Polgara the Sorceress

After reading (listening) to The Belgariad and The Malloreon I thought I would download and listen to the prequels (addendums), Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. The two, five books series are all read by the same narrator so, the pronunciations and character voices are consistent and well done. Belgarath the Sorcerer is read by a different narrator, the pronunciations are all consistent, but obviously the character voices have to be different, and they were. This wasn't distracting and you became accustom to the new narrator quickly.

Polgara the Sorceress, however, has a poor narrator. She clearly has not listened to any of the previous books, or if she has, she ignored them completely! The pronunciations of: character names, place, and titles ignores all previous narrations. Her syntax is awful, it sounds like a female William Shatner is reading complete with weird and arbitrary pauses, and bizarre dramatic inflections. Her typical reading voice is pleasant, but some of the character voices are so irritating that it's distracting to the story. In addition to this, the audio editing of the reading isn't helping her; many of the stops and starts are very abrupt and are distracting.

This aside, the content of the story is good. It gives you another point of reference for Belgarath's history and reveals interesting things about Polgara and her motivations. I enjoyed the story and suffered the narrator.

The final story in Edding's universe of the Belgariad. This tale is from Polgara's point of view and while there is some repetition, which is natural since "her" version is to correct her father's, it also contains multiple plot lines and stories that have not been mentioned before.

Narration is decent, unlike the Belgarath novel, making the flow of the story more enjoyable.

Highly recommended if you enjoy listening to the story of "Polly"'s life story!

I loved the whole series when read by Cameron Bierle. He was the best narrator I had ever heard, so why on EARTH they switched to this woman is beyond me. I honestly haven't been able to do more then skip around in the book, because if I had to listen to her constantly I would go mad. Her voice for C'Nedra is so atrocious. She made a young dryad queen sound like a 90 year old hag. WHY??? I just don't understand. If it ain't broke, don't FIX it!! The book is good but I am going to read it on my kindle, because I just can't stand this narrator.

possibly

familiar characters

I had recently listened to "Belgarath the Sorcerer" really enjoyed it. My problem is, Dina Pearlmen's pronunciation on place and character names was so far off from the other book that it took me a while to realize whom or where she was speaking of. If you are going to be an audio book narator. You should have at least a passing aquaintance with the story and charactors.

This is one of those stories that shouldn't be read without first reading David Eddings other books. I love Polgera and all the other characters from the Belgariad. I am glad to finally learn more about her she was such a mystery that needed solving. David and Leigh are a great team. Dina Pearlman is a perfect pick for the voice of Polgera.

The narration was well done, the book had the potential to be quite a boring audiobook because so much of is said by Polgara so I was peasantly suprised. The accents are good, took a bit of getting used to because I first listened to the Belgariad and Mallorean narrated by Cameron Bierle so I was used to those accents. My only complaint with this audio book is the pronunciation of some of the cities and countries. I think it would have main sense to keep the pronunciation the same as in the Belgariad and the Mallorean.

I think Steven hit the nail on the head with his description. The narrator was horrible. I guess she thought that it wasn't necessary to listen to the VOLUMES of books that had been read before this one so as to make things as consistent as possible. I don't know if I can adequately describe how grating on the nerves it is. For example she pronounces ctuchek's name (one of the disciples of Torak) as chew tik. Another one that is grating is Maloria (mah loria), which she reads as mal o ria. Okay, I know, I'm quibbling, but this had such an amateur narrator feel with Ms. Pearlman that I wish I could fire the person that chose to use her as the narrator. This reminds me of awarding the contract to the lowest bidder.

Now, for David Eddings, he did a great job. I love hearing the story from a different point of view. It is definitely not the same story, unlike what another reviewer wrote. It has the same end, but both stories cover roughly 5000 to 8000 years and they each focus of different things in their histories with some common major events tying them together so that you have a point of reference from Belgarath's point of view.

Great story, would be nicer if they just deleted her recording of it and got somebody a little more qualified.

The narrator pronounce many of the words differently than the reader of the other books. I found the book to be a real disappointment.

Agreeing with what seems to be a consenses that Dina Perlman's pronunciation of most ALL of the cities and characters were WAY off. Drove me nuts! Book is great. I mean did she and or Audible not collaborate w/Cameron Beierle or J.P. Linton at all?! Come on Audible! Your the publisher "Audible Frontiers" of both Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, would've been nice of you to go to the "Books in Motion" publishers of the Belgariad and see if Cameron was free from any contract so YOU could use him too.

Dina Pearlman has a great voice and she works as Polgara, but as so many Steves have already pointed out, her pronunciations are maddening. MaloREEuh and CHEWtick put my teeth on edge. I downoaded the Conan stories and that narrator pronounced it SimmuhREEuh. Almost ruins it for me. And it's why I didn't get Belgarath the Sorcerer. I was hoping it would be Cameron Bierle on that and it wasn't and the guy's pronunciations were worse than Dina Pearlman's.

Other than that, though, if the pronunciation doesn't bother you, it's a great story with a narrator with a great voice and worth the listen.