The Doomfarers of Coramonde

Coramonde Series, Book 1

By: Brian Daley

Narrated by: Cameron Beierle

Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

A mission to Hell....

Just yesterday, Sergeant Gil MacDonald and his APC crew had been fending off an ambush in a Viet Nam jungle. In the middle of the firefight, some kind of magic spell had transported them to this Fantasy Land complete with flying dragons, wizards, crazy castles, and dispossessed princes. They would stay trapped here forever unless they could rescue the sorceress Gabrielle. Master magician Amon held her captive in his palace; and to reach her, Gil and his men would have to infiltrate Hell itself!

©2011 Books In Motion (P)2011 Books In Motion

A good listen

I enjoy this series It was a great discovery in my youth when I was just beginning my appreciation of epic fantasy. Doomfarers is chock full of well formed and interesting characters, situations and adventure.

I enjoyed Beierle’s voice and his pacing but just like his reading of “The Belgariad” series, there are smatterings of mispronunciations of words (i.e Shore-Timer instead of the military pronunciation SHORT-Timer) which draws me out of the listen sometimes.

Still and all a great story and a solid performance overall.

Highly recommended.

Great story

This and the sequel, the Starfollowers of Coramonde are two of my all time favorite books. Alas, the narrator, who has a wonderful speaking voice, has managed to create the most jarring character voices I've heard in the many years that I've listened to audio books. His falsetto for the women's voices is very annoying.

Waited over twenty years for an audiobook version!

What did you like best about The Doomfarers of Coramonde? What did you like least?

Love the book! The issues I had with the reader may be a download issue.

What other book might you compare The Doomfarers of Coramonde to and why?

I haven't read anything like Doomfarers.

What didn’t you like about Cameron Beierle’s performance?

Very robotic nararation (might have been the download) Although, I did not like the character voice he gave Gil. I think he gave Gil a John Wayne style voice and my interpertation of Gil is much younger. I was not thrilled with Andre's voice either.

Was The Doomfarers of Coramonde worth the listening time?

Absolutely!!! Although I had some issue with two character voices, I understand it is subjective. Overall, I would recomend the book and I will listen to it again and again

Any additional comments?

I am going to listen to the book again through my Ipod instead of my Kindle to determine if the robotic tone may have been a download issue.

Old favorite of mine.

This is one of very few books I have bothered to read more than once. It is full of very memorable characters you can relate too or envy for their skills.
Alas, as much as I love this take, it was almost painful to listen to it. The reader is very clear in his pronunciation, but it's a lot like listening to Sgt. Joe Friday reading it. Almost no emotion or life is breathed into the characters.

an old favorite title on audiobook

I first read the Coramonde duology in the early '80s as a kid and have read it multiple times. While many books I read back then didn't stand up to an adult's taste, I do really like a lot of stories from that era. They are less formulaic than many more modern books, have more focused plots, and fewer viewpoint characters. The world-building is interesting and enough to feel real, but not overwhelming---it's kind of a pseudo-medieval Europe, with a Mediterranean. I won't say the story is perfect. There's a notable plot hole or three in spots. But it moves along at a good pace in a way that many modern stories seem to fail to manage. I vastly prefer audiobooks now and am happy to see the story become available in this format.

The story itself is a high fantasy/military fantasy with a side of planetary romance of a civil war with more cosmic implications in the battle between good and evil. As an author, Brian Daley has a much more "American" tone, owing much more to Raymond Chandler and Fletcher Pratt than J. R. R. Tolkien's professorial style. For instance, Daley rarely "lectures" the reader about his secondary reality, only just enough to give us an idea of what it is. I'm not normally a fan of planetary romance, but Edward van Duyn and, more importantly, Gil MacDonald, a disaffected Vietnam veteran turned reality traveler, add to the story quite a bit. It also has a feel of classical occult, such as Tarot or demons from such sources, almost making us feel that our world's legends came from worlds like Coramonde, where they are real. In addition, Daley drew on his experience in the US Army during the Vietnam War, and a number of smaller characters clearly draw on that, such as Legion Marshal Bonesteel.

Regarding the voice acting: I've listened to Cameron Beierle's narration of the Belgariad before. In general I liked them. Some of his voicings here aren't what I'd have imagined, especially Andre de Courtenay, who ends up sounding a bit more like a grumpy old man than I imagined him, Gil as John Wayne, or van Duyn, who ends up with a vaguely Scottish accent, but they're not bad overall, and some really good.

Well written but

Too graphic for me.
Love the (spoiler alert) juxtaposition of Viet Nam war and medieval-ish fantasy themes
The tank versus the dragon!!!
But the graphic sex was too much for me.
Bummer.

Highly recommended!

An exceptional fantasy that mixes classic themes with a contemporary characters modern sensibility when transported to such a realm. Perfect for anyone wanting to get lost for a few hours I n a grand adventure.

Dissapointing

I love Brian Daley's work on the Star Wars radio drama and first Han Solo book trilogy. But For this story I didn't like his characters, their relationships, or anything about the world being created to really care about his good vs. evil epic war. The romances were particularly bad. I don't know if the story improves with the next book, There was one character introduced near the end that has a lot of potential who's fate is left as a cliff hanger, but I'm not interested enough to use one of my credits to find out.

Great Dragon Fight Early On!

Everything else was sadly a big snooze. Beautiful descriptions of clothing, locations, and people, that unfortunately I just didn't care about. I liked the idea of this book, because of Grunts by Mary Gentle. If you're looking for a great, funny, disturbing, excellent story about fantasy clashing with military hardware, check out Grunts!

I wish I didn't

Well, it was a book, and there were words in it. It was not completely awful, but it was not anything to write a review about. I will not recommend this book to any reader that has a couple of brain cells.