Horrible narration

Wonderful story nearly ruined by poor narration and production. I don’t want to hear the narrator swallow. He halted mid sentence over and over obscuring the meaning. He pronounced names differently throughout and the accents were unbelievable and inconsistent. I almost quit listening many times but the story itself kept me.

7 people found this helpful

weird audio sounds

there were some cat noises and weird mouth sounds in this audiobook, particularly the second half...

4 people found this helpful

Should have had a better narrator

It’s a good story with vivid descriptions and interesting characters, but the narrator almost ruined it for me. His phrasing is strange and halting. His pronunciations of character and place names were not consistent. His Irish accent comes and goes. I love listening to audiobooks, but I wish I had read this one myself instead of hearing this narrator read it.

3 people found this helpful

First Half was Very Good

But the second half..! Maybe it was more the painful narration. The odd pauses and inflections were awful and at least once the character’s accent completely changed so maybe the editing was terrible too.
The story felt like it wrapped up too quickly and oddly, but overall was interesting and informative about a piece of history that was only vaguely familiar to me. I’d recommend reading it though or only listening to the first half of this book. After Art goes to the house stop listening and get the paper copy.

2 people found this helpful

The music was so irritating

I don’t know who decided there needed to be music at the beginning/end of chapter but it is awful! The reader was ok. The story was good.

1 person found this helpful

Very confusing

I had to listen to the story three times to connect the dots. Maybe I’m slow. It would’ve been nice each time they changed eras or dates they would’ve let us know what time They were in. The reader sounded like a computer that had no inflections or emotions. There were stops in the middle of sentences for no reason. I think if I had read the book I would’ve liked it better but didn’t have the time.

1 person found this helpful

compelling story

This is a fascinating story about how our traits are not new to the world, but shared by family that span generations and sometimes vast oceans, too. It's a story of good overcoming evil and happiness disregarding wealth to thrive. For me, the performance wasn't awful as some reviews were detailed here. I greatly enjoyed listening to it and tried to make free time during the day to get further along in the story.

Good story - horrible narrative

The historical fiction is interesting, however; the reading of the story sounds like it is robotic. The pauses and inflection was constantly off making it unenjoyable to listen to. Often it changed the meaning and diminished the storyline. Halfway through I looked to see if Audible acknowledged that it was a computer generated read but I couldn’t find any reference to it. They should be required to disclose this. I will be canceling my subscription.

SLAVERY

Never liked any slavery
I wanted to finish
The story came full circle with all the people in Ireland. How about closing it out with the Africans ?

Not for me

The story didn’t grab me, and the reader was too formal. He seemed to pause at the end of lines rather than the at end of sentences.