A Crown of Swords

Narration

I agree with the previous reviews that this was a good story linking great ones, but the wonderful narration by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer makes it as riveting as all the others. The narrators provide nuances to the numerous characters that is a wonder to listen to.

14 of 15 people found this review helpful

Solid performance, and a good book.

Since this is book 7 of the series, fans probably know what to expect from the story. They're right. What you want to know is, can these two narrators do it justice? Kate Reading and Michael Kramer narrate the entire series, so on the off chance this is the first of the books you are listening to, just know that they do it justice. Kramer reads the parts of the book that have a male viewpoint, and Reading reads the female perspective. This does not mean that they switch every time a different character speaks in dialogue, which would be jarring. They seem to hesitate before using words in the author's made-up language, but it's only enough to be noticeable, not irritating. For diehard fans, you should know that they occasionally use different pronunciations from those listed in the back of each book. As a diehard fan myself, this is sometimes annoying, but it's hard to blame them when so many words and names exist which are not part of our ordinary lives. Both narrators are good at what they do, and use slightly different voices for different characters' dialogue. Although I have read all the books several times, I believe this different format brings new entertainment and is worth it.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Incredulously!

What did you love best about A Crown of Swords?

The story throughout these first 7 books is complex and compelling. They do keep my interest although I must say the detail of every dress, coat, room, blanket and expression is a bit tiresome and there are so many characters I find it difficult to remember who is who... where they are in this vast world, who is on who's side, etc. The first book or two where the main characters were introduced and where all were in the story at the same time made the story and plot cleaner for me. By book 7, I long for information about my favorite characters, wonder why... with the "One Power" and other advantages they have they can't seem to get together, or believe or even understand each other.

And I listened to the book "incredulously" over how many times the author uses the word "Incredulously". Can't they look at each other in disbelief... just once?
Perhaps you notice it more while listening to the book than reading it... particularly when you are listening to the series back to back but I would seriously like to find out how many times that word was used in this story... and to buy the author a thesaurus.

What other book might you compare A Crown of Swords to and why?

The rest of the series

Which scene was your favorite?

I enjoy the scenes with the "lessor" characters... The scenes involving the main character are always so angry.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Amazing Story Poor Producing

I don’t know if it is simply my copy but there were so many production errors where sentences kept repeating it really impacted the immersion of the story.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Good but some issues with character behavior

I've come to really enjoy the wheel of time story, however, I come to find that, time and again, I struggle with the way women and, to a lesser degree therefore, men are treated in this series, let alone this series.

Issues arise in the way women and men are treated. For example, men are worthless, apparently. Rand (sp?), the dragon reborn, seems to think men are worthless because he doesn't give a bleep about a single one of them dying but, oh my, heaven forbid a woman dies. And, is it okay to hold a knife to someone's throat to get them to boogey in bed with you? No. But the writer seems to think it's okay because when it happens here to an individual not of the society in which it occurred, the writer makes a joke of how a man got raped by a woman. But, no, it must be okay because the man eventually develops stockholm syndrome. Further, apparently all women everywhere always sniff, slap, punch, and are otherwise violent for idiotic reasons, but it's okay because men are worthless and need to be hit, punched, slapped, etc.

This book is 3 stars in story because not all of the books fully annoy me for the above reasons. However, the way the rape was spoken of by the writer, Rand's constant need to care not at all about men yet put women on some weird pedestal, coupled with the many times a woman behaved with a sniff, slap, or punch when it was entirely not really necessary nor would that many women actually do that in the real world, just made this book slightly more annoying than the most of the books before this book.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Another great book, but...

The audio editing was poorly done. The narrators repeat them selves every now and then, which completely pulled me out of the story every time. The book is good, but i don't know why the audio hasn't been fixed.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Great book! Bad editing

Loved the book. Hated the numerous times that editing played the same snippet back to back.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

oh God the editing

fantastic story and performance but the book was frustrating to listen to as the editor apparently decided to not even listen to it once. frequent stops and starts where the Mrs Reading or Mr kramer begins and ends session. broke immeesion every time I had to listen to the same paragraph(or longer) I had just listened to be repeated.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

getting annoyed

Ok, I have to say I began really liking the story but, I am beginning to realize that he if didn't continue to describe every stitch of clothing each woman wears, like 10 times each, or how low cut their dresses are, or say "ageless face" (in fact I am going to count how many times in the next book!) or letting me know how every incidental character is doing besides getting to the story, I could go no and on... It took him a whole book to really accomplish nothing. This series could easily have been wrapped up in 5-6 books.
In each book he spends so much time describing useless details, and wraps up each book very quickly in the last few minutes, spending very little time on climatic scenes. Any way, going to try get through the series because I started it, but beginning to think I could get more out of reading the synopsis on Wikipedia

11 of 14 people found this review helpful

Great series + Great narration = must read.

Great series + Great narration = must read

8 of 10 people found this review helpful