Poorly narrated

Being new to Audible and having been introduced to audio books by a 19 hour flawless reading of a Bill Bryson book by a professional actor I was a bit taken aback by the quality of the narration here where barely a sentence went by without a fluff or a gulp. I found it quite off putting. I’m not sure the frequent, long winded and difficult to understand quotations of old English did much to help the flow of the narrative either. Overall though a reasonable overview of the subject.

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2 people found this helpful

oh dear!

the subject is fastinating. Margret Beaufort is one of the most interesting women in British history and one of the least known. Unfortunatly this biography is rather academic in nature with long passages of original medevil language, The narrator could also have been better, she appears to have a throat problem and struggles with her pronunciation.

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1 person found this helpful

Amateur production, gave up listening to it.

Would you try another book written by Elizabeth Norton or narrated by Debra Burton?

I would try another book written by Elizabeth Norton but I would not listen to another book narrated by Debra Burton.

Would you be willing to try another book from Elizabeth Norton? Why or why not?

Yes. It was not the content that was irritating, just the production of the audiobook and narration.

How could the performance have been better?

Debra fudged and tripped over her words (these mistakes were left in!). She sounded like she was talking into a cassette tape machine in the bathroom (I could have done that for free). Her voice inflections and word emphasis was out of sync with the content of the story therefore it was unpleasing and difficult to listen to and absorb anything she was saying.

Was Margaret Beaufort worth the listening time?

The subject matter is very interesting and Elizabeth Norton's story may have been worth listening to, but the production irritated me so much I could not get to the end. I will have to read her book instead of listen to it.

Any additional comments?

It is a shame the story was let down by such an amateur production and narration.

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8 people found this helpful

Dreadful narration spoils the incredible history

The narration is woeful. Completely spoilt what should be an amazing historical account of a very important yet relatively unknown powerful woman.

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Frustrating listen

This is a period I know well and wanted to learn more about the title character. The blurb was promising, the reading of it, appalling. Constant stumbling over words, emphasis on wrong words, sentences didn't flow, mis-pronunciations, general lack of fluency and energy. Reminded me of a poor reader in school, just saying the words, not reading them for pleasure. Quality of sound was abysmal. I thought there was something wrong with my sound system but no, just a job done on the cheap. Have ordered the book to read myself and returned the audio version.

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5 people found this helpful

appalling narration

L reasonably interesting biography, And always good to read biographies of the forgotten women that are so important to history, however this book was not as well written as I would have hoped. It didn’t flow,, and felt a little bit machinelike.

However what really spoiled it for me was the appalling narration: so many words were mispronounced (including common ones: Ely, Corfe, Lancaster, Southwark). It’s extremely frustrating when I narrator doesn’t bother to learn standard pronunciation, especially when the words are repeated regularly throughout the book. It also sounded a touch robotic with wrong emphasis in many places.

If you like the topic, then the book is worth a read. But I absolutely do not recommend listening to the audible version.

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Poor

Really poor production. The narrator struggled with sentence construction and it sounded very amateurish. Without doubt, this is the worst Audible production that I have listened to. I'm surprised it made the grade.

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2 people found this helpful