The Redemption of Althalus

By: David Eddings, Leigh Eddings

Narrated by: Dennis Holland

Length: 27 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Mythmakers and world builders of the first order, the Eddingses spin tales that make imaginations soar. Listeners have thrilled to The Belgariad and The Malloreon, magic-filled masterworks chronicling the timeless conflict between good and evil. But with those sagas brought to their triumphant conclusions, fans were left hungry for more. Now at last the wait is over. With The Redemption of Althalus, the Eddingses have created their first-ever stand-alone epic fantasy....

It would be sheer folly to try to conceal the true nature of Althalus, for his flaws are the stuff of legend. He is, as all men know, a thief, a liar, an occasional murderer, an outrageous braggart, and a man devoid of even the slightest hint of honor.

Yet of all the men in the world, it is Althalus, unrepentant rogue and scoundrel, who will become the champion of humanity in its desperate struggle against the forces of an ancient god determined to return the universe to nothingness. On his way to steal The Book from the House at the End of the World, Althalus is confronted by a cat - a cat with eyes like emeralds, the voice of a woman, and the powers of a goddess. She is Dweia, sister to The Gods and a greater thief even than Althalus. She must be: for in no time at all, she has stolen his heart. And more. She has stolen time itself. For when Althalus leaves the House at the End of the World, much wiser but not a day older than when he'd first entered it, thousands of years have gone by.

But Dweia is not the only one able to manipulate time. Her evil brother shares the power, and while Dweia has been teaching Althalus the secrets of The Book, the ancient God has been using the dark magic of his own Book to rewrite history. Yet all is not lost. But only if Althalus, still a thief at heart, can bring together a ragtag group of men, women, and children with no reason to trust him or each other. Boldly written and brilliantly imagined, The Redemption of Althalus is an epic fantasy to be savored in the listening and returned to again and again for the wisdom, excitement, and humor that only the Eddingses can provide.

©2000 David Eddings and Leigh Eddings (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

The story is amazing

Althalus is a thief, but in the end he is a hero. how does this happen, easy when the gods use you as the champion.

Althalus has the greatest luck being a theif, that is until he decides to look at civilization and his luck sours, we all have off days after all. but when he comes home his luck stays bad. after visiting his friends and relaxing a stranger comes in and offers him a easy job. or so we though.

the Eddings team does it again but this time writing it all in one book. the growth, challenges and dilemmas come together

I did not like the performance of Dennis Holland, he does not have the range of vocal talent needed. all you can do to tell the difference between the ladies is the horrible accent and the cadence of there speech. the men where not much better. It made it hard to enjoy a great piece of work

Worst book of all time.

I don't have any good things to say about this book. The narration is poor, the story is a train-wreck, and the characters and their lack of development are especially atrocious! It was painful trying to sit through this book, but I thought maybe it will get better in the next chapter. No, this book is the antithesis of good story telling. Not one of the characters makes anything close to logical decisions. The writing is so lazy that it is insulting to the reader. The book reads like a deck log. Rather than describing the actions of the characters, it just says that they did it. Any book that has the narrator tell you the attributes and designs of the main character rather than depicting them or relaying them through other characters, is not worth reading in my opinion. It blows my mind how this book has as high of a review as it does. I hated this book, and only finished it so that I could truthfully say that it was the worst book I have ever read.

Meh...

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Cut out most of it. Lots of pointless, boring scenes.

What was most disappointing about David Eddings and Leigh Eddings ’s story?

They seemed to have a format for all their stories, and they followed the same format which makes all the stories sound alike with only names changed. They needed to break out of their self-imposed box.

What didn’t you like about Dennis Holland’s performance?

Althalus is supposed to be an illiterate, yet good natured thief but his voice is that of an aristocrat, bad Scottish accent for another set of people, and a third group who sound as though they came from Transylvania.

Was The Redemption of Althalus worth the listening time?

No

Worst written book I have ever seen

Would you try another book from David Eddings and Leigh Eddings and/or Dennis Holland?

The level of writing and the story are awful. I enjoyed previous books but this was a poor effort

What was most disappointing about David Eddings and Leigh Eddings ’s story?

Bad story, poorly developed characters, no conflict, bad dialogue, repetitive to the point it was distracting and pointless

What aspect of Dennis Holland’s performance would you have changed?

He didn't stand a chance with such poor material. The story was painful to listen to and some of the accents and character depictions were very bad

Painful....Stay clear!!!!

I’m not sure if this was a bad book or bad reading making a decent book bad. Whatever the case I could only manage 5 chapters then deleted it of my IPhone. Horrible Horrible narration, I forced myself to push thru the 5 chapter but couldn’t take anymore. How can this be rated so high??????????????

Worst ever

Would you try another book from David Eddings and Leigh Eddings and/or Dennis Holland?

No, no and no! As a former David Eddings fan I was hugely disappointed with this.

What could David Eddings and Leigh Eddings have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Shorten the book by half. Do you really have to retell the story to every new character introduced?

Would you be willing to try another one of Dennis Holland’s performances?

Not if I can help it. The accents were terrible.

Any additional comments?

I almost cried at the end of part 3 when I realized there was still 4 plus hours to go.

Decent story m, poor narration

It was a decent enough story albeit a bit long winded in places but the narration was painful to listen to...

