The Wizard Hunters

Fall of Ile-Rien, Book 1

By: Martha Wells

Narrated by: Talmadge Ragan

Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Ile-Rien is in peril. A mysterious army known only as the Gardier has surrounded the country, attacking in ominous black airships. Hope is not lost though, for a magical sphere created by Ile-Rien's greatest sorcerer may hold the key to defeating the faceless enemy. But the sphere is unpredictable and has already claimed several lives. When a magical spell goes disastrously awry, young Tremaine Valiarde and a brave band are transported to another world-a world of rough magics, evil mages, honorable warriors, and a secret Gardier base.

©2003 Martha Wells (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"The subsequent story seems intended to combine elements of high fantasy and cross-time travel, as if it were a collaborative work by Andre Norton and S. M. Stirling. Thanks to Wells' narrative skill and considerably above-average characterization, it largely succeeds in those intentions." ( Booklist)

Great story, awful to hear

I love this author and this series and was looking forward to listening to this book instead of just enduring interminable rush hour traffic. Unfortunately the narrator has made sitting in rush hour seem even longer with her over enunciated and oddly emphasized reading. I an trying to finish this but don't know if I can.

If Siri read a book, this is what you would get

I think this is a good story, but it is difficult… to get over… the narrator’s horribly timed… pauses mid-sentence. Every scene (be it dramatic or general information) and all the characters are read with little differentiation or inflection. Then there is the mispronunciation of words- names of places and people that were featured prominently in the 2 preceding novels. I cringed every time the narrator said “Ile-Rien”. I can only hope for improvement in the next novel, because the reading can’t get much worse!

Fast paced but not lacking in anything

A great start to a gripping trilogy. Well crafted, interesting characters and fascinating world building.

And it never fets boring.

reader over enunciating.

at first I thought the narrator had never read a book before, but after a bit I realised she was just over enunciating. a bit annoying in the long run

Great story, narrator sounds drunk

Martha Wells is an amazing author. This narrator is not. She slurs, pops, sputters and has horrible sibilance and mushy pronunciation despite over-enunciating. She generally sounds drunk and maybe like she has a lot of post-nasal drip. She’s not as bad as John Lee, but that’s not saying much.

narrator sucks!

I like the story a lot but the narrator is really bad. not worth the money.

Poor narration. Hard to find thread of the story.

Struggled. The narrator tended to drone. She sometimes mispronounced words and had an odd cadence in her reading. It was if she hadn't read the story well enough to know it.

the narrator does her S's loud and long, and the author uses a lot of them :(

I just could not get into this book, despite having loved other work by this author. It seemed to jump around, and I didn't find myself caring about any of the people it talked about. Caveat: I was listening to the audiobook narrated by Talmadge Ragan, and every "S" sound is extra loud and extra long, so it was wildly distracting especially in sentences with more than four s's... I just couldn't make myself do more than a couple of chapters before I had to bail

Distracting Narrator

The book was good but better to read it yourself. The narrator's style of reading is very difficult to listen to.

I'm listening at 1.30 Speed

I've been normally listening to most books at 1.20 speed, but found the narrator on this one still too slow with weird pauses between words. So I moved it up to 1.30 speed and it's much better. I'm still noticing that the volume is rather frequently moving up and down though, which I assume has something to do with the recording rather than the narrator. However, it is rather annoying as my hearing isn't always great. I'm about half way through the book at this point and enjoying the story despite the *technical difficulties* shall we say.