Review: Audiobooks

I think it's pretty well established that I love to read and that when I find a story I like, I'll reread it several times. One of the ways I do this is through audiobooks. My commute is 30-45 minutes, each way, depending on traffic. Listening to the radio/XM is fine, but it doesn't hold my attention and more often than not, I found myself checking email and Facebook while inching my way home. Bad juju, bwana. That's when I decided to go back to my previous commute time pleasure - audiobooks. I'd fallen out of the habit when my travel time dropped to ten minutes and after one too many near-rearendings, I knew it was time to go back. I've listened to a few now - and so, a few mini-reviews for those looking for an audiobook.

Harry Potter - read by Jim Dale. Five stars. These are my benchmark. Any reader of any book/series will inevitably be held to Jim's standard (and I'm not biased just because I've met him - I loved his reading well before that.) His use of individual voices for each character (over 150 of them) makes you feel more like you're listening to a play than a book narration.

Hunger Games trilogy - read by Caroline McCormick. Four and a half stars. The half-star is only taken off because at the beginning of Hunger Games, Katniss' voice is almost too girlish and its somewhat offputting. That girlish voice doesn't last long, though. Also, the voices she uses for both Peeta and Cinna give me chills every time I hear them.

Chronicles of Nick - read by Holter Graham. Five stars. There is something about Holter's voice that just...*is* the Dark Hunter world. Especially when he does Nick's Cajun accent. He's got the right level of sarcasm and a brilliant ability to deliver it flawlessly to the point I'm sitting in my car, laughing in traffic.

Acheron - also by Holter Graham. Five stars. Where Holter gets Nick's sarcasm, he also REALLY gets Acheron's pain - both during the human part of his life where he's more shell than person, and again as 11,000 year old god resigned to an eternity alone and terrified to accept that that might actually change. Well paced, well read, and flawlessly delivered.

Night Pleasures - read by Carrington MacDuffie. One star. And here we see how when it goes wrong, it goes really, REALLY wrong. There are times I'm thrilled that readers try to use the accents for varying characters in the books they're reading. (See above regarding Holter Graham and Nick's cajun dialect.) However, when the main voice in the story is either an overly saccharine southern belle, a southerner pretending to be Gaelic, or ...whatever it is she was trying to do with Kyrian's voice...it gets to the point you're not listening to the words or the story. You're trying to keep from driving into oncoming traffic to stop the pain.

Twilight - Read by Ilyana Kadushin and Matt Walters. This is a tough one to rate. Ilyana's okay, but she has an annoying tendency to get the dialogue intonation wrong. It's at the best nose-wrinkling, at the worst, jarring to the point you get pulled out of the story. The only saving grace of the whole Twilight audiobook series is in Book 4, when Matt Walters takes the helm. He's got Jake's timing, Jake's sarcasm, and Jake's pain...all perfect. Ilyana gets two stars, Matt gets five.



The Host - read by Kate Reading Four stars. This was another of those times I had to settle in to the audiobook before the reader's narration clicked. It wasn't immediate, but as I listened, I realized that the static voice she used was more Wanderer than it was the reader. As the main characters settled, so did she. And Kate's alto voice made the make voices more believable than any most women-reading-men can manage. Occasional blips with intonation and inflection, but not enough to draw away from the overall enjoyment.