Wake Me When It's Over

There is not particular reason you should pay any attention to my review of this book as I only listened to the first 45 minutes of it before I returned it to audible. I am sure there are those who loved this book, (after all it says it is a No.1 bestseller), but I can only assume they are heavily medicated. An absolute monotone delivery of an absolutely monotone book.

Great book, terrible preformance

I have been a fan of the Eddings for many years and read the actual book version of this many times. The story is great, even on rereading it has a lot of good parts. Listening to the audiobook version of this was painful. Painful is the best word I have for this experience. Dennis Holland felt the need to give the cast of characters accents. Now this would not be a bad thing, if he had managed to keep them straight or managed to hold those accents through an entire sentence. Nothing like hearing the male main character switch to one of the female character's accents mid-sentence! He also felt the need to change the pronunciation of character and place names halfway through. I'm still not sure if that was the result of the accents or some kind direction from the producers. I was thoroughly disappointed by this performance of a book I love so much. #tagsgiving #Sweepstakes

Too Easy for Althalus

What disappointed you about The Redemption of Althalus?

There seems to be no real problems for the heroes of the story. They just go along, and everything is either provided, or just works out fine. Nobody causes them any real trouble and anything they need they just get. It's all too easy and becomes boring. I unfortunately got so bored that I stopped partway through the book. Maybe it became more interesting later?

What could David Eddings and Leigh Eddings have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

I've really enjoyed other Eddings' novels - I read through the Belgariad and the Ruby Knight series, and what I really enjoyed was how there was difficulty and then how that difficulty was overcome.
Give Althalus some problems. At least make him hunt food and cook it, or go hungy instead of just saying, "beef" and having cooked beef appear.

What does Dennis Holland bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I enjoyed the vocal variety for the different charactars.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Redemption of Althalus?

I didn't actually get all the way through.

a hackneyed and pedestrian tale.

I am a great fan of Devid Eddings and was looking forward to re- entering his world but something has happened to his writing in the last 10 years . The writing is good and easy to read as you would expect, but where are the characters, where are the plots and sub plots- I managed 6 hours of this tale before giving up - the first audio book I have not been able to finish. I have 3 reasons for this. I. The tale is simple and linear with no surprises and progresses at a very slow snails pace. The main character is locked in a house for thousands of years and it really felt like it! You have to care about the main character fo engage in the tale of his life but he is a hackneyed stereotype cobbled together from previous stories. Finally the narator is to scottish accents what dick van dyke is to cockeys!!.. I cannot recommend this book and am disappointed I contributed to its No 1 bestseller strap line.

awful accents

Narrator does the most awful cringeworthy accents. Half the characters sound like characters in a terribly cliched RomCom where they're men pretending to be Italian women but not actually knowing what Italians or women sound like and going for the most stereotypical example. The others are 'not quite right' Scottish or Italian Dracula. The snobby English accents are bearable but nasal. Very glad i have this book in hardcopy as I'm not sure i can listen to the end.

Truly dreadful narration

I remembered the book and bought it when it was on special offer. Like all Eddings’ books it’s enjoyable but Dennis Holland really needs to give up trying to do accents. Cringeworthy across the board, but topped by the worst Scottish accent I’ve ever heard.

loved the story.. narration is weird

I read the reviews about the iffy scotch accent and I thought it would be "nay bother".. But it's really weird. like Costner or Crowe in robin hood. had to stop listening after a while as it really grated on my ears. better a standard Midwest.. It's more like someone putting on an accent when reading at night than an actor.
At least it's not the narrator from belgariad

A series in itself

What made the experience of listening to The Redemption of Althalus the most enjoyable?

Eddings is one of my favourite authors, but Althalus is by far the most fun of all the works. It's effectively a series within a single book, and has the freshness present in the Belgariad, but combined with the depth of the Younger Gods. Lots of fun, full of interesting characters.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Redemption of Althalus?

The biblical-style passages are fun.

What does Dennis Holland bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Audio books in general allow you to work whilst reading. Awesome!

Creative, Magical, A must read

Would you listen to The Redemption of Althalus again? Why?

Yes I love the story line although in parts the narrator is a little boring, and seem to lose interest

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Redemption of Althalus?

The bit when he find the house at the edge of the world and starts to learn the truth

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

not completely it took me two days in parts the narrator seem to make me feel he was not interested in reading this book but having read it myself and loving Eddings others I wanted to hear it through

Any additional comments?

Worth a listen

meh

absolutely loved the book (read it so many times), it was ruined by the bloke reading it on this occasion

Rubbish. Avoid. No redemption here.

Started well, then the authors forgot exactly what they set out to do. I have a suspicion that the novel started out with the title, and then they tried to work the plots to fit the title. There was no redemption for Althalus or the authors even , to be found here. Took me more than four weeks to finish listening to the book. I kept hoping that surely there will be some sort of way for the authors to redeem themselves. Nah. They were past redemption.
The characters were paper thin in depth and there was no connection other than the fact that they all seemed to have the hots for each other.
At times you wanted the authors to open one of those doors and go back into the past and prevent this travesty from happening. The bad god Dawos did not even get screen time in the book. He just allowed his underlings to get pounded. Not sure why Gent would be interested in gold. He could conjure up anything he wanted.
It is a shame we get swindled by reviews.
Take my advice dear reader and move along. Avoid seriously.

I really tried, it was awful.

I really tried but it was one of the worst books ever I feel ripped off.

Avoid !

Any fan of Eddings work will be sorely disappointed, unfortunately no where near as good as his early work.