A Crown of Swords

By: Robert Jordan

Narrated by: Kate Reading, Michael Kramer

Length: 30 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's Summary

In this volume, Elayne, Aviendha, and Mat come ever closer to the bowl ter'angreal that may reverse the world's endless heat wave and restore natural weather. Egwene begins to gather all manner of women who can channel: Sea Folk, Windfinders, Wise Ones, and some surprising others. And above all, Rand faces the dread Forsaken Sammael, in the shadows of Shadar Logoth, where the blood-hungry mist, Mashadar, waits for prey.

Listen to more books in The Wheel of Time series.

©1996 The Bandersnatch Group, Inc. (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic Reviews

"Amid all the Sturm und Drang...is a finely tuned comic strain that both leavens the story and adds to its development. This latest installment of a major fantasy epic definitely will not disappoint its fans." (Booklist)

Narration

I agree with the previous reviews that this was a good story linking great ones, but the wonderful narration by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer makes it as riveting as all the others. The narrators provide nuances to the numerous characters that is a wonder to listen to.

14 of 15 people found this review helpful

Solid performance, and a good book.

Since this is book 7 of the series, fans probably know what to expect from the story. They're right. What you want to know is, can these two narrators do it justice? Kate Reading and Michael Kramer narrate the entire series, so on the off chance this is the first of the books you are listening to, just know that they do it justice. Kramer reads the parts of the book that have a male viewpoint, and Reading reads the female perspective. This does not mean that they switch every time a different character speaks in dialogue, which would be jarring. They seem to hesitate before using words in the author's made-up language, but it's only enough to be noticeable, not irritating. For diehard fans, you should know that they occasionally use different pronunciations from those listed in the back of each book. As a diehard fan myself, this is sometimes annoying, but it's hard to blame them when so many words and names exist which are not part of our ordinary lives. Both narrators are good at what they do, and use slightly different voices for different characters' dialogue. Although I have read all the books several times, I believe this different format brings new entertainment and is worth it.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Incredulously!

What did you love best about A Crown of Swords?

The story throughout these first 7 books is complex and compelling. They do keep my interest although I must say the detail of every dress, coat, room, blanket and expression is a bit tiresome and there are so many characters I find it difficult to remember who is who... where they are in this vast world, who is on who's side, etc. The first book or two where the main characters were introduced and where all were in the story at the same time made the story and plot cleaner for me. By book 7, I long for information about my favorite characters, wonder why... with the "One Power" and other advantages they have they can't seem to get together, or believe or even understand each other.

And I listened to the book "incredulously" over how many times the author uses the word "Incredulously". Can't they look at each other in disbelief... just once?
Perhaps you notice it more while listening to the book than reading it... particularly when you are listening to the series back to back but I would seriously like to find out how many times that word was used in this story... and to buy the author a thesaurus.

What other book might you compare A Crown of Swords to and why?

The rest of the series

Which scene was your favorite?

I enjoy the scenes with the "lessor" characters... The scenes involving the main character are always so angry.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Amazing Story Poor Producing

I don’t know if it is simply my copy but there were so many production errors where sentences kept repeating it really impacted the immersion of the story.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Good but some issues with character behavior

I've come to really enjoy the wheel of time story, however, I come to find that, time and again, I struggle with the way women and, to a lesser degree therefore, men are treated in this series, let alone this series.

Issues arise in the way women and men are treated. For example, men are worthless, apparently. Rand (sp?), the dragon reborn, seems to think men are worthless because he doesn't give a bleep about a single one of them dying but, oh my, heaven forbid a woman dies. And, is it okay to hold a knife to someone's throat to get them to boogey in bed with you? No. But the writer seems to think it's okay because when it happens here to an individual not of the society in which it occurred, the writer makes a joke of how a man got raped by a woman. But, no, it must be okay because the man eventually develops stockholm syndrome. Further, apparently all women everywhere always sniff, slap, punch, and are otherwise violent for idiotic reasons, but it's okay because men are worthless and need to be hit, punched, slapped, etc.

This book is 3 stars in story because not all of the books fully annoy me for the above reasons. However, the way the rape was spoken of by the writer, Rand's constant need to care not at all about men yet put women on some weird pedestal, coupled with the many times a woman behaved with a sniff, slap, or punch when it was entirely not really necessary nor would that many women actually do that in the real world, just made this book slightly more annoying than the most of the books before this book.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Another great book, but...

