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Originally Posted by ACGAuthor
Pretty much all of the old Pern books. As hard as they have tried, Audible can't fix the fact that many of them were produced in the early 90s, or even before then. You can't even get a copy of Nerilka's Story (at least not legally) and the illegal copies are so horrid as to make it not worth the effort. They sound like they were recorded off an old cassette copy.
And honestly? As skilled a narrator as Simon Vance is, I really wish they hadn't used him for the Kushiel's Scion/Justice/Mercy trilogy by Jacqueline Carey. Imriel is a very young character and Simon Vance's voice is just not right for the character. They needed someone who sounded younger (same with the Kushiel's Dart/Chosen/Avatar trilogy and Naamah's Kiss/Curse/Blessing trilogy, both of which were narrated by Anne Flosnik who sounds so middle-aged, college educated British that she doesn't do Phedre (a young quasi-French courtesan) or Moirin (a young quasi-Celtic girl) any justice whatsoever.)
Great narrators, both of them, but I'd really like to have a word with whoever chose them for that series.
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Hey, honesty is always the best policy.
Yea, I've got the original Dragonriders series (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, White Dragon) all recorded by Dick Hill. I've also got the Harper Hall series, recorded by Sally Darling. Dragonflight was recorded in 93. The Harper Hall series about a decade later.
I did buy all of them from audible, so perhaps they have been cleaned up a bit. I just listened to a few minutes of it and didn't notice any sound quality issues. The major difference is that Hill reads the book without much in the way of character voices. I seem to recall that a lot of the early narrators took that approach.
I have a couple of Fredrick Forsyth books (Odessa File, Day of the Jackal) and the narrator for those took the same approach. It can be a bit on the dry side and difficult to stay engaged when you are use to the full character actor with unique voices for each character. I would like to hear those with re-recorded.
I suspect that is one reason they re-recorded Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen series, that and the fact that the original narrator only recorded the first book. I didn't hate her, but really enjoyed the new narrator a lot more.
I haven't listened to the Kushiel series, but yea, even the best narrator can struggle when they don't really match the main character.