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I've listened to Lord of Runes in its entirety, and I recently started listening to Liar's Island. So far, the story is okay. I haven't finished listening to it, so I can't really pass judgement on Mr. Pratt's work, yet. And I'm specficialy NOT posting this as a review or in the comments for Mr. Pratt's book. I don't want my opinion on the audiobook version to unfairly influence the book, itself. I did post a review on Amazon, but I tried to make it clear that my problems were not with the story or writing.
I'm specifically posting because I'd like Tor to get rid of Steve West as their Pathfinder audiobook narrator. Mr. West did a passable job narrating Lord of Runes. The locations in that book were fairly close together and West managed to include a little bit of variation in voices, but frankly, his repertoire of accents is far too limited for him to properly portray the characters in the Pathfinder campaign setting. There are just too many different cultures interacting on Golarion to have someone with his extremely limited set of accents doing the narration.
I don't know who is advising Tor about cultural analogues. I assume it is difficult for Paizo to influence the production choices Audible makes in producing recordings from books published by Tor. Honestly, I could forgive Audible for not realizing that a Vudrani accent should sound a lot like an Indian accent. What I can't forgive is that literally everyone in Steve West's version of Golarion has an accent from somewhere in the UK. The homogeneity of the voices makes it difficult to enjoy the story. Either the accents are wildly out of place, or they're just plain bland.
I love being able to listen to the Pathfinder Tales books, but I sincerely hope Tor finds someone with a broader range of talent for future audio releases.
I don't know a lot about audiobooks (english isn't my native language) but is it normal to have only one narrator?
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Audiobooks typically have a single narrator reading the entire book. Typically, that narrator provides different voices for each character to differentiate who is speaking, rather than having a cast of voice actors do each different character. (You would see different voice actors used in something like the Pathfinder Legends line of audio dramas, instead.)
And in my experience, books that are part of a series or those written by the same author frequently use the same narrator for all of the audiobooks in that series. If the listener is lucky, that narrator can do a variety of accents to keep the voices "in character." So far, I think the absolute best narrator I have heard is René Auberjonois.
In this case, it seems that Tor/Audible have contracted Steve West to narrate the Pathfinder Tales line of novels, regardless of who the author of the novel is...and I really hope that changes soon.
The Harry Potter audio books are a good example of an excellent narrator with a wide array of perfect accents and voices
However, all the accents and voices in the Harry Potter audiobooks (which ARE excellent) are all UK accents. I would imagine that it is difficult to find a person who can rapidly switch between drastically different cultural accents.
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However, all the accents and voices in the Harry Potter audiobooks (which ARE excellent) are all UK accents. I would imagine that it is difficult to find a person who can rapidly switch between drastically different cultural accents.
Listen to the R.C.Bray audio of "The Martian". The guy does about a dozen accents, and really good voices. I had an audio trilogy done by a good actor, Jeff Breslauer, who did all the voices beautifully. Hard to find a good one, maybe, but they are out there.
That said, I really am looking forward to the audio of Pirate's Prophesy. Can't imagine Torius Vin with a British accent...we'll see.
I listen to a ton on Audio Books from Kindle Unlimited, I commute for 3 hours a day, so I totally agree the narrator can make or break a book.
I think the woman and man who do the Wheel of Time audio books do an admirable job juggling hundreds of characters. My absolute favorite audio books, though, are Sarah Vowel's popular histories. I love her voice and she recruits all her famous actor and radio buddies to do the historical quotes, kind of like a Ken Burns documentary.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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Now I didn't think the narrator was as bad as all that. Certainly he isn't best I've heard but he's far from the worst and for the Dave Gross book I thought he worked fairly well.
That said it would be rather cool on that series if Varian and Radovan had different narrators.
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For the record: I'm the person advising Macmillan Audio on the cultural analogues, and they definitely have the information about who's supposed to sound like what.
