I had actually purchased this one sometime ago but got distracted by some great titles such as “Breeds” by Keith C Blackmore and my new favourite zombie series ‘Arisen’ by Michael Stephen Fuchs. To make matters worse I finally recalled where I had heard the author’s name before. It was from her title ‘Torn’ which I had listen to about a year ago. I find that one ok, but not in my top 10 list by any means. So in reality this title really was up against it before I even pressed play.
The first thing I noticed was that the narration has sound affects. Despite what another reviewer has said about the narration of this one it is not narrated by a cast of people but rather just one narrator. The task this narrator had to pull off was challenging, multiple characters, and genders and ages. But here is the thing, and it is a big THING! The title states it is 6hours and 28 minutes long, but the narration is so slow that it has to be sped up, 1.5x speed at least. This cuts your listening time down even more. Furthermore, I got the feeling that the sound effects where used more as a padding to make the title longer… it was not uncommon for the narration to stop and have some ‘errie’ music playing for 10 seconds even at the fast speed. The sound effects I think can add a lot to a story. But in this one it just seemed pointless, the loop of sound effects is annoying and distracting and just made me wish that the story itself was actually longer. Because frankly I liked the story!
Despite how good the story maybe I found myself feeling a little annoyed paying full price for a title which is short to begin with, being made shorter because of the sound effects and the need to speed it up. I may not give up on the author just yet, but I will definitely be listening to the sample narration for I take another chance.
No thumbs up from the fatman today. But if this is ever on special than it get at least one thumbs up
