Ladies of Mandrigyn

By: Barbara Hambly

Narrated by: Teri Clark Linden

A brilliant mercenary must lead his army against the forces of the most powerful wizard alive

Gifted with courage, strength, and the intelligence to know when to fight, Sun Wolf is the greatest mercenary in a land overrun by war. With his first lieutenant, Starhawk - a woman more deadly than any man - at his side, he has laid waste to countless cities, taking the best of their treasures for himself, and distributing the rest among his bloodthirsty crew.

Then a woman comes to him, an emissary from the town of Mandrigyn, a lush port city recently sacked by a powerful, mad wizard of unmatched abilities. She offers Sun Wolf untold riches for the use of his army, but the captain is not fool enough to wage war against a magician. He refuses her offer, but that is not the end of it. The women of Mandrigyn can be very persuasive.

©1984 Barbara Hambly (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Good story not so good reader

I love the majority of this authors work. This was no exception. The characters were interesting and develope well. My problem was with the reader. She read the narrative like she was addressing grade schoolers. Very young grade schoolers! Her saving grace was the good job she did with the dialog. I hope she gets better.

Good story

This is a very good story but, the narrator is very close to monotone in her story telling. When she tries to use an accent she is hard to understand.

Love the story, HATE the reader

Would you consider the audio edition of Ladies of Mandrigyn to be better than the print version?

No, the narrataion is the worst I could ever imagine. It is one step above the worst text to speach I have ever heard. ONLY because the text to speach spells out the words it can't pronounce. If it could, I would consider the reader to be on the same level as a bad text to speach conversion.

What did you like best about this story?

Sunwolf and Starhawk's love for each other, even though it took the two of them being apart to admit is existed.

How could the performance have been better?

If this is the narrator's day job, she needs to quit and admit that her talent lies elsewhere. I am not being mean. I am speaking the truth. The narration made me want to stop 10 minutes into the book. I SUFFERED through because I have loved this book for many years. And have spent a LONG time waiting for it to be available on Audio.

Any additional comments?

Re-produce this with another narrator please. I love Barbary Hambly enough that I would buy it again if it were read by someone who actually had a clue. Personally I am floored that something this hard to listen too actually continued into production and wasted money. From minute ONE, someone in the studio must have said "Why the hell is this person here?" ***To Ms. Hambly, If Teri Clark Linden is a relative/lover or whatever, please get you personal life our of your business. I will not purchase another book with her listed as the reader. And I want to listed to ALL the other books you have on Audio so far. But Not with TCL as the narrator.

story excellent as usual

her accented voices difficult to understand at times. other than that, good job of narration.

Most stilted and over enunciated narration

This is an amazing book which I have already read and was looking forward to listening to. Just the opening lines convinced me that the narration might not be tolerable and I should return it. I'm going to give it a little longer and see if the narrator can change my mind. I have enjoyed Teri Clark Linden in films and was surprised at her reading style. Perhaps she was directed to read in this manor. It is flat with almost no personality or emotion. Perhaps an over emphasis on clear enunciation lead to a loss of emotional inflection?

I'll update my review accordingly. This amazing author deserves high quality productions of her novels.

Update: it doesn't get better. I played for some friends and they thought a bot was reading it.

Is it a computer?

Where does Ladies of Mandrigyn rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The plot of this book is one of my favorites - I'm so glad that Audible is bringing out some of Barbara Hambly's fine fantasies in audio (now where's Time of the Dark!)

What three words best describe Teri Clark Linden’s performance?

I found Ms Linden's performance oddly robotic. Each word is so clearly enunciated as to be almost a parody of text-to-speech. She does loosen up a bit later into the book but the pauses before unfamiliar words (Altiokis, Rind, etc.) break up the flow. It's too bad because her voice is pleasantly pitched and nice to listen to.

reader makes it unbearable

like being read to buy a kindergarten teacher who couldn't be bothered to read the text ahead of time.

Magnificent story

As always Barbara hambly makes all the characters come to life in your minds eye.

Great book... if you ignore the narration.

I read this book for the first time 20+ years ago and loved it. The story is damned good.

To cope with the mechanical and pretty abysmal narration, I suggest setting the speed to 1.5 and sometimes restarting a chapter to be able to re-emerse yourself.

Barbara Hambly deserves more than this for her good work. This narration will discourage more people from being able to experience her worlds. I'm disappointed in whomever made this choice.

To Barbara and her characters - thank you for enriching my life.

Worst narrator! Sounds like computer generated.

Thought when started that narration was computer generated. Got little better by chapter 6 like narrator was learning while recording. Not authors best work but story was made unpleasant by narration.