my favourite book

I've read this book twice. I thought I'd listen to it this time, the narration is awful. The performance is very pantominish...and every time Niclays Roos was speaking it made me cringe. If you like sapphic high fantasy, do yourself a favour and read it rather than listen to it hear.

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2 people found this helpful

confusing early on

it isn't clear enough that this has multiple POV so I found myself lost for the first 8 hours... once I established that I found it more cohesive and was able to follow it and enjoy it. decent story but I feel I lost half of it in the confusion.

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1 person found this helpful

fantastic story and superb narrator

the narrator was amazing in bringing this epic story to life! would highly recommend it

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wish there was more villain development.

thoroughly enjoyed the book. the performance was amazing, all the accents helped portray each region well. I wish there was more backstory and development of the nameless one, he was hyped up to be this big bad, and although he was, I didn't feel the payoff was as big as it could have been. still a great listen

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Great story let down by the narrator

Really enjoyed the story. It did take a few chapters to get into the flow but it was worth it. I’d recommend it for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire.

My main issue with this audiobook is the narrator. The performance ranges from the monotonous to cringey. I listened to the entire book but it was quite hard work in places due to some of the voices they decided to use. I think this would benefit from having a cast rather than a single narrator.

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I wish I could listen again

I really liked the story. I would love to listen to it again. The majority of the voices were good but there were a couple that were just weird and off putting.

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story and narrator are fantastic

I love the story, one of my faves now, but also I think the narrator is fantastic. So often a narrator ruins a good story but in this case it strengthened and enriched the story. Absolutely class A voice and narration.

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Tedious but has potential

This was a hard listen. I didn't actually know what was happening in the story until about 75% of the way through and even then I'm still a little confused. Far too many characters. I felt sorry for the narrator, there have been negative comments in other reviews about how it's different to distinguish between characters but when there are so many characters... I was impressed she was able to keep up. I had to download a kindle version of the book so I had access to the list of characters and glossary at the back of the book. Because of this I didn't really get to know any of the characters. It felt like an exam also where you needed to do further reading to understand and interpret the text.
Also, first half of the book, unnecessary. LOADS of world building. Again, had to keep referring to the maps at the beginning to understand who was where.
I will say that Shannon is a beautiful writer and this is why I stuck to the book till the end. I am not going to completely write this book off and in the future I will try it again. It has so much promise for greatness.
Maybe I'll try some of her other books first.

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2 people found this helpful

Confusing

I had high expectations for this book but I felt a bit let down. The narration wasn’t the best and it made an already quite confusing book even harder to follow. I also didn’t love the characters I just sought of liked them.

However I loved the feminist world, that was great.

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1 person found this helpful

It was hard put down & even harder to finish.

Amazing book, great story & characterisation. Very long & a little convoluted close to the end which I don't mind too much as it'll make for great re-reading. The romance was a slow burn & drawn out very beautifully & not just a gimmicky one time thing. The characters all had amazing chemistry & were multidimensional. And the narration was superb, loved every minute. Great book, honestly. Highly recommend!

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