Wonderful! (With just one niggling complaint.)

This is my favourite type of literature, which is a compliment because most of my favourite authors are dead. There is a slight tendency to reflect modern issues onto an older era, which is where I prefer authors of the past writing of their own time, but that's a personal preference. This is a good story, beautifully written. There are metaphors, moral questions, contradictions and unrequited love. It's a thoroughly satisfying listen.
The narrator is perfect for the text but I have one niggling complaint. Why don't editors check that narrators know how to pronounce place names? St Osyth is not St Ossith, it's St Oh-zith. (Not quite so bad as one narrator who failed to pronounce West Ham.)

5 people found this helpful

Boring and pointless.

OMG I lost the will to live listening to this book. Its boring, the characters are not remotely interesting, I just kept listening hoping it would liven up. I've got 7 hours to go and can't stand it any longer. I actually paid for this with extra credits because apple have brought it out as a series, so I thought it must be good. In my humble opinion, don't waste your time.

4 people found this helpful

Let down by the narration

I played this at 1.2 speed. Not because I was in a hurry but just to make it sound like normal speech. Even then there seemed to be drawn out pauses. It's such a shame as I really enjoyed the story but felt any sense of mood (suspense, tension, eerieness) was flattened by the tone of the narrator.

2 people found this helpful

Beautifully read

I was drawn into the story by a kind of love for the central character, Cora. Her honesty and ability to convey her feelings with a transparency and simple beauty of language stopped me in my tracks many times. The metaphors, the theological debates and historical facts were at another level, one I will reread to study, but for now it was pleasure enough to enjoy the story and the people in it.

1 person found this helpful

Simply wonderful

Brilliantly written and original story.
First class narration.
Highly recommend a listen. Didn’t want it to end.

1 person found this helpful

Romance and drama

Not my general genre but I thought I'd have a listen. Very well written with distinctive characters. The narrator read it well portraying the characters.
As for the story it was slow going and I felt I was wading through the mud of the Blackwater shoreline. I did think Stella just a bit too trusting though ramblings through her deteriorating did make her sound like she tripping on hallucinogens.

1 person found this helpful

Not what I expected.

I tried this due to the adaptation by AppleTV. It was very slowly read. I listened to it at 1.2 speed and it sounded normal. It’s slow going and I made it to the end, but it did find it uninteresting.

Don’t bother

Utterly uninteresting -wish the Essex Serpent had eaten the whole boring lot of them. Avoid.

Beautifully written but non-stop communism undermines the story

This book is beautifully written and has expertly crafted details throughout. It clearly takes inspiration from the literature of the time period, its nice that it also has a more modern parlance. The relationship and debates of Will and the main character are really nicely handled.

That being said the book continuously hits you over the head with the authors clear love of communism. I wouldn’t mind it cropping up here and there but at some points it feels like every chapter has her decrying that the whole world isn’t communist, which if the 20th century is anything to go by doesn’t sound like a great plan. The book feels like a great love story with political filler every couple of pages

The Essex serpent

Boring that’s all I really have to say about it, not my kind of book