The Wizard King of the North

Ranger Series, Book 4

By: Charles Lamb

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Newly crowned Wizard King of the North, Alex Rogers, has a real mess on his hands. The surprise successor to the vanquished Vassal King Ailmer, he inherits a kingdom in shambles. Bankrupt from the looted treasury and past mismanagement of the northern kingdom, he must find a way to restore prosperity in a place where almost no one seeks his involvement.

Besides the financial woes, he is besieged by the Lords of Gundor, all seeking a return to the days when there was no central kingdom and the Lords themselves ruled unchallenged on their holdings in the Gundor Valley. Undermined from his first day on the throne, Alex must put them in check with no army, no money, and few allies to draw upon.

As if a bankrupt kingdom and unruly Lords seeking his overthrow were not enough, his newly born child has become the focal point of interest to parties unknown. This unseen threat snatches the newborn child out from under the watchful eye of parents desperate to reclaim their heir.

It's now up to Cassie and Alex to move heaven and earth to reclaim their child and put an end to any plans to alter their heir's destiny.

©2022 CW Lamb (P)2022 Tantor

Great story, performed by much less talented voice actor.

Charles Lamb’s story was as excellent as the three before. Great characters, good plot, good pacing, great world building. But the performance was a huge disappointment. The previous three novels were performed by Travis Baldree, who is known for his excellent work. The new performer Todd McLaren unfortunately is not in the same league as Travis Baldree. He can pull off the narration (he sounds like a news caster or NPR radio host) and he can make male character voices (fair to middling), but his attempts at performing the female characters are abhorrent. Without considering the previous three performances in the series he changed pronunciation of names and places (you know you hate that too) as well as the character’s personalities, tone, and accents so much that a seductress with an melodic English accent becomes a husky woman with a Transvaal accent and the dignified and powerful Wood Elf King is transformed into a week sounding doddering old dodger. Strong and confident female characters now sound weak, pleading and hysterical. Audible or Tantor, or whoever the producer was, please don’t use this guy to perform books featuring female characters. He would be pretty good ready something like An audible tour of the Great Lakes or something like that. It is my recommendation, that if you are already completely dedicated to the story then can probably live through his butchering of the character performances. I made it through but was grumpy (and I’m usually pretty easy going about most performer’s shortcomings). But if you’re not already loving the story from the previous novels you will just get angry so I recommend reading this one in book form if you can instead of listening to this version. I hope that helps.

Narrator is really bad especially with the female characters

Like the story hate the narrator. Not nearly as good as the other stories. It’s a shame

why change the narrator?

loved the series. I feel like the other reviewers, No one can replace Travis.... I was determined to finished the series and don't regret it but the last book took a while to finish. literally picked the series because of Baldtree.

Good story well put together

All around a well imagined and well told story I would recommend reading this book

Geat series

I like the story line but of course the narrator is slow and no Travis B. I was able to still enjoy it by increasing the narrative speed to 1.15 and it helped. This narrator should not do female voices he is very poor at it for sure. The question is, would I get the next book with this narrator No!

Great story. Bad narrator

The storyline is great, love the series. Travis Baldree was amazing in the first three books. The new narrator is horrible… He gives no life to the characters, takes unnecessary pauses, overall disappointing.

Good but not the best

This book like the others was well written. I think the ending could have been a hair bit better, but that's my opinion. I wish they would have kept Travis as a narrator for this book as well because Travis first off did the first three and second off just brings characters life. This narrator wasn't bad but he wasn't the best either. all in all, if you read the first three books then stick it out and read this one. It does bring a conclusion to the story maybe not one you hope, but nevertheless a good ending for a good story

A disappointment

Charles Lamb decided to change the story direction along with the series narrator which, combined, made the book less interesting. The emphasis moved away from Alex being the MC to that of more females (nymphs, succubus, mermaids) being involved, many of which having seductress traits; along with female elves being trained to be premiere rangers besting male combatants. This moved the book from a balanced fantasy genre to that of a female-empowerment one.

Changing the narrator from Travis Baldree to Todd McLaren was also a setback. Todd is a very good narrator and I enjoyed his performance in the Halo series as well as others but was less than enjoyable here.

While the series seemed to come to a conclusion with this book but I will not continue on with the series if there are continued books.

Disappointed in delivery

Please use the same recording artist this was a let down as expectations were much higher than the delivered

The change in Narrator. WTF

It is a mistake to change the Narrator in the middle of a series. This should be redone with the return of Travis Baldree. The timing of this new reader is slow and I miss Travis Baldree’s voices.

Love the story but it’s an issue with the new Narrator.