Pronunciation is important

I have nothing but praise for the Labyrinth Index. It continues the laundry files, picking up soon after The Delerium Brief, in the beginnings of case nightmare green. If you're a fan then this story will not disappoint.
However I do have to mention the elephant in the room and that's the pronunciation of Mhairi Murphy by the narrator. In the previous books her name is pronounced as Ma-Ree. It's a Gaelic variation of Mary. If you really wanted to be pedantic "mh" in Gaelic is usually pronounced as "V".
The narrator however continually pronounced it as Ma-Hari. It was very annoying and somewhat detracted from the enjoyment of the book.
Whoever produced the book should at least check pronunciation from the previous books to ensure continuity when changing narrators.

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2 people found this helpful

Reader does not fit with the series

Readers who join a series part way through should be obliged to listen to the previous books and at least make a passing attempt to follow the accents and personality of the characters as already established. They should also be obliged to follow a name prononciation guide for characters, species, planets, etc.

This is like it belongs to a different series to the rest. Names are so badly pronounced that they have changed (“Mari” has become “Mahari” - I don’t know what the original spelling was but this far into the series the pronunciation has now been established). Bob has changed from being a dour and slightly grumpy character to a whiney geek with a squeaky voice. Brains has developed a full-on Scottish accent. And all the male characters are just shouty cartoon versions of the originals.

This might be a really good book, but I’m finding it hard to tell through the reading.

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Good story. Jarring accents.

Good story but some of the accents were a bit grating. I got through it in order up continue with this excellent series. You can to.

Here’s a question audible book production companies. How about using male voiceover artists to voice the male characters and female voiceover artists to voice the female characters?

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Based on partial listen

It's no use. Just occasionally there are narrators that so wind me up that I have to return the book rather than listen all the way through. This is one. It's the joint worst narration I've heard - and I've heard a lot. The worst crime of all, as mentioned by other reviewers, is that the reader hasn't even bothered to find out how to pronounce the main protagonists name. None of the characters sound anything like they have before, accents are over the top and way out. I'm going to see if I can get text to speech on kindle instead as I'd rather have a robot voice than this. Just awful, which is sad for me as I was counting the days to the release.

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15 people found this helpful

Some sound edit errors, overall enjoyable

Editing errors at: Ch. 4 18m 22s remaining & Ch.4 16m 12s remaining.

Laurence Bouvard is a good narrator, but some of the English accents don't match those established by UK series narrator Jack Hawkins. That said, she does this book excellently and it was really enjoyable once I'd got my head around the difference(s).

Still listening to this series as started so well, but has basically jumped the shark in the last couple of installments. Nonetheless, looking forward to what comes next.

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Good story utterly utterly ruined by the performan

I have listened to or read all of the Laundry file novels. narrator ruined this one
Real talent required to make all the male characters sound like petulant 12 year olds - not!!

I have a high tolerance but I have had to stop listening to calm down.....

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27 people found this helpful

Excellent Story, but.......

Story as captivating as always, but I hope that an audible version read by Jack Hawkins is released soon.....Ms Bouvards' reading is really nowhere as good :(

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12 people found this helpful

Great story poor reading

Badly edited reading is full of mispronounciations, misread sentences and truly terrible comic renderings of British Accents reminiscent of Dick Van Dyke in the original Mary Poppins. Impossible to listen to without frequently wincing. This might be fine for non-native English listeners but not for anyone actually from the UK. All of these problems could and should have been fixed in the editing stage. A great shame because this is a brilliant new book by Charles Stross. I'm off to buy a print copy.

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Appalling narrator, actually puts you off

The story is good but the narrator is absolutely appalling and actually puts you off listening to the book for more than a few minutes at a time. Also the pronunciation of the lead characters name is dreadful, you don't pronounce the 'h' in Mhairi. I find it hard to believe that the author heard and approved the narration. The voice characterisation's of the players in the story sound like broad stroke caricatures rather than well considered portrayals and the narrator is awful at doing british accents.

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16 people found this helpful

Good story let down by strange narration.

The narration is not that bad but at odds with past books. As others are finding if you have followed the series there is a change in narrator witch is fair enough female main lead character. However even if there is an intention as the story takes place in the USA to make everyone sound American it comes across as the narrator has not listened to the other books, as names and regional accents don't match up with how I have come to expect them to sound. perhaps the narrators don't get access to past recordings of the series??, perhaps in the USA they have a different recording to the UK and this follows the established character voices. It left me almost returning the audiobook and getting the print copy.

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3 people found this helpful