The Dragon and the Raven

By: G.A. Henty

Narrated by: John Bolen

Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's Summary

In a time of chaos and Viking onslaught, Alfred the untested Saxon king must fight to save his ravished land. The tale unfurls through the eyes of a young thane, Edmond, who becomes Alfred's friend and mightiest warrior. When Danes over run the land and the Saxons capitulate, this young knight trains and leads a devoted corps of pike-men to recapture the kingdom.

On his adventures Edmond is captured by the Pagan Danes, raises the siege of Paris, meets the Pope and still finds time to fall in love. Henty successfully weaves this plot of intrigue and suspense into the fabric of true history.

©2002 Tantor Media, Inc. (P)2002 Tantor Media, Inc.

Disapointing Reader

I was eager to listen to this book, as Henty seemed a fascinating and perhaps unjustly forgotten author. However, the reader, John Bolen, who reads most of the books from Tantor Media, is a very, very poor reader. Leaden, wooden, ponderous. Feeble attempts to do accents. His attempts at differentiating characters are often down right silly. So, I have abandoned this book, as I have other books he has read, like The Yellow Claw, the Sea Hawk, The Black Tulip. This is especially frustrating, as Tantor has one of the more interesting catalogs of relatively obscure classic fiction.

My advice: Stay away from anything read by John Bolen.

good story, strange reading

I was fascinated by the history in this book as little is written (in fiction) on this subject. But the reading was extremely weird. The characters were these warrior and viking types and they all sounded like sissies! I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if the reader was better.

I should have listened and not listened

There have only been three audiobooks that I've failed to complete out of over 200 titles, so it's not like I'm picky, but the narration of this book is so poor that I couldn't get through the first chapter. One of the other reviewers warned us, but I thought that the sample wasn't intolerable and I wanted to hear the story. Unfortunately, I should have listened to the other reviewer and saved myself the price of this book. It would have been better listening to a machine read it because then we wouldn't have had to hear the narrator's abysmal attempt at accents and voicing different characters. Please, before you disregard this review, ask yourself if you can stand listening to seven hours of his voice and then choose wisely.

great author; narrator lacking

I love Henty. My 13-year-old XBox-360-fanatic loves Henty, and that's saying something! HOWEVER, that said, I must agree that the narrator could have been better chosen.

A Great Listen

This was another great adventure by Henty. I had a hard time stopping the story. The history was also very interesting. I did need to look at a map to better picture the different location.

Great Book

I thought this was a very good book if you are interested in this period of history. It's a good look inside the life and times of the early British kingdoms, and their battles and adventures with the Vikings

Great story

I have enjoyed this story but this particular rendition by Bolen, while better than the other offered by Audible, is not great. I find his rendition of a Danish accent annoying and distracting.

One of my favorite historical fiction books of all time!!!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This book is amazing! The voice of John Bolen is pure gold. If you like griping adventure and stirring romance and friendship this is the book for you.👌👌👌

Great Book!

I love G. A. Henty's books. His books are filled with accurate historical knowledge along with fiction to make it interesting. I have a really hard time with the narrator John Boland. I can't stand his accents and the rhythm of his diction but Henty's authorship shines through anyway.

Did not like at all

Kalli Clark.

My ten yo liked the characters, but complained to me all the time about the narrating! Finally I listened to it with him and I must say that I have to agree with him.

Terrible reading!!!