Non-Partisan Viewer
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Seed
- By: Ania Ahlborn
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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With nothing but the clothes on his back - and something horrific snapping at his heels - Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. Now, years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead. Surviving a violent car crash seems like a miracle for Jack’s family, but Jack knows there’s nothing divine about it.
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THE DIRTY SOUTH
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-28-16
- Seed
- By: Ania Ahlborn
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
Just Whole Lot of Meh
Reviewed: 10-22-24
Went with the reviews on this one. I’m not entirely sure we all listened to the same book. This was some of the most mediocre writing/storytelling I’ve experienced in a long time.
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The Scarlet Gospels
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Scarlet Gospels takes listeners back many years to the early days of two of Barker's most iconic characters in a battle of good and evil as old as time: The long-beleaguered detective Harry D'Amour, investigator of all supernatural, magical, and malevolent crimes, faces off against his formidable and intensely evil rival, Pinhead, the priest of hell. Barker devotees have been waiting for The Scarlet Gospels with baited breath for years, and it's everything they've begged for and more.
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Guys, I have a great idea for character voices...
- By Jim Fenner on 06-03-15
- The Scarlet Gospels
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: John Lee
Sweet Jesus! What is wrong with this narrator?
Reviewed: 05-25-23
Small critique for potential directors of audiobook performances: pick an appropriate voice for the story. The narrator’s native accent is fine for the “Pinhead” dialogue (I do find his delivery a little rushed and possibly just a little too familiar) but the majority of characters are of specific regions of the U.S. A Foghorn Leghorn impersonation is not how one goes about voicing individuals from New Orleans, and Jack Nicholson (ala Prizzi’s Honor) is not appropriate for folks from New York City. The stereotypical Jewish accent is FAR too prevalent in this performance as well. My advice: pick a new narrator and start over.
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A Book of Bones
- A Thriller
- By: John Connolly
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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He is our best hope. He is our last hope. He is our only hope. On a lonely moor in northern England, the body of a young woman is discovered. In the south, a girl lies buried beneath a Saxon mound. To the southeast, the ruins of a priory hide a human skull. Each is a sacrifice, a summons. And something in the darkness has heard the call. Charlie Parker has also heard it, and from the forests of Maine to the deserts of the Mexican border, from the canals of Amsterdam to the streets of London, he will track those who would cast the world into darkness.
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narration distracting
- By Nowhere man on 10-18-19
- A Book of Bones
- A Thriller
- By: John Connolly
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
Overall, again, a good story ruined by meandering prose and an annoying reader.
Reviewed: 06-03-22
I’m almost there. I’ve almost listened to nearly all of Charlie Parker series books by John Connelly. It’s been a long time! I’m a little sad, actually, that it’s all coming to an end (until the next book, of course).
I wish I could say I loved this story, but I can’t. I can’t get past the meandering prose that has always existed in these books, but seems to be prevalent as of late. Parts of the book just drone on and on and on and… you get the picture. This book could seriously lose a good 100-150 pages and still be overlong. Way too much exposition on characters that are entirely meaningless to the story, feelings and thoughts given voices that do not fit the character’s personality (there’s probably a literary term for this but I don’t know what it is.), and the aforementioned meandering prose - all lend themselves to what feels like a chore of a book.
Don’t get me started on Jeff Harding.
Ok… just a few points. The good: Jeff Harding is easily the best of all the readers in the Charlie Parker series, which really isn’t saying much. His constant mispronunciation of common words like “nomenclature”, “pasta”, and “minutiae” make me cringe every time he utters them. It begs the question: is there a director or does Jeff just phone this stuff in? His voice characterizations make everyone either sound like 5 year old girls (the women) or adults with speech issues - just… ugh!!!
The story… let’s see. It’s long. It takes over half of the book for something to actually happen, and the foreshadowing is terribly heavy-handed. The story is fine. All of the Charlie Parker stories are fine. They aren’t great, but they aren’t literary genius either.
Could be worse. It could be James Patterson!
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The Burning Soul
- A Charlie Parker Mystery
- By: John Connolly
- Narrated by: George Guidall, Tony Ward
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Randall Haight has a secret: He is a convicted murderer, a man with the blood of a young girl on his hands. He has built a new life for himself in the small Maine town of Pastor's Bay, but someone has discovered the truth about him. He is being tormented by anonymously sent reminders of his crime. He wants private detective Charlie Parker to make them go away.
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Great Story, Uneven Narration
- By Bob on 11-06-11
- The Burning Soul
- A Charlie Parker Mystery
- By: John Connolly
- Narrated by: George Guidall, Tony Ward
Does Anyone Actually Listen?
Reviewed: 01-27-22
Does anyone actually listen to these performances before they are published for consumption. Wow! This may be one of the worst performances of audio book EVER! The story was fine, but the performances were horrendous. Boring and uninspired. Keeping characters straight in a conversation was nearly impossible.
Thankfully, this book didn’t seem to suffer the bloat of previous books. There was no 5 page description of a character’s appearance, and he seemed to keep the chapter long brooding sessions to a minimum as well. And there was no mention of “the honeycomb world” - a concept I never understood nor found interesting.
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Dark Hollow
- A Thriller
- By: John Connolly
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Back again is ex-New York Police Detective Charlie "Bird" Parker, who has returned to his hometown of Scarborough, Maine, after the vicious killings of his wife and daughter; it is time to leave the bloodstained streets of Manhattan and rebuild his family's house - as well as his own life.
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I could do without the romance
- By Gregory C. H. on 06-16-17
- Dark Hollow
- A Thriller
- By: John Connolly
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
Another Great Parker Book With Less Than Great Narration
Reviewed: 10-07-21
I’m not sure who directs the voice narration in these books, but they really should be fired. Allowing Jeff Harding to continually mispronounce names, locations, and simple words is silly. Every time he utters the name “Cheryl” with a hard “ch” sound, takes me right out of the story. I think Jeff needs a new career. His work on Every Dead Thing was equally horrendous.
The book… is good. Of course it is!
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A Darkness More than Night: Harry Bosch Series, Book 7
- By: Michael Connelly
- Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A movie director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then staging her death to make it look like a suicide. In a seemingly unrelated case, a loner is murdered, leaving the sheriff's department with no clues. One unsettling revelation after another leaves a retired FBI agent and an L.A. detective thinking they've unmasked a most frightening killer with almost inconceivable calculation.
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Narrator is the worst ever
- By Keith on 11-23-05
?
Reviewed: 08-11-21
If the investigators are people at the top of their game, why would they make such a leap with absolutely NO physical evidence? So many bad moments in this book. Don’t get me started with narrator. I didn’t it could get any worse after Angel’s Flight, but I was wrong! Who directs these narrators? Harry comes across sounding like slurring alcoholic. Just terrible.
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