New audiobooks!

[readsintrees.livejournal.com]

There are clips from the upcoming new audiobooks for the series! What do you think of the narrator?

https://soundcloud.com/harperaudio_us/sets/the-queens-thief-series

I've only listened to a little, but so far....I'm neutral. He sounds nice and clear, but personally I wish that at least for the first book (when it's Gen's voice) they had someone who sounded younger and more mischievous. Oh well. I'll probably still listen to them so that once and for all I get the final pronunciations down for everything.

Comments

[ibmiller.livejournal.com]

Is a very nice voice, but it's so slow and deep. I don't know if it's familiarity, or preference, but I like the narrator for the previous four books a bit more.

Did the narrator consult with MWT to get pronunciations? Not all of them do...

[readsintrees.livejournal.com]

Hmm...true, the narrators don't always consult. There's a series of mystery novels that take place here in Maine, and one of the audio narrators pronounces some town/place names wrong.

[ibmiller.livejournal.com]

The worst I remember is still Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, when they pronounced "Daoine Sidhe" "Dah-oo-n Sid-hee" instead of "Doonya Shee." That made me so sad. I stopped the audio book and went back to the paper copy. :)

[readsintrees.livejournal.com]

The ones from the Maine series that stuck out to me was that he pronounced the city of "Bangor" like "bang-er" instead of "bang-gore". And then there's a famous map/GPS company called "DeLorme" which is pronounced like "d'lorum" but the narrator pronounced it "dee-lore-may".

[(Anonymous)]

Ah! You say it like the original Welsh place name!
~Helen[ logged out &lazy]

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

*is fascinated by Welsh everything*

Tell us more.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

I listened to all the clips, and so far, he seems to be pronouncing everything the same way Woodman did.

Megan has gone on record saying she does have her own pronunciation, but she thinks everyone can pronounce the words as they like.

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

I'm already a fan of Steve West as Sean in The Scorpio Races audiobook, so on one hand I'm pretty happy about this! On the other, I agree it's not how Gen (or any other character, for that matter) sounds in my imagination. I was curious to see if he used his natural English accent for this project. As you can read about here, http://voice123.com/stevewest6 he can do a number of different accents, including American.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

He does different voices for each character's dialogue, but the narration he's reading in what sounds fairly close to his own voice. He's a Shakespearean actor, and I'm happy to hear Megan's work read like Shakespear!

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

He's a very good reader, and his voice is pleasant, so I assume that's why they went with him, rather than going down the more complicated route of trying to find different voice actors for each character. Besides, how many readers would agree on ALL of them being "right" for every individual's idea of what each character should sound like? (They used 6 different actors for the 6 different POVs in the Six of Crows audiobook, for example, and I liked maybe two of the choices.)

So, rather than trying to imagine Steve West as Gen or Sophos or Attolia (lol), etc, one has to imagine having the book read to you by someone else. I understand if that doesn't work for everybody, though. It's down to personal preference.

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[(Anonymous)]

I wanted to buy the audiobooks but his voice is all wrong for me. I much prefer the original narrator, Jeff Woodman, so I canceled my preorder. This man has a nice voice but it doesn't work for me.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

Epp! I'm so excited to listen to these! He does different voices for each character's dialogue and reads the narration in something close to his own voice, only clearer and slightly deeper. He can change his voice quite a bit and does different accents, so I'm really excited to listen to the voice he does for each character!

I'm glad they didn't cast someone based on Gen. An actor who suited him would not suit Sophos, Costis, and Kamet. He only said like three words of Kamat's dialogue and that's so close to how I imagined him! The TaT audiobook is going to be so much fun to listen to!

His voice is not reminiscent of any one character, so it won't sound like Costis is narrating Sophos's story or Gen's narrating Kamet's but a neutral voice not associated with any one character.

That makes casting a narrator for these books difficult, because normally, there is only ONE pov, not five.

[eachase.livejournal.com]

I have this weird hang-up where if I start reading a series I can't switch to the audiobooks (and vice versa).

That said, I love QT enough that I did try the previous audio version of TT (Woodman, I guess). My reaction was exactly the same as readsintrees to the new one:

"I wish that at least for the first book (when it's Gen's voice) they had someone who sounded younger and more mischievous."

Because the first book literally is Gen's book - the one he writes for Helen - it seems like it should be his voice: young and full of himself and delighting in the con he is pulling over on everyone.

I never got any further listening to the series. I salute all of you who can both read and listen to the books!

[(Anonymous)]

Ideally, each book would have it's own narrator who suits each character, however I can understand why Harper Collins can't do that.

Thus, they couldn't cast a young michevious sounding narrator, as that would not suit Sophos, Costis, and so on.

-Lady Jane, not signed in

[eachase.livejournal.com]

I think that's a great idea. Why do you think Harper Collins can't do it?

Other than the obvious 'they've already made a big investment in recording them again.' :-)

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that they could, but I imagine that it would cost a great deal more and would require a lot more effort. Thus, they may not have been able to even entertain the option. That's just my speculation though... :)

[eachase.livejournal.com]

I agree that the ship has already sailed. I don't know, but I assume -- given the sale price of audiobooks -- that productions costs are pretty high. The voice actor(s), studio fees, editing, etc. all add up.

Given that each of the QT books is from a different POV, though, having a different narrator would have been a logical choice and quite doable IF the decision had been made to take that approach from the beginning.

On the other hand, readers do become fans of a specific voice actor when that perfect match is made. So that's a consideration, too.