The Weavers of Saramyr

Braided Path, Book 1

By: Chris Wooding

Narrated by: Imogen Church

Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

A richly textured, darkly evocative fantasy set in a beautifully realised fantasy world, the Saramyr trilogy tells the story of an empire that rules over a land being overwhelmed by evil.

An evil that comes from within the empire's centre, a sect of magicians close to the throne intent on killing any child born with magical powers. But now the empress has given birth to just such a child and revolution is brewing.

Akin to the works of Robin Hobb, this is a hugely involving fantasy set in a world with an enticing oriental flavour.

©2010 Chris Wooding (P)2023 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Fun introduction to a new world

I enjoyed this novel and look forward to more. the magic system and world building are creative and rich. Mr. Wooding commands prose well beyond other contemporary authors, and I sought this work out after reading some of his other fiction.
The narrator's pacing started slow to emphasize the moment and she got better. she can manage a male voice better than most but it's still not my favorite?

I've not read the other reviews. As I write this, 3.5 stars seems low ( ratings by others). I've bailed on novels with 3.5 stars and I found myself eager to listen to more. If you liked The Ember Blade, this one will not disappoint.

On occasion I had trouble feeling like character POV was sloppy but this might be just related to the audible format.

Cheers!

overall good book

i really enjoy the story. it was different. it felt like it had a lot of asian influence to the world and the characters names. the narrator wasnt terrible but i think they could have gotten someone better.

Meandering, Plodding, and Infuriating

After seven hours of trying to like this book, I give up. The actual plot just plods along at a snail's pace while the author barrages us with random details about the environment that don't matter, only to spring some random event on us without any context or meaning, then chapters later we get a partial explanation buried somewhere in the flowery details of something else that doesn't matter. This is all further exasperated by the main character doing stupid things only to move the plot along. So annoying!

While other books have already told amazing tales in eight hours, this one has still barely started. I legitimately hate it, which is a shame because I did enjoy "Poison" by the same author. I have over 600 audio books and this is the first time I've rated one with a single star, only because it strung me along for so long and wasted my time. I'm cutting my losses now. There is no way I am listening for another twelve hours. I'd rather eat brussel sprouts through my nose.

Entertaining series, unique world, bad reader

Having read the 3 books in this series I will say it seems like a good start to a larger high fantasy anthology. I wouldn't rank it among the best fantasy works I've read, but it's far from the worst. The setting is rather unique, a bit of an oriental flavor to an otherwise European flavored government and a lot of intrigue over fighting houses and power struggles. I found the first book to be the most engaging. The magic system here is a bit Lovecraftian with powerful entities affecting the world. The reader is pretty terrible, she seems to draw out words and very slowly sound the out so I found it necessary to set the speed to 1.25 which largely fixed the problem. At that speed she still adds somewhat out of place emphasis and doesn't pause much, and she has weird British pronunciation for things that British readers usually correct to a more neutral pronunciation in their reading, but these issues are much easier to adapt to than her bad pacing which you just need to adjust the speed for.