The Book of Life

Discovery of Witches trilogy:

The book itself from the author is a fabulous read. All be it from time to time a little inconsistent of how each character throughout is depicted. Diana lost her personality. For example; on Track 9, when Diana saves baby Grace from the fire in the Bishop kitchen and Diana then explains of her power and skills to the room. Sarah openly snaps at her throughout, at least that’s how it’s narrated. Not so long ago, Diana would have said after Sarah’s constant snapping: Sarah , stop snapping at me, I’m not lying, you would know if I was. Instead, Diana lets Sarah throughout the conversation just snap at every word she says, letting Sarah imply she is lying, when she knows perfectly well that one witch cannot lie to another, in this series anyway. Diana in the first book would never allow that to happen, she would have said something. Mathew is a complex and sometimes a volatile creature. But in the narrating, he rarely raises his voice, if ever. That’s not how the series was filmed, which was true to how the character was written, in my point of view.
Now, It’s the narrator that’s the main issue for me. Several things here; narrators need to act when they read. That’s what an narrator is in my opinion. There are a lot of characters, from USA, Italy, France etc, with the main accent being heavily British, or English. The narrator speaks from the voice of her own tongue which is American. She reads from Diana’s tongue which is also American. When the narrator reads from an English tongue, words are heavily said from an American tone and pronunciation, which is cringing to listen too. Everybody knows that English is the language from Britain. And what we like to call, the Queens English. Everything Americans pronounced is completely wrong to the way the English say everything, not to mention the spelling. So when the narrator is talking from an English perspective, she is still pronouncing every word in the book the way say she would and as Americans would say it, exactly. Nothing she has said sounds remotely like say I would say or pronouce anything from the books when an English or British accent is required. That’s how it should be read and acted from the narrator, it’s a big job to do this job well. I shout at my device, saying to the audio book: why is she saying it like that. It’s so frustrating, and before she started narrating these books for audio, it would have served her well if she would have completed a great deal of research into how original English is spoken. The other issue is she keeps throughout the book what I would call, singy songy speech. One minute the narrator is talking normally and within the same sentence she is doing a singy songy reading. It’s extremely annoying. Why is she reading like that, it’s not necessary.

Also, and for example the character of Gallowglass. It’s bad enough the narrator has not captured the Scottish accent either. But his voice sounds like a five foot man thin and weedy. Not a huge man of height and width as described. If it’s not possible to get all the characters accents correctly, then don’t try and do something that is out of your skill. I rather her read the book in a normal way than the way it was approved and sent out to the mainstream. Her voice is pleasant enough to listen to without all the wrong accents, incorrect pronunciation, the tone of a great deal of the sentences within a sentence which have been read up and down. If one is mimicking one who is English, speak like the English do, to include all pronunciations performed correctly. It was not captured in any of the three books narrated for audio thus far by this narrator.
I’m surprised by the author allowing this great piece of work to be approved for audiobooks. She should have had more say or put her foot down. All the work needed to complete this trilogy has been spoilt when reading for audiobooks. I just hope that the next audiobook due July 2024, has improvements and the narrator has taken note, as it’s the same one for all three previous audiobooks. And new alike.

I cannot believe that this audio has not been sorted. It only downloaded chapters 40 and 41. I was so looking forward to listen to this last book. Give me my £9.99 back please, so I can get it from somewhere else. Very disappointed.

Only downloaded one chapter