Woken Furies

By: Richard Morgan

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 22 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

This is high-action, ideas-driven noir SF of the highest order. Morgan has already established himself as an SF author of global significance.

Takeshi Kovacs has come home. Home to Harlan's World. An ocean planet with only 5 percent of its landmass poking above the dangerous and unpredictable seas. Try and get above the weather in anything more sophisticated than a helicopter and the Martian orbital platforms will burn you out of the sky.

And death doesn't just wait for you in the seas and the skies. On land, from the tropical beaches and swamps of Kossuth to the icy, machine-infested wastes of New Hokkaido the hard won gains of the Quellist revolution have been lost. The First Families, the corporations and the Yakuza have a stranglehold on everything.Embarked on a journey of implacable retribution for a lost love, Kovacs is blown off course and into a maelstrom of political intrigue and technological mystery as the ghosts of Harlan's World and his own violent past rise to claim their due.

Quellcrist Falconer is back from the dead, they say and hunting her down for the First Families is a savage young Envoy called Kovacs who's been in storage.

©2005 Richard Morgan (P)2006 Tantor Media

horribly narrated and edited

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Someone who doesn't care about details, background information, setting and didn't listen to the first two audio books.

If you’ve listened to books by Richard Morgan before, how does this one compare?

Bottom of the list. I usually enjoy the audio books of Richard K. Morgan, his fantasy novels as well as his scifi but this one was just awful, especially since I took a liking to the first two.
And what's with the editing? Echo sound effects for flashbacks? Why? I had to check my file at the first scene, just to realize it is edited to sound like this. Why the inconsistencies in a trilogy? Highly unnecessary.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

If you can't even get the protagonists name right, you might as well decline the job and choose a different book. The author spent a few lines in his earlier books explaining the pronunciation and origin of his character's name, the narrator just didn't care. The setting of the story has a strong Japanese influence but he couldn't get any of those words right either. Every time the I heard the word yaKUza made me cringe and it didn't stop there. I'm not sure if it was the author's choice to find a new narrator, I really liked Todd McLaren's interpretation of Takeshi and his attitude. Just the right amount of "not giving a fuck", pardon my language. Dufris' character interpretations, especially those of the female characters, all sound cookie-cutter-basic.

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

I wouldn't chance it. The author wanted to tell a story, and even though I liked the later parts better, because I had an interest in those plot elements from prior books, the author likes to keep the reader guessing. I'd have liked greater detail regarding the changing environment, since the protagonist had a long and eventful life at this point but we don't read much about the changes in the universe. Altered Carbon still remains my favorite from the trilogy with this one ranking last, even though the plot had me hooked before I even had the chance to pick this book up.

16 of 16 people found this review helpful

Terrible narrating

Couldn't get past the first few minutes. The lack of effort put into this audiobook is apparent from the start. I would probably read it instead.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Annoying Sound Effects

Periodically this audiobook makes use of annoying sound effects on the speakers voice. If you have background noise from sitting in public transport or have a hard time with English because it isn’t your native language I would say you should probably read the book instead. Story is good and fleshes out the universe of Takeshi Kovacs even more but at this point I reckon it’s mostly appealing to fans of the series.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Story average at best, the reading is abysmal

How did the narrator detract from the book?

McLaren read the first two of the series splendidly. The narrator should've at least listened to the style - and learned how to pronounce the Name "Kovacs"!!! It's a running joke in the first book that people outside Harlands world cannot pronounce the slavic "tsh" ending - and now the narrating character HIMSELF mispronounces his own name. Pitiful.

Even worse: The stupid cowboy style voice does not fit a self-control master like an envoy AT ALL. Wish I could return this audiobook, it ruins the series for me.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

A terrible third part of the series.

Firstly, the story was not up there with the first part of the series.

Secondly and more importantly, the performance, or more accurately the editing was atrocious! Very annoying echo and distortion sound effects.

And lastly, if the author makes a point about the correct pronunciation of the protagonists name in the first book, make sure to let the new narrator know...

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

great Story, horrible pronounciation of names

The book is great, I loved the whole series. The only problem with this book is the pronounciation of the main Character's name. The first book makes a major point about how Kovács is pronounced. He draws conclusions from it. It is correct in the second book, too, but this third one is read by a different narrator and he just uses the wrong pronounciation throughout. Quite anoying.
Still it is worth listening to the book. But if it is ever rerecorded, get the new version.

