attention of Bisochim. Tiercel survives Bisochim's attack and begins trying to turn himself into a High Mage.

Next in line to be Harbormaster of Armethalieh, Harrier instead finds himself regularly saving Tiercel's life and meeting magickal people and creatures. To Harrier's dismay, it seems that he must become a hero.

In The Phoenix Unchained, Harrier and Tiercel begin a marvelous journey to uncover their destinies. Along the way, they meet a charming female centaur, several snooty Elves, and the most powerful dragon their world has ever known.

©2007 Mercedes Lackey; 2007 James Mallory (P)2007 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Sets a lavishly detailed stage peopled with intriguing and well-developed characters whose futures hold both promise and peril." ( Library Journal)

Great Read!

I really enjoyed listening this book and can't wait for book two so I can continue the journey. I think there should be more audio books by these authors and hope there will be!

Rating narrator

The books are great, lots of adventure, magic and character development. The narrator is very good, but it is really irritating that he didn't take half an hour to listen to any of the books in the first trilogy. All the place names, and many of the people's names are pronounced differently, and not as well. The obvious pronunciations were used in the outstretched shadow trilogy. This narrator seems to add or remove syllables in unlikely ways that bother me every time he says them. On the other hand he is very good at changing voices for the different characters and keeping the pace of the book moving well. Overall good narration, but I don't know why different narrators can't be consistent with each other.

Brutal to listen to

Narrator butchers pronunciations, rushes the storytelling and is bad at female voices. Story is not as good as the rest of the obsidian trilogy but a nice young adult read

A disappointment after series one.

This sequel has none of the smoothness of plot the prior series displayed and the narration is atrocious. The reader managed to mispronounce every city and most character names from the prior series and frankly bored me. I’ve loved Mercedes Lackey for ages, in Valdemar, the Kethry and Tarma and I found Kerowyn to be amazing. This isn’t her work, and shows it.

Can't get enough.

The story is everything I could have hoped it to be. Definitely recommend this book.

First book ok, the others get worse

Honestly, I can't believe that Mercedes Lackey agreed to put her name to these books. I listened to all three, and actually the first one wasn't too bad. By the last book I was just completely annoyed at the pasteboard characters who act in irrational ways. The characters actually seemed to become LESS mature as time went on. Ah well, wasted credits.

Excruciating listening to this

What disappointed you about The Phoenix Unchained?

The narration is killing me. I'm trying, I'm really trying.

What didn’t you like about William Dufris’s performance?

Everything. From his first sentence, I was already annoyed. I went into this series excited, as the Obsidian trilogy is one of my favorite stories. I loved it and the narration of the audio books was excellent. If you are reading a continuation of a series, wouldn't you at least listen to the previous one so that pronunciation of names is the same? In comparison to the first trilogy, he mispronounces almost everything. I actually twinge every time he says "Armethalieh". What baffles me is he also mispronounces common words a few times. His reading is too dramatic and sometimes feels like he's standing on a pulpit preaching. He seems to break up sentences in odd places. I wanted to give up so many times, but I already paid for the whole trilogy and I wanted so badly so see where this story would go. The performance really, really disappointed me and made it a struggle to listen to.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Irritation by the narration. But I struggled through because I was excited to revisit this world and did enjoy the story.

Not my favorite

The story itself isn’t horrible. But it is hard to listen to the reader change the pronunciation of all the cities and names. He should have listened to the first books.

I feel book one and two (and maybe book 3. But I haven’t listened to those yet) should have been combined. The end of this book feels like the end of a chapter not the end of the book.

Narrator Ruins Story

This story is pleasant enough but the narrator's pedantic tone just ruined it for me. His narration is like Chinese water torture: in the beginning, not so bad but it slowly becomes excruciating.

It's really a shame because Ms. Lackey has written a lot of entertaining reads, and there are a lot of very good narrators out there. But I won't buy another audiobook with this narrator.

if you like the obsidian series don't go here

I did not enjoy this due to the fact that they changed almost all of the ways they pronounced everything and it makes no sense