my favourite book

I've read this book twice. I thought I'd listen to it this time, the narration is awful. The performance is very pantominish...and every time Niclays Roos was speaking it made me cringe. If you like sapphic high fantasy, do yourself a favour and read it rather than listen to it hear.

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fantastic story and superb narrator

the narrator was amazing in bringing this epic story to life! would highly recommend it

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wish there was more villain development.

thoroughly enjoyed the book. the performance was amazing, all the accents helped portray each region well. I wish there was more backstory and development of the nameless one, he was hyped up to be this big bad, and although he was, I didn't feel the payoff was as big as it could have been. still a great listen

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Great story let down by the narrator

Really enjoyed the story. It did take a few chapters to get into the flow but it was worth it. I’d recommend it for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire.

My main issue with this audiobook is the narrator. The performance ranges from the monotonous to cringey. I listened to the entire book but it was quite hard work in places due to some of the voices they decided to use. I think this would benefit from having a cast rather than a single narrator.

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It was hard put down & even harder to finish.

Amazing book, great story & characterisation. Very long & a little convoluted close to the end which I don't mind too much as it'll make for great re-reading. The romance was a slow burn & drawn out very beautifully & not just a gimmicky one time thing. The characters all had amazing chemistry & were multidimensional. And the narration was superb, loved every minute. Great book, honestly. Highly recommend!

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Confusing

I had high expectations for this book but I felt a bit let down. The narration wasn’t the best and it made an already quite confusing book even harder to follow. I also didn’t love the characters I just sought of liked them.

However I loved the feminist world, that was great.

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Tedious but has potential

This was a hard listen. I didn't actually know what was happening in the story until about 75% of the way through and even then I'm still a little confused. Far too many characters. I felt sorry for the narrator, there have been negative comments in other reviews about how it's different to distinguish between characters but when there are so many characters... I was impressed she was able to keep up. I had to download a kindle version of the book so I had access to the list of characters and glossary at the back of the book. Because of this I didn't really get to know any of the characters. It felt like an exam also where you needed to do further reading to understand and interpret the text.
Also, first half of the book, unnecessary. LOADS of world building. Again, had to keep referring to the maps at the beginning to understand who was where.
I will say that Shannon is a beautiful writer and this is why I stuck to the book till the end. I am not going to completely write this book off and in the future I will try it again. It has so much promise for greatness.
Maybe I'll try some of her other books first.

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Difficult to follow

The story seems interesting enough with well-written characters, a fascinating world and a well thought out story. However, with many, complicated names and places it is often difficult to follow the story and get involved with any of the characters. The narration doesn't make this easier. The narrator herself seems quite good, however the recording quality is below-average and different sections of the story are cut very close together so the story jumps from one character to the next without a second to breathe. If you have the time and concentration to fully immerse yourself this might be a good choice but if you don't, or are looking for something to listen to on the side, this may not be it.

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Great, but slow

The beginning of the book is very slow. Mostly, it addresses politics. You will learn a lot about the duties of a lady of the bed chamber. The story will pick up when the Orange tree is introduced. From that point on, the book is great. It becomes an absolute pageturner on good VS evil !!!

I do wish that there was far more on Dragons. There were only like 2 pages on the Dragons. Also, the ending felt super rushed. This is, of course, in stark contrast with the beginning, which was extremely slow and elaborate.

The narrator is good. For each character, she had a different voice. I liked it a lot. Some of the voices need some work. But overall, the narration was good.

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Overall I enjoyed it but there's quite a few flaws

First of all, can I please defend the narrator as a few comments were really negative - I thought the narrator was definitely not as bad as people said at all! she was way more engaging than sooooo many other narrators out there, and used a good range of voices. My only comment would be that it was a bit strange to have specific accents from around the world in a fantasy world.
In terms of story, I overall enjoyed it but it was quite weirdly paced. The beginning is super slow and the end felt mega rushed. I didn't really warm up to 2 out if the 4 main POV characters .... The world was interesting but felt a bit dense to get into, and even after the whole book I still didn't feel like I really understood some of the areas of the world. Some twists also felt a bit too improbable/convenient. Anyways, various flaws but I did like the premise and the world and despite not loving it I also don't regret reading it.

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