Great book completely ruined by a moron narrator and cheesy sound effects

If you've listened to the other audiobooks in this series, I'd advise avoiding this one. For whatever reason it was made by a different company and at some point somebody decided that, because its sci-fi it needs cheesy sound effects. Which evidently meant speaking every word of "Envoy recall" through an old Pringles tube, which just cheapened the whole thing.
This alone I could have dealt with...

What is completely unforgivable and the reason I'll be returning this book after I post this, is that the new narrator William Dufris, mispronounces the lead characters name EVERY SINGLE TIME HE SAYS IT! which given that this book is written from Takeshi's point of view means that since the last book he's forgotten how to say his own frickin name!
When you add to this, that in the previous two books Takeshi has occasion musings on how frequently people mispronounce his name, just makes it hysterically incompetent and all the more rage inducing.
William Dufris, you sir are a dingleberry, do your research next time, your a disgrace to your profession.

40 of 40 people found this review helpful

Disappointing

I totally loved the first 2 audibooks and the author but then this!

I cant stand the new narrator - the singsong voice does nothing for this brutish hardened hero story and does not work for the genre. He is a significant change from the narrator of the first 2 books and cant pronounce the lead characters name.

What on earth happens in the story? Total mess. New characters keep on appearing all the way to the end. Eventually the poor plot just become annoying and I just couldnt care if the hero lived or died. If I hadnt listened to the other 2 books and enjoyed them so much I would have deleted this hours and hours ago. Real shame.

34 of 34 people found this review helpful

Poor quality recording

I've enjoyed Morgan's books (and own them in a number of formats - digital and analogue) and was looking forward to listening to the further adventures of Kovacs but didn't make it more than 5 minutes into this talking book. It sounded as though it had been recorded on a Walkman in my garage. In addition the narrator pronounced "Kovacs" with a hard "c" - something that the books themselves decry as incorrect!

I own 30-40 Audible titles and this is the worst quality recording I've come across. It is very disappointing and shows little respect for an enjoyable story.

28 of 29 people found this review helpful

Pronounced Kovacs wrong the whole time

I can't believe they got his name wrong, they make a big thing of it on the first two books, then this narrator gets it wrong. Bad show.
Great book though.
Narrator also needs to lay off the effects.

10 of 10 people found this review helpful

The Weakest in this Trilogy

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, if anything to finish the trilogy.

Would you be willing to try another book from Richard Morgan? Why or why not?

Yep. Although this third installment was a bit ropy, it was still enjoyable. The first two were superb.

Would you be willing to try another one of William Dufris’s performances?

Absolutely, but no thanks to this audio book. He was brilliant in Cryptonomicon, so I know he can do (a lot) better. I can only assume that this was poor direction by the producers.

Any additional comments?

What were the producers thinking? Did they even listen to the first book? KovaCH, not KovaKS! Takeshi even makes a point about it in the beginning of the first book.

I was binge listening to the trilogy, so having a different narrator in the third book was a bit off-putting. Not because Dufris is bad (see above), but because it was so different from the first two. It's like changing the main actor in a TV series between seasons.

And what's with the cheap audio effects they put on the "dream sequences"? At first I thought they botched the recording. It completely irritated me and, in my opinion, has no place in an audio book.

9 of 9 people found this review helpful

Don't listen to this if you liked the first two!

why would they change the narrator for the third in a series? then add in vocal shifting for some elements and not tell the narrator how to pronounce the name of the lead character?! if you can get past these frustrating points it's good but it annoyed me every step of the way :(

18 of 19 people found this review helpful

Different Narrator

Eventually came around but the change in performer was very jarring with already established pronounciations.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Terrible echo sound effects

Completely unlistenable. I loved the first two books but I couldn't get past the the first couple 9f paragraphs of this as the narrator was drenched in awful reverb.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Bit of a let down after the first two.

Why change the narrator? I like Dufris for a lot of his other readings but this isn't good, it doesn't do the book any justice at all. He even has Kovacs pronouncing his own name wrong...

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Absolutely awful narrator!!!!

The first two books are brilliant and I enjoyed them so much I've listened to them more than once.

Much of the enjoyment is owed to Todd Maclaren's performance and portrayal of the tough and grizzled protaginist Takeshi Kovacs.

William Dufris' interpretation is so disconnected from the first two books, so irritating in his speech patterns and incorrect pronunciation of the lead's surname, that after an hour I had to scrap it.

I'll buy the paperback and read it instead.

What on earth were they thinking changing the narrator for the final book?
Really, really disappointed.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful