One of the best narrators of all time is Jim Dale. He narrates the entire Harry Potter series on audio book and gives every a character a unique voice. He is very consistent about making sure each distinct voice is utilized with the appropriate character. Step back and think about how many characters there are in the series. The amazingness that is Jim Dale astounds me every time I listen to the series.
Recently, I've lost myself in a paranormal young adult series. The narrator for the first three books was fantabulous. She did an excellent job of giving every character a unique voice and making sure each voice was age appropriate. Well, something political must have happened in the middle of the recording of the series, because book number four and on are recorded by a completely different studio and publisher than the first three. Hence, there is a different narrator.
I know I can be resistant to change and I was extra skeptical when I put disc 1 in my CD player, but I was willing to give this new narrator a chance. I really was. But when she made the seventeen year old main character sound like she was thirteen it made everything seem less believable. In addition, this narrator is not consisent about giving each character a distinct voice. So sometimes you assume it's Character A speaking but it's really Character C.
I'm so put off by this new narrator that I'm seriously thinking of just buying the books or checking them out from the library. And then I wonder if that was the publisher's goal. Maybe they wanted to annoy us with the recording so we'd go buy the book instead. Maybe there's a higher profit margin on the book instead of the audio book.
Ok, sorry about getting all conspiracy theory there. Just speculating.
LOL. It does take me awhile to get into a recording and get used to a narrator, so I know how you feel. I couldn't listen to Erik Larson's Thunderstruck because of the narrators tone at the end of each sentence. It drove me nuts.
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