That said, as folks have pointed out, it's hard to find a narrator who can do all the different accents one might want, especially if (as in the case with the newer Pathfinder Tales novels) the production folks want to use the same narrator on every book. While it can be a little weird to have all the characters have the same general accent, someone doing *bad* accents is even worse, and in the worst cases can be downright offensive. So my default guideline for narrators is "If you can do the accents right—great! But if not, just read it like you're reading a story."
Regarding specific narrators: I'd love to hear more and detailed feedback about Steve West (the reader for Lord of Runes and Liar's Island). Suggestions of specific readers aren't useful—there are all sorts of financial/availability/contractual concerns that keep us from picking and choosing—but if the majority of folks have a problem with the reader, we can absolutely pass that information on to Macmillan Audio (the people producing the Tor-era audiobooks).
That said, please stay tuned, as there's an announcement I'm really excited about coming next month that will have some bearing on this particular issue... :)
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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The. Female. Characters. All. Speak. As. If. They. Have. A. Problem. With. The. Language. And. Need. To. Speak. Very. Slowly.
I wasn't a fan of Liverpudlian Radovan, but I stuck with it and saw it through. It wasn't too bad, but Liar's island wasn't good at all (the narration, not the story... the story was great, I love Tim Pratt's work).
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Also, he pronounces Paizo wrong???
How do you pronounce "Paizo"?
We pronounce it to rhyme with "pie dough."
He pronounces it "Pay-zo"
I'm Australian, and I've always pronounced it "Pie-zo", and British English isn't that far removed from our pronunciation of things (or vice versa if you want to get technical).
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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However, all the accents and voices in the Harry Potter audiobooks (which ARE excellent) are all UK accents. I would imagine that it is difficult to find a person who can rapidly switch between drastically different cultural accents.Listen to the R.C.Bray audio of "The Martian". The guy does about a dozen accents, and really good voices. I had an audio trilogy done by a good actor, Jeff Breslauer, who did all the voices beautifully. Hard to find a good one, maybe, but they are out there.
That said, I really am looking forward to the audio of Pirate's Prophesy. Can't imagine Torius Vin with a British accent...we'll see.
I also really enjoyed the narration of The Martian. It's not a book I normally would have picked up (I only did so because of the hype surrounding it), but R.C. Bray's narration really made me enjoy it more than I thought I would (even to the point where I'm considering going to see the movie).
I can't wait to hear Pirate's Prophesy either, it's the upcoming PFT novel I'm most looking forward to. :D
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I thought this crew might be excited to know that Audible is releasing ALL of the Pathfinder Tales backlist as audiobooks, with a ton of different high-profile narrators behind the mic. The first 15 just went live today, and while the audiobook samples are currently glitching, I've been informed that they'll be fixed by this time tomorrow, so you can sample all the different narrators to find your favorites!
The link is http://www.audible.com/Pathfinder.
As you might guess, I'm EXTREMELY excited about this, and can't wait to hear what people think. :)
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I'm really excited that the female protagonist books are getting Female narrators.
Yeah, that was something we felt pretty strongly about!
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I've listened to Lord of Runes in its entirety, and I recently started listening to Liar's Island. So far, the story is okay. I haven't finished listening to it, so I can't really pass judgement on Mr. Pratt's work, yet. And I'm specficialy NOT posting this as a review or in the comments for Mr. Pratt's book. I don't want my opinion on the audiobook version to unfairly influence the book, itself. I did post a review on Amazon, but I tried to make it clear that my problems were not with the story or writing.
I'm specifically posting because I'd like Tor to get rid of Steve West as their Pathfinder audiobook narrator. Mr. West did a passable job narrating Lord of Runes. The locations in that book were fairly close together and West managed to include a little bit of variation in voices, but frankly, his repertoire of accents is far too limited for him to properly portray the characters in the Pathfinder campaign setting. There are just too many different cultures interacting on Golarion to have someone with his extremely limited set of accents doing the narration.
