Phil Gaskill

Amazing story, great narrator

Reviewed: 07-28-24

The story kept me on the edge of my seat, and Erica Sullivan is one of my favorite narrators.

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What a great story!!!

Reviewed: 05-22-23 Listener received this title free

This was my first Heathcliff Lennox mystery. (Or, really, just "Lennox." He HATES his first name, and asks people, not terribly politely, NOT to use it.) This is a great mystery story, with a totally surprising surprise ending. The characters are very well drawn, and I liked them all.
¶ One of the finest points of the Audible version of the series (this is the eighth book, and the ninth is just being released as I write this) is the wonderful narrator of all the books, Sam Dewhurst-Phillips. I have heard many narrators who do voices quite well, but I had never heard one who comes at all close to Sam's abilities in that department: every single person in the book is easily identifiable by Sam's voices. And not only the males: Sam does females much better than any other male narrator I'd ever heard, and the ladies are ALSO all totally identifiable just by his voice. Just amazing.
¶ FULL DISCLOSURE: This copy of the book was given to me by Karen Menuhin, the author. But I want to say that not a single word of this review (in fact, she did not even ask me to write a review) is intended to curry favor with her: it's all exactly what I would have said had I never had any contact at all with her and had paid full price for the book. I have now bought the first book in the series, and I fully intend to purchase them all in turn.

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2 people found this helpful

Mumbler

Reviewed: 08-07-22

If I were going to select the narrator for MY book on infinities, I would certainly pick one who could pronounce “infinitesimal.”

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A great book.

Reviewed: 08-01-20

I just this minute finished listening to the book, so I'm having a little trouble putting sentences together. A great story, sort of half police procedural and half young, inexperienced female detective solving the crime when nobody else thought she had. The great Nicol Zanzarella, the best narrator in the world (and that's saying a lot), brings it all together. Now I have to wait till January for the next book in the series.

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Horrible narrator; I couldn't finish the book.

Reviewed: 04-25-20

This narrator was SO bad that I could not finish the book. Mispronunciations, words out of order, inappropriate pauses, stresses on the wrong words, you name it. I was liking the story until I had to stop before I went crazy.

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Pretty good book so far; mediocre narrator

Reviewed: 04-09-18

I'm about 2/3 done with the book as I write this. I just came across the narrator—who is pretty good with accents, at least—not knowing the word "carotid," as in artery: he thinks it's pronounced "carteroid." That's on page 206 of 294 (ch. 57) in the Kindle version. Oh, and a couple of chapters earlier (ch. 54), I noticed his pronunciation of Highway A1A as if it was A-EYE-A. Turns out it's that way in the book, AIA rather than A1A, big mistake by the author; but any self-respecting narrator should KNOW what it is (the major state highway, runs right up the Atlantic coast) and should pronounce it right. Also, earlier there was a totally wrong (but similar) word to what should have been used, but I didn't check it out and now I forget. Could have been spelled right and the narrator blew it, or could have been a mistake by the author. ¶ Oh, well. I'm pretty much liking the story and will give the series at least one more chance before I think about giving up in disgust.

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Getting tired of Caroline

Reviewed: 01-28-18

The stories are (otherwise) very good; the narration is wonderful; but I'm getting awfully tired of Caroline's lack of trust in Joe and any kind of belief that he might possibly know anything about what he's doing. If I don't start feeling better about this by the end of the book (I've still got almost 4 hours to go), I'm afraid this is going to have to be my last one, which I'll consider a damn shame. First there was the supernatural stuff in the second book in the series, which almost turned me totally off right then; and now Caroline has turned into too much of a stupid bitch in, if my memory is correct, the latest three. Again, otherwise great books, but she plays a major, major part in them.

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Horrible narrator

Reviewed: 11-26-16

I haven't finished the book yet, but felt I HAD to try to counteract some of the other reviewers who loved the narrator. I can't remember when I last heard a narrator, especially of a science book, mispronounce so many words. Hell, he can't even pronounce "hydrogen," let alone a ton of other words. VERY distracting. Good voice, good rhythm and all that, but it's impossible in some cases to figure out what word he's trying to say. ¶ I'll add more commentary about the content itself later, after I've finished the book. Muller is one of my favorite scientists; I used to watch broadcasts of his class "Physics for Future Presidents" (i.e., physics in a nutshell, just what you need to know to survive in today's world without becoming a world-class expert in any one sub-field) and absolutely loved them.

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Great book needs better narrator

Reviewed: 09-17-12

What made the experience of listening to Darwin's Ghosts the most enjoyable?

It's an extremely fascinating story. We all know the Darwin narrative, but I didn't know anything about 90% of what's in this wonderful book.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Extremely affected British accent PLUS she turns final "d" into final "t" (I mean, she fairly *spits* those d's), leading to my misunderstanding of several names and terms that had been unfamiliar to me. In fact, believe it or not, this is the sole reason I broke down and bought the Kindle version, so I could figure out what she was saying.

If you could give Darwin's Ghosts a new subtitle, what would it be?

Well, I'm not much of one for glitzy, sexy, cutesy, say-something-so-people-will-buy-the-book titles and/or subtitles. My subtitle for this book would probably just be something like "Darwin's Forerunners" or "Predecessors Who Had Worked Out Most of How Evolution Worked" or some other thing to the point and non-misleading. (Actually, I'd probably choose my first example as the *title,* and my second as the subtitle.) But that's just me, I guess.

Any additional comments?

The book is WELL worth reading, despite the less-than-ideal narrator.

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Great book, lousy narration

Reviewed: 12-16-11

Would you be willing to try another one of Sean Pratt???s performances?

Absolutely not. He's the worst narrator I've ever heard, in his own unique category. His voice is pleasant and intelligent enough. His German pronunciations are mediocre (for every word that he pronounces perfectly, there's another that he totally mangles). But he's defined his turf by inventing a new way to make spoken sentence structure unclear, ambiguous, and utterly confusing: any time he seemingly (this is the only explanation I can think of) comes to a word at the end of a line that *conceivably* *could* be the end of a sentence, he assumes that it *is* the end of *the current* sentence, even if it makes absolutely no sense in the context of that sentence--and regardless of whether it has *any* punctuation after it. No punctuation = end of sentence. Comma = end of sentence. After an end-of-sentence pause with appropriate inflection, etc., he then continues on with the rest of the sentence (the part that's obviously on the next line) as if it were a sentence on its own, even though it makes absolutely no sense.

This alone makes the book almost totally unlistenable.

Unfortunately, before I started listening to anything, I bought all three books in the series. I assume the same thing is going to happen throughout. And I shall persevere, whether the narration drives me crazy or not (see my comments below about the book itself).

Any additional comments?

The author, in the preface or introduction to the book, states (I'm paraphrasing) that the book contains pretty basic information, and that if you're at all knowledgable on the topic, you might not learn anything new. I wish to disagree: I know something about the topic, and yet I find the book to be *very* educational, interesting, instructive, and the like. I think he's selling himself short. Audible just needs to find a better narrator for him.

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7 people found this helpful