Heir of Sea and Fire: Riddle-Master Trilogy, Book 2

This is an excellent book! I gave it 5 stars based on the book. The narrator is terrible! Her pronunciation is horrifically annoying. She slaughters the names of the characters in the book to the point that you wish she would never make another audiobook! This book is excellent and desperately deserves a better reader. Thankfully, this book is good enough that I listen to the audiobook to enjoy the story in spite of the lame narration. It would be a great service for Audible to have Simon Prebble read this book and replace this pathetic excuse for narration with a talented, better suited voice.

Here's a hint to the folks who make audiobooks: If you are recording a fantasy series with fictional character and place names, settle on a consistent pronunciation for them over the entire series, and give the narrators a glossary! This narrator has chosen entirely different pronunciations from those in the previous book in this series (narrated by Simon Prebble). She also has difficulty creating distinctive voices for the individual characters, which makes some conversations hard to follow.

That said, the book is excellent, and the full series is excellent. Once you have adjusted to the strange pronunciations, the story is well worth it. I am delighted that this series is available on audio at last!

I enjoyed Ms Walsh's reading of Book 2 of the Riddle Master Trilogy with one item that really annoyed me. She pronounces the proper names of many of the characters and lands completely differently than the reader of the 1st Book. I don't understand why this was done; it was very jarring at first, and I never quite got used to it. Other than that, well done.

Here's a hint to the folks who make audiobooks: If you are recording a fantasy series with fictional character and place names, settle on a consistent pronunciation for them over the entire series, and give the narrators a glossary! This narrator has chosen entirely different pronunciations from those in the previous book in this series (narrated by Simon Prebble). She also has difficulty creating distinctive voices for the individual characters, which makes some conversations hard to follow.

That said, the book is excellent, and the full series is excellent. Once you have adjusted to the strange pronunciations, the story is well worth it. I am delighted that this series is available on audio at last!

I've loved this book, and the whole series, for 30 years. I needed every bit of that love to get through an entire audio recording about MorGOAN prince of HEED. "Heed"? Are you kidding me?! In what language anywhere is "Hed" pronounced with a long E? It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. (And it's not like she pronounces Deth or Hel with long E's, so it's clearly just some weird affectation.)

I'm glad that Audible (or someone) sponsored the creation of this audio series: it's an excellent trilogy and deserves more publicity than it gets. I think it was a nifty idea to have this middle book recorded by a female reader, and I don't even mind if a few of the names are differently pronounced (is the Morgul's daughter LYE-ra or LEER-a?) by the separate readers, though that seems such an easy thing for the series editor to have coached.

But to get the hero's name so befuddled is inexcusable. For the narrator not to remember from one scene to the next whether Raederle has a high girly voice or a lower one is guaranteed to frustrate readers, especially since Walsh has such a meager range of voice types (besides a mild working-class accent) to draw on. Great books deserve better voicing, and better quality control by the editors.

I've loved the print version of this series since it came out in the 1970's. Like so many books I enjoy, I was hesitant to get it in audio--there is a gulf between reading and listening that can be hard to breach. Now that I've listened to it, I am very glad that I decided to get the audio books of the series.

Raederle's coming to power in the night, under the fearsome gaze of the dead of Hel is one of the most memorable moments of the book, and indeed the series.

This was the first time I listened to Fiona Walsh. I thought her voice and characterizations were beautiful and moving.

The key conversation between Raederle and the woman known as Ariel was beautifully done. There is a lot going on in their conversation, much revealed about both of their characters and key plot elements. I felt that Fiona Walsh really did it justice.

Changing narrators from the first to the second books in the series was a bold move on the part of the publishers, and I think they pulled it off. With the second book of the trilogy being thoroughly dominated by female characters, it needed a female narrator.

McKillip continues the story of Morgan of Hed through the eyes of other characters, most notably, the woman he is supposed to marry, Raderle. As with the first book in the series, the story sucks you in. However, no matter how I tried to ignore the annoying narrator, it was very difficult. Her voice is fairly pleasant, but I can not get past her ignorance of the proper pronunciation of just about every name in the book. You'd think she'd listen to the first book to get some ideas. Every time she read "the Prince of Hed" as "the Prince of Heed", I wanted to bring her into my reading class and teach her the difference between long and short vowels. I recommend that you read the second book in the series and skip this recording. I'm looking forward to the third book, when Simon Prebble takes over the narration again.