I don't know who is advising Tor about cultural analogues. I assume it is difficult for Paizo to influence the production choices Audible makes in producing recordings from books published by Tor. Honestly, I could forgive Audible for not realizing that a Vudrani accent should sound a lot like an Indian accent. What I can't forgive is that literally everyone in Steve West's version of Golarion has an accent from somewhere in the UK. The homogeneity of the voices makes it difficult to enjoy the story. Either the accents are wildly out of place, or they're just plain bland.
I love being able to listen to the Pathfinder Tales books, but I sincerely hope Tor finds someone with a broader range of talent for future audio releases.
I absolutely agree with you. this guy is horrible!
The female narrator of PLAGUE OF SHADOWS is ok though.
I completely agree with a need for a new/different narrator. If someone is going to record their reading of a book; the story should be read in a manner which makes it engaging to the listener.
The current people reading these (and many non-pathfinder) books tend to do so in a manner that practically puts me to sleep, defeating my reason (to listen while driving long hours for work) for wanting audio books.
When hearing a story, as opposed to reading it; I expect to hear excitement, passion, sarcasm, etc.etc. conveyed where appropriate. I don't know anyone who enjoys reading that doesn't get all of that in their imagining of a story as they are reading & feel that a similar experience should come from hearing a story as well.
*Edit to add*
I would even go as far as to suggest having 2 or 3 readers working together on any given book, so the exchanges between characters can be better portrayed. But hey!, that's just my 2 copper on the subject.
Gotta say, I've listened to the Audible versions of Pirate's Honor and Pirate's Promise, and I'm pretty happy with the narrator, John Pruden. He does an awesome job with Vreva Jhafae, and especially awesome with Snick. Well done on that choice, whoever made it! You can get a free taste on the commercial page.
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I felt the need to come back here and say that Steve West actually did an admirable job with Howard Andrew Jones' Beyond the Pool of Stars.
I still have a problem with the fact that his female voices are sometimes difficult to distinguish, but he actually does have a knack for some accents related to the West Indies and Africa, which worked well for Sargava. Additionally, he did very well with the voices of the lizardfolk. Jekka's voice, in particular, must have been hard to keep up for long periods of time.
Ilyana Kadushin did a good job with Wes Schneider's Bloodbound. She was a fitting choice for a novel in which nearly all of the important characters were female. There were times when her pronunciations bother me, but I realize I'm a stickler, so I just made the conscious decision to let certain things go.
I'm currently listening to James Sutter's The Redemption Engine, and Ray Porter's voice has taken some getting used to. I'm finally getting to the point where I enjoy it, but I never would have figured that there were so many people in Kaer Maga with an Irish-sounding accent. Salim's accent is often hard to place and seems to have a strange mix of Irish and Arabic or Hindu. Generally, I don't mind the odd mixtures, though, because it helps break Golarions nations away from their real-world analogues a little bit.
In general, though, I like the variety of narrators we're getting, now, and look forward to hearing more of the Pathfinder Tales.
Audible audiobooks use DRM. Thus, I'm not interested.
Not interested. Sadly, in my view, it's a waste of an opportunity for Pathfinder Tales books to be sucked into a DRM-encumbered system for their audiobook versions.
I'm sure the exact details are going to remain between Paizo and Tor, but I have a suspicion that the choice was 'DRM' or 'not at all'.
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I'm currently listening to James Sutter's The Redemption Engine, and Ray Porter's voice has taken some getting used to. I'm finally getting to the point where I enjoy it, but I never would have figured that there were so many people in Kaer Maga with an Irish-sounding accent. Salim's accent is often hard to place and seems to have a strange mix of Irish and Arabic or Hindu. Generally, I don't mind the odd mixtures, though, because it helps break Golarions nations away from their real-world analogues a little bit.
Yeah, accents are hard, and not everyone's going to be able to do all the different accents a given book might need. (Salim's definitely *not* Irish!) But Ray has a great narrating voice, which is the most important thing to me, so I'm happy!
