The Highwayman [Dramatized Adaptation]

Saga of the First King, Book 1

By: R. A. Salvatore

Narrated by: full cast, Dylan Lynch, Thomas Keegan, Eric Messner, Mort Shelby, Alexander Strain, Colleen Delany, Bradley Smith, Daniel Sonntag, Richard Rohan, Michael Glenn, Steven Carpenter

Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

It is God's year 54, many years before the Demon Wars, in the land of Corona. The roads are unsafe to travel; goblins and bloodthirsty Powries search out human prey. Two religions struggle fiercely for control. Bran Dynard, a monk of the fledgling religion of Abelle, returns from his mission in a far-off land with a book of mystical knowledge and a beautiful and mysterious new wife. But he soon realizes that the world he left behind has changed, and his dream of spreading the wisdom he learned to his fellow monks is crushed. Forced to hide his wife and his precious book, Bran must decide whom he can trust and where he should now place his faith.

Twenty years later, the situation has grown darker and more desperate. Only the Highwayman travels freely, his sword casting aside both Powries and soldiers. The people need a savior, but is the Highwayman on a mission of mercy...or vengeance?

Performed by Dylan Lynch, Thomas Keegan, Eric Messner, Mort Shelby, Alexander Strain, Colleen Delany, Bradley Smith, Daniel Sonntag, Richard Rohan, Michael Glenn, Steven Carpenter, Johann Dettweiler, Terence Aselford, James Konicek, Joe Brack, Nanette Savard, Nick DePinto, Patrick Bussink, Kimberly Gilbert, Alyssa Wilmoth, Thomas Penny, Christopher Scheeren, James Lewis, Drew Kopas, Yasmin Tuazon, Elizabeth Jernigan, David Coyne, Tim Carlin, Michael John Casey, Ken Jackson.

©2009 R.A. Salvatore (P)2012 Graphic Audio, LLC

This was awesome!

Great performance and wonderful hero evil billions and a great plot. I enjoyed the performance very much.

They’re making spend my money!

I own the audiobook of the original version already, but this one was so worth it! I need the rest now. And now they said that The Warded Man is also dramatized? Oh, man, I’m going to need another job at this rate!

Worth every penny!

Classic RA

Excellent story. I continue to be an RAS fan. Glad to see something new and away from the Forgotten Relms series, not that I have anything bad to say about Drizzt. This has the same graphic sword play with magic mixes in there too. Good characters and of course the narration is excellent

Yikes this is bleak. Absolutely amazing characters and world building.

Incredibly mature and grim dark. Totally unexpected too as I always associated this author with books aimed at a younger audience or flashy and immature. This however is far from YA and honestly some of the subject matters were even incredibly mature and disturbing even for me. My stomach turned a few times with how dark this got and how little relief there is from this bleak world.

This book totally took me off guard as I went into it thinking it was going to be a lot lighter then what it was. I'm not disappointed though as I found the experience to be incredible and surprising in the most positive of ways. I'm glad this was a mature and adult oriented fantasy novel.

Initially I was a bit lost. The first half doesn't hold your hand very well. It sort of gives you the story all jumbled up and out of order. Somewhere around the midway point there is a scene that put a lot of it together finally and made it make sense on who was associated to who. From that midway point I really started to enjoy myself as the plot really felt like it was gaining steam. Also the delivery from that point on is easier to follow with the time line.

I grew to love this style of writing as the world and character building was all about showing instead of telling, which is my favorite style of world building. We get to see the world fleshed out naturally and shown intimate scenes that speak on the personality of important characters instead of clumps of exposition. The writing for example would display passage of time even by showing, like telling you about a child character now with a beard to explain a jump forward in time. So many great examples of showing instead of info dumps, love the style this author leaned into so much.

Overall this book was depressing though. If you're in the right book and prepared for that I'd recommend this. The writing was so enjoyable with great built up characters, world building that is spread out in a easy way and a slowish plot but still enjoyable way to start a series.

amazing

wish I could find every novel I like and have read in this format, impossible not to enjoy

Salvatore never disappoints

loved this. As good as any he's written. Highly recommended and the graphic audio keeps you interested.

Just discovered GraphicAudio...

I recently came upon these books, or rather narrative movies, while trying to find what to use my credits on when I stumbled across the curious header. "Graphic audio - a movie in your head".
It is just that, as long as you have a good author.
I looked for an author I was familiar with and I gleefully downloaded the first one I saw.
Theyre amazing for someone like me with ADHD where I can listen to this "movie" and get my work done at the same time.
Audible makes it easy for me to go back a couple minutes if I get distracted, too.

Meh

really bad story,only made it through due to the sound effects and voice acting made by graphic Audio.

Why cut the story so short?

The perfomances of the voice actors were top notch and Rob's story telling is above par as always. My gripe is with how much of the story is left out of this edition. Turned a 11 hour telling to a 8 and it gets worse as you get deeper into the series. At one point one of the books is nearly cut into half.

Not sure if I can justify buying the others due to how much of the story just isnt being told in these reworks...

Should be marked as abridged

I love the dramatized versions but if I had known this book was abridged I would not have bought it.