The Price of Blood

Emma of Normandy, Book 2

By: Patricia Bracewell

Narrated by: Heather Wilds

Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Unwillingly thrust into marriage to England's King Æthelred, Emma has given the king a son and heir, but theirs has never been a happy marriage. In The Price of Blood, Bracewell returns to 1006 when a beleaguered Æthelred, still haunted by his brother's ghost, governs with an iron fist and a royal policy that embraces murder.

As tensions escalate and enmities solidify, Emma forges alliances to protect her young son from ambitious men-even from the man she loves. In the north there is treachery brewing, and when Viking armies ravage England, loyalties are shattered and no one is safe from the sword.

©2015 Patricia Bracewell (P)2015 Tantor

Good story narration annoying

I love the story and the previous book as well. I was disappointed in the narration. The inflections and accents are not consistent. It could be that the mother language of the author is not English. She inflected upward at the end of each sentence which is not the way English is spoken. I didn’t care for her accents and change of characters but admittedly she performed much better than I would have. It must be hard to try to be different characters in a book. The narrator of the first book was a master. If I had known the narration would be so lacking I would not have purchased this audio version.

Maybe a different narrator??

This is the second in a series about Queen Emma and her life as England’s Queen. I was looking forward to learn more about her, but this book was hard to follow due to the monotone narrator.

Narrator needed to do her homework!

The narrator needed to do some more homework of correct pronunciation. If I hadn’t liked the story and already invested in the first book I may not have continued. Book 1 narrator is far superior!

like the story but not crazy about the performance

The narrator had a very strange cadence to her speech and most of the time was very monotonous and droning. her voices were good but the listening became very boring. also this one had way more dialogue and less action than the previous one. I'm not sure if I'm going to read the third one.

Bad cadence

Whereas I liked the story very much, I did not enjoy the cadence or intonation of the reader. They were without variation no matter the character or circumstance. I found it quite distracting.

Poor narration....good story....

The narrator made me think of Captain Kirk the whole time and took away from the story. The short cut emphasis at the end of each sentence took away from the individuality of the characters. I really enjoyed the narrator for the first book. This book would've been much better if it had the same narrator as the first book. I'm looking forward to the next book and hoping it won't have this narrator. This book's narrator has a very monotone voice with emphasis in all the wrong places, unfortunately.

Good story, poor narrative

Narrative is very stilted and choppy with very little emotion to the point of boring.

narration is monotone

narration is monotone and I almost did not listen but the story made it worth it

Through Gritted Teeth

Devoured the first audiobook in this series. Really enjoyed it. Promptly bought book 2. Gritted my teeth through 8 chapters and coukd take no more.
How do you ruin a series in audio format? You change the narrators which changes the voice. Ticked me off from the first sentence but gave it a shot. Now I need to carve out time to read the actual book.

The Performance

As rhe narrators voice had a nice tone, I found it quite sing-song. I eventually got used to it, but the story could have been more appealing if there was more expression.