A Storm of Swords

Book 3 of A Song of Ice and Fire

By: George R.R. Martin

Narrated by: Roy Dotrice

Length: 47 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

The complete, unabridged audiobook of A Storm of Swords.

HBO’s hit series A Game of Thrones is based on George R. R. Martin’s internationally best-selling series A Song of Ice and Fire, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A Storm of Swords is the third volume in the series.

The Seven Kingdoms are divided by revolt and blood feud, and winter approaches like an angry beast. Beyond the Northern borders, wildlings leave their villages to gather in the ice and stone wasteland of the Frostfangs. From there, the renegade Brother Mance Rayder will lead them South towards the Wall.

The men of the Night’s Watch are ready for the coming of a great cold and the walking corpses that travel with it. But now they face a horde of wildlings 20000 strong - hungry savage people steeped in the dark magic of the haunted wilderness – poised to invade the Kingdom of the North where Robb Stark wears his new-forged crown.

But Robb’s defences are ranged against attack from the South, the land of House Stark’s enemies the Lannisters. His sisters are trapped there, dead or likely yet to die, at the whim of the Lannister boy-king Joffrey or his depraved mother Cersei, regent of the Iron Throne. Cersei’s ambition is unfettered while the dwarf Tyrion Lannister fights for his life, a victim of treachery.

And on the other side of the ocean, the last of the Targaryens rears the dragons she hatched from her husband’s funeral pyre. Daenerys Stormborn will return to the land of her birth to avenge the murder of her father, the last Dragon King on the Iron Throne.

©2011 George R. R. Martin (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Colossal, staggering.... Martin captures all the intoxicating complexity of the Wars of the Roses or Imperial Rome in his imaginary world...one of the greats of fantasy literature." ( SFX)

"Fantasy literature has never shied away from grandeur, but the sheer-mind-boggling scope of this epic has sent other fantasy writers away shaking their heads.... Its ambition: to construct the Twelve Caesars of fantasy fiction, with characters so venomous they could eat the Borgias." ( Guardian)

Worst narration I've ever heard.

If you can't pronounce "toga" then maybe this is not the job for you. Due to my worsening eyesight I find reading increasingly frustrating and turned to audio books. This narration is the worst I've come across. Female voices sound like a poor impression of the swamp hag, the vast majority of characters sound like they are dim witted or stoned and many characters have different voices in the same dialogue.
It's hard to believe that the ASOIAF series is narrated by a man that can't pronounce "toga". Listening to this has become more of a struggle than a pleasure.

None of the problems with books 1 or 2 fixed here

As with books 1 and 2, the narrator gets names wrong (often switching between different pronunciations between adjacent sentences), completely changes character's voices in different chapters, makes no attempt to give characters from the same place the same/similar accent and his choice of accent for Missandei is extremely weird, almost like a racist caricature of a chinese accent (think "flied lice").

As far as the story, it's pretty good, but definitely George R. R. Martin's horniest so far in the series.