Kazgoroth, the Beast, has come into the world to destroy the power of the Earthmother. Changing its shape as needs be, the Beast goes across the island of Gwynneth, corrupting everything in its way. Its destination is a large gathering of Northmen raiders at Oman's Isle, in the middle of the Moonshaes, where they are preparing an assault on the kingdom of Corwell. The Northmen don't realize yet that this is going to be more than just a plundering raid. They don't know that their leader isn't King Thelgaar Ironhand, but the Beast, who has killed the king and assumed his shape.Meanwhile, the Earthmother, aware of the danger and hurting from the corruption brought to the land, her body, by the vile presence of the Beast, awakes her children - the Leviathan, the Pack, and Kamerynn, the Unicorn. They will try to stop Kazgoroth in different ways, but that won't be enough.At Caer Corwell, the seat of the king of Corwell, rumour brings word of war coming to the kingdom. Preparation is under way, but the Ffolk don't know where the enemy will strike. It is up to Tristan to organize the Ffolk against this both human and demonic threat. In his fight against the odds, helped by Robyn, he will grow into the responsible leader that should inherit his father's kingdom.
©1987, 2004 TSR, Inc., c. 2004 Wizards off the Coast LLC. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
"Horrible audio"
As far as Douglas Niles goes, I'm not sure. The story seemed decent, especially considering it is the first book written to build up the world of Forgotten Realms for Wizards to sale more of the D&D campaign. Dara, however, isn't a very good reader (her gravely voice for the king was one of the worst voice acting sections I've heard in an audio book). Also, there are a lot of post editing artifacts that make the book hard to deal with as you will have a sentence being spoken in a voice, but one or two words are very obvious post process fixes to possibly garbled recordings. I gave the story a 3 as it seemed decent, but I just couldn't finish it due to how horrible the recording was and so it may be a 4 or a 5 (or possibly a 1 even), I just can't really say, so I left it at a medium score.
Better editing and getting somebody that can do male voices when most characters are male... it can be a female reader (Kate Reading did well in the Wheel of Time books I've listened to), so this isn't a "guys are better readers", just a "Dana seems to really suck" though this is the only book I've heard from her, so maybe this is just a really badly done recording.
Story seemed decent, narrator was just too bad that it distracted from the story.