Polgara the Sorceress

By: Leigh Eddings, David Eddings

Narrated by: Dina Pearlman

Length: 30 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Polgara is the epic culmination of a magnificent saga, and a fitting farewell to a world which, once experienced, will never be forgotten.

She soars above a world of warriors, kings, and priests. The daughter of Belgarath and the shape-shifter Poledra, she has fought wars, plotted palace coups, and worked her powerful magic for three thousand years. Now, Polgara looks back at her magnificent life, in this fitting crown jewel to the saga that is the Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean cycles.

Her hair streaked white by her father's first touch, her mind guided by a mother she will not see again for centuries, Polgara begins life in her Uncle Beldin's tower, and in the prehistorical, magical Tree that stands in the middle of the Vale. There, she first learns the reaches of her powers. There she assumes the bird shapes that will serve her on her adventures. And there she starts on the path toward her destiny as Duchess of Erat, shepherdess of the cause of good, adversary of Torak the One-Eyed Dragon God, and guardian of the world's last, best hope: the heir to the Rivan throne.

Here is the legendary life story of a woman of wit, passion, and complex emotions, a woman born of two majestic parents who could not have been more unlike one another. Ordained to make peace and make war, to gain love and lose love, Polgara lives out her family's rich prophecy in the ceaseless struggle between the Light and the Dark.

Fantasy fan? Listen to titles in the Malloreon series, which is a sequel to David Eddings' Belgariad series.

©1996 David Eddings and Leigh Eddings (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Good Story, Poor Narrator

After reading (listening) to The Belgariad and The Malloreon I thought I would download and listen to the prequels (addendums), Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. The two, five books series are all read by the same narrator so, the pronunciations and character voices are consistent and well done. Belgarath the Sorcerer is read by a different narrator, the pronunciations are all consistent, but obviously the character voices have to be different, and they were. This wasn't distracting and you became accustom to the new narrator quickly.

Polgara the Sorceress, however, has a poor narrator. She clearly has not listened to any of the previous books, or if she has, she ignored them completely! The pronunciations of: character names, place, and titles ignores all previous narrations. Her syntax is awful, it sounds like a female William Shatner is reading complete with weird and arbitrary pauses, and bizarre dramatic inflections. Her typical reading voice is pleasant, but some of the character voices are so irritating that it's distracting to the story. In addition to this, the audio editing of the reading isn't helping her; many of the stops and starts are very abrupt and are distracting.

This aside, the content of the story is good. It gives you another point of reference for Belgarath's history and reveals interesting things about Polgara and her motivations. I enjoyed the story and suffered the narrator.

Research

This is book 12 and last in the series. It is understandable that there is a female voice recounting this tale as it is to have been written by the Sorceress herself. As much as I love the story and as much as I was able to fly through the other 11 books, this one actually angers me a bit. Not from the story but from the telling of such.
The biggest issue is the inconsistency in the pronunciation of many of the names of both people and places. Written fantasy is always up to the individual to pronounce it in our minds and we all alter it to suit ourselves. However, it is blatantly apparent that the reader of this book had not bothered to listen to any of the previous books. Book 10... to a great extent covers the same topics and same names. And there is no way to be this inconsistent had this happened. The reader did a good job other than this mispronunciation repeatedly. And by no means to I feel that Dina Pearlman should not be reading books and I would happily listen to her reading anything else again. No the blame on this lies only with the editors/producers that decided to make this book and didn't check to ensure that some semblance of consistency was in place.
I should also point out that this appears to be an Audible Exclusive where the company itself opted to pay for an Audio version to complete this series. And I, for one, do appreciate that this was done. And I hope for more. My only ask is that before having the reading recorded any other performances be monitored for consistency.

A bit like reading a history book

I found this a pretty dry read. Polgara doesn’t come across as very nice to me. I thought the performance pretty bad with Garion’s princess sounding like an old woman instead of the much younger woman she is.

Narration is awful. Dont waste money

Cameron Beierle narrated 11 books in this series. He is capable of narrating the MANY male voices. This book is about a female but normally she is the ONLY female... That leaves all the other voices in the book as MALE which the female narrator cannot manage. Cameron Beierle created the voices of all these character for ELEVEN BOOKS!!! His female characters were good.... Why would they change the narrator? Why they thought that they needed a female narrator who can NOT do male voices.... is beyond me. This ruined the audible book. Don't waste your money!

story awesome reader not so much.

story awesome reader not so much. should of had Cameron do this one too. blah

It's great but...

There are 12 total books I believe, that covers this series. Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara cover relatively the same time line so there is a lot of repetition between the two stories.

What ruined this audio book for me was the fact there are roughly 170 hours of narration for the other 11 stories. In those stories, everything is pronounced correctly. Like the narrator actually took the time to look up the words I. tje pronunciation index, practiced them, and then read the story.

This narrator however started butchering pronunciations from the start. Mah Loria. Mal Or E Ah... I mean come on...

Even though you're supposed to listen to this book last, I would recommend listening to it first.

good book. not so good narrator.

narrator needs to learn how to pronounce the words properly. other then that it was good

Fantastic story, TERRIBLE narration

This book is one of my favorites in the series. The fact that it covers thousands of years while showing both character personality and development is astounding, and while I don't personally agree with some of Polgara's thinking ("a woman isn't fulfilled until she gives her husband a child" -gag-), she is an enthralling character.

However.

I'm honestly amazed I got through this audiobiok. Names/places aren't just mispronounced, they're inconsistent within chapters. Mallorea, Beldaran, Cthol Murgos, Ctuchik, Tol Honeth are all butchered continually. UL is pronounced both "oool" and "Yule", often in the same sentence. Issa, Nyissa, Nyissan, and Salmissra don't sound similar at all to each other. Editing is choppy, and the narrator stumbles over regular speech. Ce'Nedra sounds like an octogenarian.

One of the Tolnedran emperors is called "Ron Howneth" apparently. Matches well with "BellMaker", one of Aldur's previous disciples, I guess.

0/10 would not recommend this narrator, but if you can find the JP Linton version, you should give it a shot. The only issue in his narration is a hard "C" on dryad names.

8/10 would recommend the book. Great history and insight, but as "tough and strong" as Polgara is, she's 100% wrong in thinking that cooking and popping out babies is every woman's end goal. If that's what she wants to do, fine, but dont shove it down everyone else's throat like it's gospel.

(Also, RIP David and Leigh because apparently that passed from this earth without EVER meeting a gay person, since there's exactly 0% of characters in the series over the age of 13 that don't settle down in nice little hetero, child-rearing marriages. Except the eunics.)

Good story, Poor Narrator & Bad Rording.

Any additional comments?

They list this book as a prequel however if you read this book or Belgarath the Sorcerer first it will totally spoil the other books in the series.

This story is excellent, but is marred by a poor narrator. Her general reading voice is decent, but she gives the characters voices that just don't fit. It is as if she didn't bother reading the earlier books so has no idea what the characters are like. She also some very odd inflections when reading in a characters voice.

The production is also flawed by boor sound editing. Throughout the reading many words are clipped off so they drop the final bit. It is very distracting. This is the second Audible production that I've listened to that had production problems. If you can find another audio source for this book I would suggest you buy that and avoid this one. If I could I would request a refund.

Best fantasy series!

I have been reading it since 1989. With twelve books in the series David and Leigh were really able to develop the characters. The audio series is a whole new way to experience them too.