Swordmage

Forgotten Realms: Blades of the Moonsea, Book 1

By: Richard Baker

Narrated by: J. P. Linton

Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Discover a whole new realm of adventure!

When a wandering swordmage, trained by the elves of Myth Drannor, returns to his boyhood home on the windswept shores of the Moonsea, he finds that corruption has taken hold, leaving his friends and family open to a devastating evil.Swordmage was the first novel to fully embrace the exciting new elements from the next edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. This paperback resize releases fresh on the heals of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, and showcases a major revision to the Forgotten Realms world that has fans buzzing.

©2008 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Poor editing killed this experience

This is one book I suggest you but a hard copy of. I may have been spoiled by Nicholas Pohdel and Michael Kramer but this narrator felt very apathetic and relatively monotone. If the narrator had been the only problem though that would have been fine, but this is the second forgotten realms recording where the editing has been so bad. Several lines get spliced into the middle of sentences paragraphs later. Chapter 8 devolves into near incomprehensibility after several of these splices play consecutively.

Please have someone on the recording team take a listen to the final product. It could go a long way towards cleaning this book and That from the Sea series.

Pretty good

Any additional comments?

The focus is more on the individual characters point of view and memories within a small town and an extended family of the Harmac (their name for city-state Baron). They are an earthy crew, no high-tea stuff, and it is a small town of mostly working class people. It does not confusingly jump around from past to present. The past is given to us in the characters remembering and commenting on what happened, which I thought gave a better feel to the local culture. It has strong male and female characters which seemed genuine instead of lame. I hate stupid characters and ones the audience is supposed to like, but given every reason to not even respect, much less identify with, and we don’t get that much here, thankfully. The bad guy dialog makes them sound dumber than they are because most do some decent strategizing and tactical thinking and this offset the dialog for me. The plot of this novel and other two of this series are about various forces seeking take control of this land between larger economic powers. Even so, it doesn’t have that huge scale, epic feel I don’t like in my D&D stories so I liked all three novels.

Passing on this series...

The story is pretty transparent and lacked significant intrigue for the type of story being told. The narration pissed me off! Orcs and other gruff subclasses sounded absolutely pathetic!! Ruined the immersion!

decent story, hard listen

Story was entertaining but the narrator's orc voice was annoying. Editing was bad. I had to skip ahead during a part that repeated several times.

Rough listen

sorry to say it but the narrator ruined this adventure for me.
The attempts at voicing the characters was terrible, (for me).
The monotone reading and emphasis throughout was very rough for me to get into.
Again, sorry to say it but it was only the narrator for me that caused me to rate low.

Narrator needs to wake up

I read this book years ago when it was first published. I am sorry for what I am about to say, but this narrator did a poor job. He sounds sleepy, out of breath, and constantly fails at using the appropriate dramatic inflection for numerous scenes. A great example, is when a dwarf attacks the orc climbing the wall. The dwarf yells out "Die, orc!". The narrator read this as "Die." *breath* "Orc."

That is the exact issue I took with the entire performance, played out over and over again ad nauseam. If I wanted to listen to a book read I'm such a manner I would hire an elderly alcoholic man to pretend to be my disinterested grandpa at bedtime.

I'm truly sorry that I come across harshly but I feel that it is important to note that I am also being sincere and earnest.

The narrator wouldn't be my choice for this book

I liked the book once I was finally able to get into it. Took awhile as the narrator's delivery is so dul and monotone. The biggest problem is the voice he chose to go with for the orcs, quickly takes me out of the story. Overall he is either putting me to sleep of making me want to just read the book for myself and avoid is voice and tone choices

Epic struggle...on a non-epic scale

Richard Baker first came to my attention as one of the authors in the War of the Spider Queen saga. On a whim I then decided to check out his Last Mythal Series and wow. That was an epic adventure spanning all around Faerun and the locations were beautifully described. With this series Baker brings down the stakes and the scale. Greater Faerun probably doesn't care too much what happens to the little city of Hulburg, but to the people who live there it is home and the stakes are very high indeed. Baker still takes us on a ride around the Moonsea and beyond (no spoilers). I quite enjoyed this book. I didn't enjoy it as much as the Last Mythal because I had issues with the main character. By the end of the first book you are thinking, "Okay...you are 30 now, time to take some responsibility. But he makes excuses, gets distracted, and refuses to see what is right in front of him for two more books until he finally comes to his senses. It was a bit frustrating (but likely necessary to the story arc, but it made him less relatable for me).

Good story, horrible narrator

I liked the story but the narrator is unbearable, in this setting at least, so I gave up and did not finish.

Quick fix

Any additional comments?

I know this may sound a bit odd but when I first began to listen to this book the readers performance was awful. His bad guy voices all sounded like they had marbles in their mouths. At one point I grew tired of how bad it was so I sped it up so that I could finish with it. But when I put it to 1.20 the performance actually became good. Can't say if they slowed it to add to the read time or what they are thinking. After this fix I'm now going to purchase the second book. I wouldn't even entertain the idea if I hadn't done this. The story has pulled me in now and I look forward to the next book and recommend it to any fans of D&D novels.

decent story, awful narration

the narration was really bad, couldn't listen more than 10 or so minutes without getting annoyed at the lack of vocal variance and the feeling the narrator had never read aloud before.