Queens of the Wild cover art

Queens of the Wild

Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation

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Queens of the Wild

By: Ronald Hutton
Narrated by: Gary Paul Williams
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About this listen

A concise history of the goddess-like figures who evade both Christian and pagan traditions, from the medieval period to the present day

In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the fairy queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed over the centuries.

Looking closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition—Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses. He makes the compelling case that these goddess figures found in the European imagination did not descend from the pre-Christian ancient world, yet have nothing Christian about them. It was in fact nineteenth-century scholars who attempted to establish the narrative of pagan survival that persists today.

©2022 Ronald Hutton (P)2022 Tantor Europe Great Britain Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts Royalty Witchcraft Magic Users Pagan History

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The ‘anals’ of history, pronouncing Celts as ‘selts’ and ‘demon’ as ‘demond’ , misreading James I as ‘James eye’ , this is the WORST narration I’ve ever heard.
Only the fact that I really wanted to know what Hutton had written made me struggle on but it’s honestly awful.

The narrator is dreadful!!!

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I'll be honest I'm barely through the first chapter. I can already tell that the contents of this book are absolutely spot on and exactly what I was looking for. Therefore I have nothing negative to say about the book itself.

My issue is with the reader. I can't tell if this is a real human or an AI because the enforsis in his tone is absolutely all over the place. I'm finding it so hard to take in any information because he's constantly enforsising words at random

great content, distracting delivery

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Narration is truly appalling. Intonation is staggeringly bad. It is clear that the reader is not following the meaning of the text. DO NOT Purchase

Appalling reading

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I have no idea where Audible found this narrator, but his voice is unpleasant to listen to and the over-stressing of certain words annoying. Some words are not pronounced correctly. I haven't been able to listen for long enough to make an adequate judgement of the content, but usually enjoy anything by Ronald Hutton.

Interesting but ruined by narration

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This is the worst audiobook reading I have ever encountered. I was listening to a novel with a reading app that had more warmth and animation. Some of the mispronunciations are howlers! They are not just manglings of placenames and technical terms but failures of common vocabulary. It really distracts from the text. Prof Hutton himself is an engaging speaker. Don't know why he was asked to read his own work

Terrible narration!

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It's probably best to just buy a copy of the actual book and read it yourself rather than listen to this. The book itself is excellent but the narration almost makes it unlistenable. It's as if the reader is seeing the text for the first time and is just stumbling through it. The mispronunciations are also very off putting, I mean, everyone knows how to pronounce Gawain, don't they? Well this narrator doesn't. Why isn't there a producer to pick up on this sort of thing, or is there and they are just as clueless as the reader? Shame it wasn't sent to the author first to high light this sort of thing. I will steer clear of anything read by Gary Paul Williams in the future.

Good book, bad narration

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How can the publisher think that they are serving an author well when they agree to such an appalling reading? I was eager to hear this book by an author I admire tremendously, only to be horrified when I started to listen. Another reviewer has said that it sounds like text-to-speech and I agree, that was my first thought as well. In fact, if you were to listen to it via the text-to-speech function on Kindle you'd probably find the reading much more coherent.

If the quality of the book is as good as the lectures I've seen by Professor Hutton, then it's well worth finding in another format. That's what I'm going to do.

Buy it on Kindle, the narrator is dreadful!

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A very informative book. I started listening at normal speed but the narration was unbearably slow. Thank goodness for the option to increase the speed. I listened to it at 1.5x and that was okay

Interesting book but Very slow reading

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Great book, very thorough as ever from this excellent author. However, I'm sorry but the narration was just awful. Stilted, virtually no flow or feeling, and peppered with mispronounced words. Such a shame as the subject matter is fascinating. The narration was just cringe inducing, irritating and distracting.

An excellent Hutton offering... but

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It sounds like a text-to-speech programme. in fact, I'm tempted to believe it is given just how artificial and jarring it is. I assume the content is brilliant, given the author and other works. But you wouldn't know from this. Tried listening on 1.2 and 1.5 speeds - no good. As an audiobook, absolutely atrocious. Gave up. Will return it.

Unbearable Audio

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