Thief of Time: A Discworld Novel

After buying this audiobook and listening for a few minutes I was just sick. I really, really hated the presentation by these voice actors. I came online and read everyone elses reviews and thought "well, it's my own fault, I should have checked the narrator". I decided to tough it out, because I do love this story. I kept waiting for it to get better and it really just never does. The switching around of parts by the different actors is terrible. The lines done with an American accent instead of English is jarring and just never sounds right. The voice actors seemed to have no idea of how to deliver their lines. I think if there have been 25 other books read by the same narrator that everyone loved you would be happy with a winning combination. I don't know what brought about the change, but hopefully we'll never have to hear it again. Bring back Nigel!

Out of all the Discworld books offered by this site, this is the first one to disappoint me. Having multiple people read a book is a fine idea, but why does this group have a tendency to change parts at will? You get used to hearing one voice read a character and then you get a different person reading the character with completely different style. I cannot come up with any reason why this was done except for the possibility that the person reading was the one who showed up to work that day. Several of the characters are well done by this group, which makes it even more disturbing when the voice for that character changes.

The story is another wonderful Discworld title. If you like the series, you will enjoy this one also. However, since I have learned that ISIS has produced this book with Stephen Briggs reading, I don't think I can recommend this version. I hope that Audible will acquire the ISIS version and continue to provide the ISIS versions of this series.

While most of the readers did a fine job with their segments, I found the switching of voices per character distracting. [This is not a "cast recording"-style reading, with one reader per character; each reader has a section of text and reads all the voices within that segment, so sometimes Igor is voiced by a woman and sometimes by a man - and with different accents, too {wry grin}.] Having one narrator for the text and the others doing one character-voice each might have worked better, though this would obviously be harder to record. Overall I'd prefer a single narrator - and Nigel Planer has been doing a wonderful job on the other books.

I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, however, in audible form, Nigel Planer is the best. I have purchased the Thief of Time, unfortunately without looking as to who the narrators were and am disappointed. The story is great, but the narration is greatly lacking personality. The narrators "just read". They do not put the oomph that Nigel Planer puts into his readings.

COME BACK NIGEL.

I have nearly all of Terry Prachett and by far this was the worst narration by far!!! Stephen Briggs is number one. The characters were wrong the accents were terrible. What on earth made them do this. Prachett fans beware!

Summary: All in all, buy the book, not the audible. The author is excellent. The sound production is extremely competent. However, there are too many narrators. They are not appropriate for reading satirical fantasy. Some have awful affectations for accents.

***

I have read every Pratchett book (up to Fifth Elephant) at least 3 times. The author is humorous and clever on several levels. Nigel Planer did a good job of carrying the appeal until I had a chance to listen to Briggs read A Hat Full of Sky and was hooked. (Between the two men, Briggs does a much better Vetinari.)

In this book, however, the entire tone and quality of _Thief_of_Time_ was lost in the blur of readers. A few were good, some were adequate, and one female voice was spectacularly bad in doing "Ronnie, the milkman."

Following the progression of producers and narrators, one can see maturation in the products (the audio versions of the Pratchett books). The reading of this book, on the other hand, did the talent of Pratchett a terrible disservice.

The sound production of this story was skilled, but I would prefer to listen to the early, amateurish productions of Pratchett (complete with sound chops and cheesy sound effects) rather than struggle through listening to this book again.

I mourn the loss of this book to this set of narrators and hope fervently that the production company doesn?t make the same mistake again.

The Discworld audio books available on Audible.com are, in general, wonderfully engaging. Although the later books in the series are rather expensive, they are worth it. Unfortunately, this audio book is the exception to this general rule. It's a terrible shame, as the story itself is absolutely wonderful. The problem is with the audio production. Rather than having a single person read the entire book, the book is read by an ensemble cast. Unfortunately, not all the readers are equally well-suited for this genre, and the overall effect is incredibly jarring. For example, Pratchett's trademark parenthetical asides and footnotes are read in a completely different voice from the rest of the text, which ruins the flow of the narrative.

Because it was a Terry Pratchett story, I bought this with high hopes and because no other narration was available, but agree with other reviewers completely - the multi narrators are a disaster.
When you have an absolute winner like Nigel Planer who has brought our old friends like DEATH and Nanny Ogg to life ( no joke exactly intended!) why change? To hear DEATH in an ordinary dull voice and Nanny Ogg so very American was just all wrong and such a let down, and it just got worse and worse. Please, please, please get Planer back and re- record this as continuous narrative with the right emphasis and pacing.
The story is very very good, but the jarring narration distracts so badly.

This is another wonderful, funny story by Terry Prachett. It's wrapped in an uneven and uninspiring recording, which is too bad. His other books are read in the quirky British way that fits so well with his writing. This one is cut strangely, incorporates a LOT of vocal talent but doesn't show them to their advantage and doesn't have the rhythm the book needs.

I agree with other reviews about how the changes in the voices are a bad thing. But, I had already read this book and really liked it, so I decided to buy this audiobook anyway. These reviews had prepared me for the worst (in the same way that the reviews of Star Wars I were so bad that I was pleasantly surprised when I went to see it) and I was happy to learn that I was able to deal with the voice changes. Actually, the narrator stays mostly the same for the first half and then I think changes 3 times in the last half. I wish it wasn't so, but regardless I still enjoyed listening to it and plan on listening to it many times in the future.