The Valhalla Testament

By: Jon Land

Narrated by: Lance Axt

Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Imprisoned in Nicaragua, an NFL star must escape to the United States to warn the government of an impending terrorist attack - before the sinister forces of the international intelligence community silence him forever.

Jamie Skylar is not a political man. His life has always been about football, and that single-minded dedication was justified when, after he finished setting school rushing records at Brown, the New York Giants gave him a lucrative contract to join their crew of bruisers. But more important to him than football is his sister, and she needs him now.

An American undercover operative masquerading as a journalist in Central America, Beth has just learned of the Nicaraguan army’s plans for an attack inside the United States, codenamed Operation Thunder Clap. She invites her brother to visit her, intending to have him smuggle out the government’s sinister plans. But when she is murdered and Jamie is imprisoned, the running back will need all his strength to escape and warn the United States.

©1991 Jon Land (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Exciting story

The only problem was chapter 6. There were repeated sentences, some heavy breaths, Long unexplained pauses and even a burp at 9 minutes and 20 seconds!

Who edited this?

I think this has to be the worst editing of an audio book I've ever had. Around chapter 6 (8h15m to 7h44m remaining) the narrator tries to remember what voice goes with what character. He also belches! WTF!

Worst edit ever.

This story was a good one. The narrator almost made me stop listening to it. I don’t think the narrative was edited at all. There were many spots where the same line would be repeated several times. It was very distracting. If you are a fan of perfect narration, you might want to skip this one. I am glad I stuck with it though I is a good story.

Needs quality control

Several sections of the reading where the listener had to listen to the reader redo a passage until he was happy with how it sounded. Someone needs to quality control chapter 6 especially.

Great story by Land. Odd production narrator's reading.

I am a huge fan of Jon Lands work and this story did not disappoint. A little over and hour in the narration goes pear-shaped for a whole chapter. It sounds as if it is the raw tape from the reading without any editing. Full of repeated sentences, half spoken dialog, burping and clearing of his throat. But just for that chapter (and a minor bit here and there during the rest of the book) and it was weird. I found it amusing others might find it unlistenable. If you can bear that one mistake than the rest of the book was fun to read.

Did I accidentally buy the raw audio?

The recording sounds like it skips frequently and has sentences that repeat several times and you hear the multiple retakes where the performer tries multiple ways of reading. Odd long pauses at random. You hear the mouth sounds and clicking of tongue at the starts of sentences. The reader even belches more than once. The story is good but the audio makes it hard to follow the story when random parts of sentences are repeated 3 or 4 times and it separates the context.

Skip chapter 6

The narration needs to be edited in chapter 6 as well as what appears to be glitches. Story is not bad once you get past that.

lousy story

very poor playback with repeat lines throughout the reading very annoying and should not have been released

Needs edits

Did anyone listen before publishing? The audio version was horrible, so bad I stopped at Chapter 6 and I listen to hundreds of audiobooks. Just couldn’t take it with this one.

As-is audio!

I think nobody reviewed this audio before posting it as a done deal. There is a whole chapter full of rerecordings, patched together. I guess it was a draft that found its way to final version.