Crown of Fire

Forgotten Realms: Shandril's Saga, Book 2

By: Ed Greenwood

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

Adventurer on the Run! Once Shandril was a humble kitchen maid. Now she's one of the most powerful magic-users in the land. And a lot of people want her dead. The evil Zhentarim, the powerful Cult of the Dragon—all of them want her spellfire, and they'll kill whoever they must to get it. There's only one thing for Shandril to do: run. With the aid of Elminster of Shadowdale, the Knights of Myth Drannor, her lover, and a determined dwarf, she'll wield her magic for the cause of good. But if her magic becomes too powerful, her friends won’t have a choice.©1994 TSR, Inc., c. 2002 Wizards off the Coast LLC. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Great book!

Love anything forgotten realms! This is a classic story and is full of fun and unique characters, but by all the gods the narrator is horrendous. It's like the Muppets entered the Forgotten Realms...

The narrator is really hard to listen to

The narrator has the strangest pauses. Poor pace in general. His character voices are very odd. His emphasis, especially on females, words rarely make sense with the characters described situation.

much better in text

enjoyed the book when it came out years ago, thought I'd like the trilogy in audio, but it's not happening for me. still, I have the first two, so am going to complete the trilogy, but I've lost my enthusiasm for the last book. Oh well!

Love forgotten realms, can’t stand the narrator

I read the Forgotten Realms books growing up and enjoyed nearly all of them. I wanted to dive back in after decades and experience them again. The books are as good as I remember but the choices made for narrators keep them from being as enjoyable as the should be. This narrator is atrociously bad. The voices he chooses are so laughably terrible and so nonsensical they constantly pull you from the story. His female voices are the worst and are either stilted and monotone or sound like they are being played at half speed. The males sound like muppets characters instead of gruff adventurers. If you can hang through the narration, which is a chore, you should enjoy the story which is vintage Forgotten Realms.

Reader ruins the story

The performance of reading this book is poorly done. The droning and broken sentences is like a 5th grader reading aloud to the class that hadn’t bothered to pre read the assignment. This is the first of over 4 dozen books that I stopped listening to before even the 3rd chapter. The story seemed interesting, I will end up reading it myself as opposed to listening to it while I mow grass.