Water Sleeps

Chronicles of the Black Company, Book 8

By: Glen Cook

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews

Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's Summary

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight in the trenches of vast sorceress wars, this epic has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them. Now Cook brings the latest cycle of the Black Company saga to a major climax, as the survivors of the disaster at the end of She is Darkness regroup in Taglios. Determined to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain, they journey there under terrible conditions, arriving just in time for a magical conflagration in which the bones of the world will be revealed, the history of the Company unveiled, and new worlds gained and lost...all at a major price. Wry, tough-minded, brilliantly imagined, and told with enormous flair, Water Sleeps is Glen Cook at the top of his game.

Listen to more in the Black Company series.

©1999 Glen Cook (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Extraneous Mouth Noises

Would you try another book from Glen Cook and/or MacLeod Andrews?

Glen Cook is fantastic. MacLeod Andrews has been great with other books, but this one, the recording distracted from his voice acting and the story.

What did you like best about this story?

This far into the series, pulled away from the protagonist that started the story, there was a challenge to make the reader care about these people. Glen Cook managed to keep me going, which is saying something.

How could the performance have been better?

Lick the roof of your mouth while opening your mouth. Here that popping, clicking sound? The subtle, moist smacking? At almost every pause in the narration, and several times in the middle of sentences, I could hear that sound.

Imagine 18 hours of that sound, and that's what the experience was like listening to this book.

My guess is that the microphone was too close to MacLeod's mouth, or something along those lines. Whatever the reason, it made listening to this book extremely difficult, because it was a constant distraction from the story being told.

Great

Story was amazing per usual.

Performance
While he might not be my favorite Narrator in this series, there is no doubt he is the most talented. His voices for one eye and the new character Suverin(sp?) are amazing works of art.

Fantastically Narrated

It had been a while since I had read the Black Company series, and this audible re-introduction was a pure delight. McLeod Andrews is one of the best narrators I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. The sheer dexterity of his voice allowed the diverse characters to fully come to life in this tale.

entertaining

little drawn out but i still love the characters. was interesting to see how the group stays the same even when there is only one original member from the first story.

another great

this one can seem kind of slow but it gets to the point eventually and we get to see how everyone grows and changes their time as we follow sleepy through being basically the captain

Excellent Narration

The story is the story. At this point in the series, you either love it, or you don't. Instead, this review will focus on MacLeod Andrews performance. At first, I was a bit put off by his narration. For one, I had never heard him before. He sounded nothing like the previous Black Company narrators, each of whom I liked for their own individual narration talents. Second, in the beginning, the book focuses primarily on two or three characters. During these chapters, the narrator makes all of those voices sound like variations of each other. But as the story progresses and the author adds more and more characters, the narrator's voice talents begin to shine. Each character has his or her own voice, and by the end of the story, I bet there were at least forty or so unique voices that he somehow managed to keep track of through the narration. I was incredibly impressed with this one sixty-second scene where Soulcatcher is talking with herself in a moment of insanity, which the author makes clear that each comment is meant to be heard in a different voice. And to my pleasure, the narrator brings out new unique variations for each of those voices without missing a beat. Bravo, MacLeod! Bravo!

Loved it!

Glen Cook did it again! Another dark Masterpiece as haunting as it is imaginative and beautiful!

Amazing voice actor

The voice Actor is utterly amazing. Perfect voice for sleepy and really brought Soul Catcher alive.

chew with your mouth closed

Either the microphone just clicks and pops for no reason, or ol' buddy's slobber filled mouth smacks with every sentence's end. Still a good book.

shouldn't have switched readers

i get that there is inherent bias once you get used to a good reader but this guys accents are over the top and his cadence is bad

Back to form

I very much enjoyed Water Sleeps after not quite the same enthusiasm for Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness. It is not the best paced story but it generally rattles along and builds out significantly the Company, Kina and Glittering Plain back stories.

There is some good character building - we learn much more about some former bit part players (not least because one is the annalist).

While some new characters come to centre stage there is a sense throughout that others are lining up for their final curtain call.

It could have been an ending - but it isn't - and it sets things up nicely for the last book.

Good narration.