The audio editing was poorly done. The narrators repeat them selves every now and then, which completely pulled me out of the story every time. The book is good, but i don't know why the audio hasn't been fixed.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Great book! Bad editing

Loved the book. Hated the numerous times that editing played the same snippet back to back.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

oh God the editing

fantastic story and performance but the book was frustrating to listen to as the editor apparently decided to not even listen to it once. frequent stops and starts where the Mrs Reading or Mr kramer begins and ends session. broke immeesion every time I had to listen to the same paragraph(or longer) I had just listened to be repeated.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

getting annoyed

Ok, I have to say I began really liking the story but, I am beginning to realize that he if didn't continue to describe every stitch of clothing each woman wears, like 10 times each, or how low cut their dresses are, or say "ageless face" (in fact I am going to count how many times in the next book!) or letting me know how every incidental character is doing besides getting to the story, I could go no and on... It took him a whole book to really accomplish nothing. This series could easily have been wrapped up in 5-6 books.
In each book he spends so much time describing useless details, and wraps up each book very quickly in the last few minutes, spending very little time on climatic scenes. Any way, going to try get through the series because I started it, but beginning to think I could get more out of reading the synopsis on Wikipedia

11 of 14 people found this review helpful

Great series + Great narration = must read.

Great series + Great narration = must read

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

Ebou Dar

Although many new and exciting developments happen in this book, the key progression of the story takes place in Ebou Dar as Nynaeve al'Meara and Elaine Trakand search for the bowl of the winds, a new Ter'angreal that should help change weather (see book 8 to find out if it succeeds!).
The introduction of Cadsuane also adds to Rand's disgruntlement, and gives much stock into the history of Aes-Sedai, though the discovery of women who can channel in Ebou Dar also lends weight to Aes-Sedai history.
This book is full of excitement, like the others, but in many ways it is expositional, setting up things for the final swing through the remaining books to Tarmon Gai'Don. A fine step through the world of The Wheel of Time, and thoroughly gripping as with the others.
Lastly, Matt Cauthon again gets some great scenes, and really fleshes out as a character in this book, setting him and Perrin up for the rest of the books where they both become Rand's right and left hands.
From this book on, it gets even more exciting! But from book 11, Robert Jordan's final completed and published volume in the series, the Jordan-Sanderson team do a fine job tying it all together. Bring on Volume 12, Tor and Harriett! ;)

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Poor editing spiles a overall great audiobook

The general feel of the wheel of time series is usually very good the only problem this time is the repeated doubling of certain sentences that should've been edited out in final production

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

sentences repeated at section chang Varied volume

Sentences were repeated at section changes, and the volume changes from one section to the next

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Quality Control?

OK, so I’ve literally listened to 100’s of books now and you often find at least one or two slight errors such as duplicated sentences, but I’ve lost count how many this book has. It started to get to the point that it ruined the story. I even thought my phone was developing a fault!!
Apart from that the story is excellent and well told, I wish other audiobooks used more than one person - especially when some of the male readers try to impersonate a female character’s voice !!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Great book

Really good book but not a fan of the narrators voices. fans of the series get it

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Excellent, a compelling and addictive epic.

This is one of the best fantasy epics ever written, a series right up there with the work of J. R. R. Tolkien but be warned it is not one to be taken up lightly, this series is Huge!



The books have been kept together so one audio book will get you one book and many hours of happy listening.



Sadly Robert Jordan died in 2007 after publishing book 11, but with the help of Jordan’s wife/editor Harriet McDougal, Brandon Sanderson has taken up the torch, using Jordan’s plentiful notes he is finishing off the series brilliantly, with book 14 being the final volume.



The series is voiced by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading throughout and their performances are exemplary, their narration brings the world to life in a way that simply reading it never had for me, they bring a unique voice and feeling to each of the characters that brings them to life and firmly embeds them in your heart.



The only negative I have to put in is that the audiobooks chapter division bears no relation to where the chapters start and end in the books making the chapter search and snooze modes on the app all but useless.



All in all a five star read. An absolute must for any fantasy epic fan.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Not a good edit job

This is the first time I have been unhappy about a recording(I have now listened to the first 7 books in the series), I lost count of how many sentences had been repeated throughout the book: over 10.
This was very disturbing, it spoiled the smooth running of the story!!!

What’s going on Audible?

The story continues to excite me and I am always genuinely amazed at how good the two narrators are, as they never fail to bring the story alive.

However, for the first time it was very noticeable how poorly put together the recordings were as there were many if infrequent lines that were repeated.

Sloppy editing

Many lines are spoken twice. It seems someone forgot to edit out second takes.
That is an annoying detail for a product of this price

Incomplete / parts missing / Not the full version

Warning, there are various sections and paragraphs missing from this version of the audio book. I own kindle version of the book as well as the full audio version on CD. This audio version is the same and read by the same narrators Kate Reading, Michael Kramer but for some reason there are various repeated sentences and whole sections missing. An example of this is in Chapter 39 - "Promises to Keep" where Mat talks with the sea-folk there is a whole section missing.

The audio issue with the same sentence repeating twice, also present in the previous book "Lord of Chaos".

I tried contacting Audible to bring attention to this, but there were not very helpful/ didn't seem to care.

For this reason, this version of the book, is extremely vexing and incomplete. The book and the series on the whole is fantastic but, this version of the audio books is a disservice to the author.

Whilst the Wheel of Time series (in my opinion) is a must read for anyone who like fantasy epics, the Audible UK version of the book has several issues. but its still a fantastic book on the whole.