Magician's Gambit: The Belgariad, Book 3

I stand by my statement in my review of Pawn of Prophecy. The best narrator for the Belgariad novels, for me at least, has always been and will always be Jon Beryl, who narrated the Talking Book versions. But Cameron Beirle does a better job of giving the characters personality. The problem he sometimes has is that sometimes multiple characters sound exactly the same. He also still often has difficulty pronouncing the same names the same consistently. But as I said before, this can perhaps be excused. Not only does he have to try to give voice to names that are difficult to read let alone say out loud, but I suspect that English wasn't his native language judging from his accent. That would make it harder on anyone. But he tries and he does a good job despite these difficulties. I've always wanted the Belgariad and Malloreon to be avaible in audiobook form commercially, but for years nobody seemed interested. Thanks to Books in Motion I got my wish.
As for this book, Cameron has some more new characters to deal with. He did a good job capturing the ancient sorrow of the god Mara and the evil of Ctuchik, as well as his fear and panic in the final moments of his cofrontation with Belgarath. He also does a good job on the emotionally conflicted Relg. I said before the Cameron was beginning to find his footing with Queen of Sorcery and he does seem to be improving with each book.

I remember reading these books as a teenager and enjoying them; as I currently walk to and fro work, I thought they'd be ideal for a bit of commuting brain candy. The stories are still as much fun as I remember, although the constant repetition of each character's establishing traits can be a little trying - for example, try taking a drink every time someone says 'you're a bad man, Silk'. You'll be on the floor in no time...
Unintentional hilarity is provided by the narrator, who is obviously a perfectionist as he strives constantly to improve his characterisations, often in the middle of a sentence! So Silk is either from Eastern Europe, Chelsea, or even Turkey or Greece, depending on what the narrator's feeling like - often's he's all three in a sentence. This can be annoying, but at least not as bad as it was in Queen of Sorcery, the book preceding this one (...all the Knights sounded like John Cleese in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Less cheese, please.

Beierle gets a bit carried away with off-the-mark accents (still fun to listen to, though), and mis-pronounced names, but he probably has the widest range of voices of any narrator I've listened to so far. And he does a good job of voice acting, not just reading.

Beierle had his faults--he gets a little carried away with his accents (and I think he misses the mark significantly on a few), but his narrations are the best so far.

However, I seriously wish the narrators would put in the time to get the name pronunciations right. I really don't understand how they can mangle some of them so badly. Here's something "straight from the horse's mouth" I found after a 15 second Google search.

Magical, Compelling, Envigorating

Prince "Silk" Keldar would have to be my favorite! The quick witted and slick-tongued little man never fails to surprise, impress, and humor me.

Cameron Beierle is his own cast. The voice talents used throughout the series is never duplicated between characters, and always premeditated. It's as if Cameron is so engrossed into the story that he feels what each character feels and knows how to portray their tiredness by yawning and talking at teh same time, or their mysticism with a inquiring tone, and, of course, malicious humor, as perfectly portrayed by Silk. I must admit, that if he doesn't play the voice of Silk when ever a movie is made, I'll be sorely disappointed with almost any other portrayal of the sharp faced and sinical little prince.

Admittedly, I listened to it over the course of 4 sittings, because of minions running around the place, however, it was captivating enough that when I listened to it while dead tired and falling asleep, I stayed awake for a couple of more hours because of the compulsion to know what Beierle is gonna say next.

I've read, and re-read this excellent adventure series by David Eddings several times over the past 20 yrs., but just recently purchased it in audio form. I must say Cameron Beierle has a gift with bringing out the accents and attitudes of each character. It took me some time to warm up to his voice, because I had already established the personalities in my head, but once I opened up to his reading of the story, it all became new again!

When Ce'nedra found out she was going to marry Garion

His voice is warm and full, and perfect for bringing a character to life.

When Garion revisited Faldors farm.....that moment, among others brought me to tears.

If you like Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia, you will most definitely love this action/adventure series.

Great book, the author is very imaginative and has great, diverse characters. The narrator does a great job.

I found Cameron Beierle reading interesting because each character started with one accent a word or two later they had a toltaly different accent.it was fun and annoying all at the same time. none of the accents were what I had in my head. Barak from the frozen north I thought should have a Norwegian type accent. Hettar seemed to be Mongolian (Ghengis Khan) type character--but then that's just me. Then the princess Ce'Nedra he pronounced her nane differently each time.
But other than that I found the reading interesting and enjoyable.

All the readings I have made my way through have been great so far.

My only issue w/ this book is the charecter Relg (sp?), the cave diviner. He plays an essential role, but he is by far one of the most annoying literary charecters I have come across.

Although I've enjoyed the story and listening to it, the fact that I need to fork out yet another credit, or two, or? to keep going with the narrative finally got to me. I bought and listened to the first three, but you know where the plot is headed, and it's just not worth the extra $'s to keep on with it.