The Wine of Angels

Merrily Watkins, Book 1

By: Phil Rickman

Narrated by: Rebecca Lacey

Length: 16 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

The Wine of Angels is the first instalment in the Merrily Watkins series from highly acclaimed author Phil Rickman.

The new vicar had never wanted a picture-postcard parish - or a huge and haunted vicarage. Nor had she wanted to walk into a dispute over a controversial play about a 17th-century clergyman accused of witchcraft...a story that certain long-established families would rather remained obscure.

But this is Ledwardine, steeped in cider and secrets...a paradise of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses. And also - as Merrily Watkins and her teenage daughter, Jane, discover - a village where horrific murder is a tradition that spans centuries.

©1998 Phil Rickman (P)2006 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Critic reviews

"Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman." (Guardian)

"First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night." (Daily Mail)

"Phil Rickman is one of my all-time favourites." (Diana Gabaldon, international best-selling author)

So Good!!

The story was really good but the Reader was AMAZING! Her storytelling really made all the characters feel real.

Mixed experience

The premise of a woman Anglican priest in a haunted vicarage in a pagan town is intriguing. The story does not benefit from the unnecessary introduction of a racial stereotype to indicate a fraught event, but the narrator's incredible ability to make a range of distinguishable male and female voices with credible regional accents, educations and ages is very impressive. The production, however, suffers from being recorded at so low a volume that it constantly needs the listener's full attention, ear to device, to be heard.

We Love Merrily

Excellent narration and a cracking good story. Highly recommend. On to the next book in the ser!

Wonderful - Take a listen!

The Wine of Angels is the first in the Merrily Watkins series, and can be read/listened to as a stand-alone. I read this originally as a traditional book, and, having finished the series, I am now re-reading via listening . OK, I loved it as a hard-copy book, and I am loving it all over again as an audiobook. The narration is excellent. Take a listen!

could not finish

I had trouble with the narration. I turned my speed control down to 85% and still had problems. It seemed she finished her sentences so whisper-like that was hard to understand.
I got to Chapter 17 and called it quits.

Jumped from scene to scene

There was no distinction between one scene and another, which made things a little confusing. I had to rewind several times to figure out what was going on. This story could have been told in half the time. Parts of it may have been setting up for the next book, but I don’t think I will be finding out, because I have no desire to waste a credit on continuing the series. This was a very tedious book.

Boring Boring Boring!

If I wanted to listen to a long, long story about a neurotic, insecure, conflicted newly minted minister and her tediously stereotypical teenaged daughter, in exacting detail, this would have been a great book. That is NOT what I was looking for when I chose this title. There was supposed to be a murder several centuries old, a haunted parsonage and multiple mysteries. I kept listening out of sheer stubbornness, waiting for something TO happen. The book was a 16 hour listen. I was literally 10 hours into the book before ANYTHING happened. The entire story could have been told in 8 hours time and still cover all the bases for the story line. And while the book was well written, it was NOT interesting. This is the first in a long series of books so obviously some people enjoy them. I am not one of those people.

The narrator was terrible! Kept speeding through things or slurred her words.

I don’t know if they changed the narrator after these reviews saying how good they were but it definitely seems like it.

The narrator I had kept rushing through details and would only slightly slow down when a character talked but not always. Probably because someone told her to.

She slurred some of her words and it wasn’t based on a character speaking.

She doesn’t differentiate between characters so with her speaking so fast it gives you whiplash. I even tried slowing it down but it hardly helped.
All of this is not because of her accent that wasn’t the problem.
I had to refund after letting another family member listen to it and they also agreed on my points.