Greywalker

Greywalker, Book 1

By: Kat Richardson

Narrated by: Mia Barron

Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Kat Richardson excels at creating vivid, fast-moving novels that blend urban fantasy with paranormal mystery. In Greywalker, Seattle P.I. Harper Blaine is viciously attacked and murdered - but after exactly two minutes, somehow she returns to life. Now she's seeing strange things all around her - dark visions from the shadow world - and living a normal life may no longer be possible no matter how hard she tries.

©2006 Kathleen Richardson (P)2008 Recorded Books

Her reluctance to accept the supernatural and unseen worlds.

Her stupidity and refusal to accept reality and adapt. This almost cost the world and all realities.

The author or the narrator?

Here's the thing. I got this book on sale (thank goodness) and I am still up in the air about it. There were concepts/ideas that seemed interesting, but the descriptions were often long and drawn out and still left me scratching my head (huh?) wondering what was going on.

Perhaps, it's that this is the first in the series and there's a lot of world building to trudge through. I had to rewind/back up and relisten to parts often to try to make sense of "the Grey".

Then there is the matter of the narrator. She wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. It was hard to listen to sometimes as all I could hear was her lisp( except, oddly, when she did an Irish accent.) It's like when you are watching a movie in the theater and notice a small tear or imperfection in the screen somewhere; and then for the rest of the movie you just keep noticing it and it grates on your nerves, taking away from the overall enjoyment of the movie. Yeah, it was kind of like that.

I am NOT saying to stay away from this author/series. There were things I found compelling and interesting (both concept/story wise and character wise). I would, however, recommend getting it from a library though. Be sure you like it before you spend your money on it. If I had wasted 2 credits on this, I would have been irate. However, for just under $5... it was worth trying a new author/series.

If they switch out narrators or if other books in the series go on sale for under $5 again, I might pick them up... otherwise, save your credits.

Hard listen

This book may not be as bad as I think but it was so hard to listen to the narration. The narrator had one voice that sounded okay, the rest where just plain bad. I bought two of these and regret the purchase.

Mucking through Greywalker

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The sentences are blocky and the reader pauses a fraction of a second to long between sentences - adding to the blockyness of the writing. Short choppy sentences are grammatically correct that tell small choppy portions of the overall scene. There is an overabundance of the first person usage of “I” at the beginning of the sentences.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Looking for the inconsistencies throughout the story.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The reader tends to read in monotone, and at a constant rhythm, and under emphasizes dramatic parts of the story. It is not till chapter 15 that the reader appears to develop a sense of the characters and the story begins to develop some cohesiveness.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

There were portions where the reader managed to successfully add accents and character to the voices for ‘some’ of the characters.

Any additional comments?

Through much, especially the first 15 chapters, I felt like I was sitting in an economics class listening to the instructor reciting, “ Bueller….. Bueller….”

Being academically correct in enunciation and pauses between sentences, and after other punctuation, does not lend itself to the telling of a good story. In this case, it contributed to the choppiness of a story that forgets to provide details in an entertaining way and fails to develop characters the listener can enmesh themselves with.

potentially a good story

I found the story completely predictable and the voice performances was awful. The narration person is terrible at accents and the voice she chose for Cameron sounded like she was taking a dump.

Interesting story, annoying narrator

Although I enjoyed the world Richardson built this story in, I did wonder at the motivations behind many of the characters in the story. I kept wondering why all of the secondary characters continued to help the main character except to move the plot along. She gave them no reason to continue to help her. The world-building and the mystery were interesting though.

The narrator I found overly melodramatic and the voices she used for the males drove me to distraction in their silliness.

This may be one of those books that is better read than listened to.

Painful Narration of a Really Good Book

I own all of the print books in this series and I really enjoyed them. I listen to a lot of audio books during my long commute and I thought I'd re-visit this series on audio. I quit half-way through because the narration was so bad. It's not even that the male characters didn't sound the way I imagined them from reading the books; some of them didn't sound anything like the gender and/or age they're supposed to be.

Maybe it's more frustrating for me because I enjoyed reading the series. I hate to give a good writer's book a bad review, but... I couldn't make myself ignore the terrible narration long enough to get into the story. Buy the print books. Buy the e-Books. Give the Audio a miss.

I personally did not like story to wordy, did not pull me in

Discriptions to complicated Did not paint a picture in my mind. Could not get into the characters

Average Story, Terrible Narrator

What would have made Greywalker better?

The narration made the story fall flat. The reader's voice had such an unvarying tone, rhythm and inflection that it became difficult to listen. Scenes that were meant to be exciting were read with the same dull tone as the explanatory bits. Attempts to differentiate between voices had every young person sounding drugged and/or air headed. It seemed like the narrator was extremely concerned to pronounce each word very precisely, but had no feel for the flow of the plot.

Since the story was only moderately good to begin with, a poor narrator made the whole thing not worth even the sale price.

Would you be willing to try another one of Mia Barron’s performances?

No. I could not recommend this narrator to anyone. I think she could make my favorite book sound unbearable.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Greywalker?

Actually, the story could have used more fleshing out. It went rather lightly on actual characterization. The whole plot line about the auctioneer who was crooked and fired Will was extremely weak. It could have been dropped and Will could still have gotten that good job in Europe as an excuse to dump gray girl.

Any additional comments?

Overall, extremely disappointing. I'm not sure why I actually kept listening to the end.

Bad Narrator

I like the story line but the narrator just ruins it for me. The lisp is distracting, and the voice of Cameron reminds me of a Ninja Turtle. Won't buy the rest of the books in the series due to narrator.