Great narration of a Bollywood story.

Kish Sharma takes a little while to get accustomed to but does a very fine job.

The author took a great canvas of time, place and detail but ended up with all the improbability of a Bollywood script.

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Good read

Great story well read. Is the next book available? I would like the same narrator.

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A brilliant book....ruined by the narration

This is an absolutely cracking read, a story so vivid and sublime, I lived through the sailings, the islands, the laskars and everything unique about this period of the East India Company, indentured Indian coolies, opium trade with China and a lot more.
Unfortunately it is narrated extremely poorly. Kish Sharma absolutely gallops away and at time it’s a blur of slurred words. I had to listen at x0.8 to be able to understand anything. I suppose the reasons to select Krish Sharma could have been his Indian decent, but this doesn’t work at all. I speak the language well and it’s jarring to hear such poor accent and incorrect use of the words. Given that the book is full of Hindustani, Bhojpuri and Urdu this means a lot of words are painfully incorrectly pronounced.
I absolutely love the story and will definitely be downloading the next books. I am just extremely glad that the next book is read by a different narrator.

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Use the replay speed facility

I was wondering if I could make it through this book. The narrator was galloping and I wasn’t catching names etc. I saw others had mentioned this in reviews. But then I found the speed setting for the replay. Set at 0.75 it slowed down sufficiently to not slur, and give me the detail and time to absorb comfortably. Huge difference. Great book....

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4 people found this helpful

I’m hooked

Totally engrossing story beautifully read. It’s a long book but I could have listened all over again. My only complaint is that each of the books in the trilogy are narrated by different readers. The voices of the characters have been lodged in my head now and just can’t bring myself to listen to new ones, so have decided to buy the next two books instead.

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Great story, exotic location

This is a really original and different story, about a time and a place that most of us know little of. It is outstandingly well narrated by Kish Sharma, who gives each character a unique and entirely convincing voice.

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Loved this book

I really liked the background and history to the poppy trade.
I also enjoyed the way the story unfolded, the connections were made and characters were brought together.
It seemed to end a bit abruptly but from the threads throughout the story we know it all comes together. Great book!

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Slow and steady like the flow of the Ganga

Once again, Ghosh grips you from the very first word of the very first page and doesn’t let you go. The pace of the book is slow and languid. The different subplots flow down like tributaries into the main plot (the Ganga) until it reaches the ocean and readies for the next part of the trilogy (it ends abruptly on a cliff hanger and wants you to take up the next book of the trilogy straight away).
Found Kish Sharma’s pronunciation of Indian words jarring. If you can do an American and a French accent surely you could try and pronounce Indian words better: especially the voiced consonants like Dh or Bh. But the book is teeming with different accents and languages (Avdhi, Bengali, Urdu) which would have tested anyone. I think someone like Naseeruddin Shah or Kabir Bedi would have done it justice (although I think the latter is no more).

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Loved the book

Would you listen to Sea of Poppies again? Why?

I never listen to a book twice.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

I loved this book, but I wonder if the narrator got a bonus for reading at twice the normal rate. I am glad to see that the second part of the trilogy is narrated by a different narrator.

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3 people found this helpful

Brilliant storyteller

A wonderful story full of imagery of time and place. And the narrator's voice and pronunciation of some difficult foreign words brings the story alive.

I could listen too his voice forever and am disappointed to see he isn't the narrator for the next two novels in the trilogy.

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