Hearts of Fire

By: Anita Mills

Narrated by: Sandra Caldwell

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

Gilliane de Lacey's pride is as fiery as her hair. In the face of a command from the King of England himself, she refused to wed a lord she despises. The one man she does want, Richard of Rivaux, is honorbound to wed another, even though his passion for her has become a burning need. Defying death to rescue Gilliane from the royal wrath, Richard draws his love into the perilous swirl of conflict between England and Normandy. Against this dramatic backdrop, Gilliane and Richard know that nothing will ever stop them from risking it all for love, and giving all to desire.

©1989 Anita Mills (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Critic Reviews

"Mills is a sprightly storyteller, providing atmosphere and action aplenty, and cannily complicating her characters' inner landscapes." (Publisher's Weekly)

Terrible narrator

The narrator has to be the worse choice ever for the books in this series. She lacks dramatization, she doesn’t know how to pronounce simple French words, she doesn’t differentiate between characters so the hero and heroine sound the same when they are talking to each other. I would guess that the narrator never even bothered to read the book to see what’s it about before just barreling through, giving a thoroughly passionless delivery. A better narrator could have read the phone book with more animation.

If I could have given this narrator a negative star I would have. She is that bad. Audiobooks are considerably more expensive than paperbacks or ebooks and as such the people responsible for picking narrators for audiobooks have a responsibility to select those who are appropriate for the book at hand. Ms Caldwell maybe perfectly suited to reading essays on the economics of third world nations, just not tales of romance of Medieval Europe. Unforgivably, this narrator was chosen to read all of the books in the series.

I’d like to contrast this narrator to that chosen for all of Laura Kinsale’s books : Nicholas Boulton is one of the finest narrators I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. Not all the credit goes to Mr. Boulton since he was handpicked by Ms. Kinsale herself. Additionally she reviewed his deliveries to ensure that they convey the emotions and meaning she intended. I wish all authors would do the same.

The story would have been better enjoyed had any number of other readers been picked. A waste.