The Revolt of the Angels

By: Anatole France

Narrated by: James Holt

An angel called Arcade leaves heaven for earth, where, using his invisibility, he steals books from a library with the purpose of studying. He ultimately joins several other fallen angels with a plan now to overthrow God, in their eyes an incapable and ill-informed and thus impossible creator...The great author's knowledge of history and religious texts is brilliantly conveyed, pairing extremely well with his cynical philosophy and the virtuosity in his descriptive prose.Public Domain (P)2019 Musaicum Books

Incredibly Disappointing

I was extremely disappointed by both the story and the narration performance. I really wanted to love it since this book was so highly recommended, but it's a jumbled mess. The author spends the vast majority of the book delving into side stories and soap operas with irrelevant and unmemorable characters who have nothing to do with the main plot. There's a few chapters about a quarter of the way in that give an interesting and captivating narrative of the rebellion of Lucifer and his army before the creation of the world, and an account of the different fallen angels through early human history. But after this it goes back to surface level drama with human characters who nobody cares about.
The only reason I pushed through and finished the story is because throughout the whole book we're given a sense that it's building up to an incredible final battle between the fallen angels and the host of heaven. What could be a more epic climax to any story ever written, right? Except the total duration of this battle was less than 5 minutes of the audiobook, and we're left with a half-hearted moral of the story and then the book is over...
It's as if the author made it to the final chapter and then just decided they were done writing and had their editor wrap it all up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that the story didn't end "the way I wanted it to", on the contrary, the story went the way I had actually hoped, but for some reason the author couldn't be bothered to actually make the effort to write the damn thing.
On the performance of the narrator, I was right away regretting my purchase just based on the voice of the guy reading it. It sounds more like a voice-changing filter that's a few octaves lower than most people speak, and he reads like a robot with no fluctuations or emphasis where an actual human would put them. Was it just a text-to-speech program doing the narration? It's very possible. There's also a long interruption at the start of every new chapter where we're reminded on the title of the book, the name of the author, the name of the translator, the chapter number, and a brief description of what we can expect to happen in that chapter. Nobody asked for this, and it's a very tedious and annoying interruption.
Overall, I'm more disappointed in this book than I was with the way Game of Thrones ended, and I would not recommend it to anyone.

Good story, but too many speed bumps.

The end of each chapter is announced, then the next chapter begins with reminding the listener of the book’s title, author, and translator. And the first few chapters made me wonder if I had downloaded the right book.

An excellent and inspiring work

The book itself is such a great work! The narrator was a bit dry at times, but an excellent narrator none the less!

It's very...early-20th Century French, alright.

And with all the vicissitudes of the writing style of the time.

Buried amongst the story are gems of insight, some about the perspective of the world at the time, some an alternative perspective on God and Christianity, some of which is certainly still applicable today. This is one of those books I would get very lost struggling to read on my own, so I'm grateful I was able to listen to it.

That said, in agreement with many of the other reviewers, the narrator is very...academic. You will hear all the words clearly, but you will never hear the characters' voices, tone, or inflection. You'll have to imagine that.

Overall, I'm glad I read it, but someone looking for a summary of the hidden gems could seek the Cliff Notes or, based on the chapter titles (you have to listen to the opening of each chapter to get the titles, which are really more like chapter descriptions, which is helpful), listen to key chapters such as those of the Gardener's story, Arcadi's first appearance, and the final chapter.

I did think the book ended very abruptly, and had a lot of lead up for such an abrupt ending. I also couldn't fail to be upset by the assertion that women and God's angels were just made in such a way that God's angels just wouldn't be able to help themselves around women, such is the nature of the world. Other than that it was just...again, very early-20th Century French.

PS, there are only 35 chapters.

Great story, but poor reading.

Witty, intelligent, and entertaining, this story is delightfully unexpected though the reader failed to enhance the prose.

Narrator makes it hard to enjoy the story

I'm not done, and I'll update this when I am. I know the premise of the story, since it's such a famous work it would be hard not to, so I do plan to finish it, but it's a little excruciating to get through.

The story starts off super slow, and the author focuses on so many itty bitty details that wind up being entirely insignificant that it's often difficult to keep track of what's going on. I've been assured by many of my friends who've read it that it does eventually pick up the pace, so I'm holding out to that point at least. Based purely on the pacing and the inconsistency of focus between tangents and the main story, it comes across as a book written by someone who is still in the process of discovering their writing style. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of going in. I don't feel I can really pass judgment on the story itself until I am finished, but I've heard nothing but fantastic things about it.

Normally the complaints I mentioned wouldn't be so much of a problem, but the way the text meanders is exacerbated by the completely lifeless reading of the narrator. His pronunciation is clear, but the total monotone of his voice paired with the constant run-on sentences and off topic tangents of the text make it impossible to follow anything he says. Maybe it's just difficult to follow because of my ADHD, but I feel like it's bad enough that it would be painful for even a neurotypical person.

I would search for another edition with another narrator, and honestly I just might at this point, but I don't want to waste the credit I already spent on this one.

Great book but narrator is not ideal

Unfortunately the narrator, James Holt, is just wrong... It's like Eeyore the donkey is reading....I had to speed it up to 1.25x so I wouldn't get depressed. I actually really love Eeyore...I just wish he wasn't reading this book. I think Christopher Robin would have been a better choice, or perhaps Rabbit. At least have someone narrate who knows how to pronounce French words and names with a little je ne sais quoi. Poor Eeyore couldn't even remember how he pronounced names from previous chapters. Also, each chapter he recites the book title, author, and translator before reading the chapter number and title. It is a strange habit and unnecessary as it interrupts the flow of the story. Wonderful story otherwise, a worthy read....just not my favorite voice style with James Holt.

I just couldn't get into it.

I just can't get into this. It's dull. This was one I was told I had to get and it just... it was boring to me.