(If you want to hear what Salim actually sounds like, just go watch Naveen Andrews as Sayyid on LOST. :))
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I agree, it seems like all of the longer standing PF Tales have a great starting narrator then jump to Steve West who makes it brutal to listen too after having good voices.
The Pirate Series, Liars Series and I plan to return my audio book of Lord of Runes it is so bad.
If I am a narrator picking up after someone else, I would at least try to emulate the previous reader, especially if they are leaps and bounds beyond my skill.
Not sure the reasons, but if you as a company sign up to have a bunch of books done, wouldnt it be good business sense to try and keep it all as close to the same as possible?
There is a reason Val Kilmer and George Clooney as Batman failed. Other than Bond changing the actor is not good. Same should go forbaudio books. If at all possible, don't change the narrator.
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Ok, in Steve West's defense, I've listened to Liar's Island and Liar's Bargin, but not Liar's Blade, and enjoyed the narration on them both.
I have to admit that I agree with you. I don't think I'd appreciate Hrym's voice done by anyone else.
That said, I'm very glad they've got a wider range of voice actors available, now.
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Hrymm is much better in Liars Blade. He seems much less like an a-hole who could care less about Roderick and more like a guy who has witty banter with a friend.
I wish Steve would get his own book series to narrate instead of jumping in after establish voicework, and doing nothing to attempt to get even close to the continuity of the previous voice actors.
They are getting paid to be professional voice actors/readers/narrators. And we are paying money to listen. I would like at least an attempt to match a caidence or if you are going to insist to do accents, attempt to do the same ones as previously established.
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FWIW, I enjoyed Ray Porter performing Death's Heretic and Redemption Engine.
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FWIW, I enjoyed Ray Porter performing Death's Heretic and Redemption Engine.
Ray Porter is good. I took me some time to get used to, but I enjoyed his work on both of those books.
I loved John Pruden's work on Pirate's Honor and Pirate's Promise. I was so disappointed when he didn't return to do Pirate's Prophecy. (Steve West took over there, too.)
Ilyana Kadushin has made good contributions in Bloodbound and Hellknight.
Kristin Kalbli was decent in Firesoul, and I liked Tavia Gilbert's work on The Crusader Road.
I strongly disliked Dina Pearlman on Stalking the Beast and Karen White on Called to Darkness. In fact, as much as I complained about Steve West early on, I think his performances are far more palatable than those two.
Karen White's performance had a breathiness and strange, panicked emphasis that didn't always fit the scene and made things uncomfortable. I found Dina Pearlman's delivery to be harsh and off-putting, and it seem to me that she put marbles in her mouth whenever she spoke for a male character.
In general, though, I'm happy with the audiobook performances, now that we have some variety in narration. Given the fact that I don't have much time to actually read the books, I'm glad for the opportunity to have them read to me. ;)
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I felt the need to come back here and say that Steve West actually did an admirable job with Howard Andrew Jones' Beyond the Pool of Stars.
I signed up for Audible's two credits per month and listened to Beyond the Pool of Stars first. I listened to much of the book on one trip and didn't want to put it down. I also thought Steve West did an excellent job with the narration; so much so that I wanted to find his other work, because a few of the other narrators have been mediocre.
Karen White reading Mother Bears, the short story prequel to Skinwalkers has been difficult to listen to. It almost sounds like her words were recorded and spliced together, because it doesn't flow well at all. I thought maybe it was just the audio sample for the product and that it all couldn't be like that. Skinwalkers sounds interesting, but I may have to read that one separately.
Karen White's performance had a breathiness and strange, panicked emphasis...
That's about how I'd describe it.
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One thing I should point out in the various narrators' defenses: The Steve West/Ilyana Kadushin books were produced *at the same time* as all of the backlist titles. We signed two separate deals—with Macmillan Audio to make audiobooks of the new Tor-produced novels, and with Audible to release all our backlist. The two companies were working in parallel, recording simultaneously to try and get the whole line out in a relatively short window of time. Trying to use the same narrators for all of them would have created a world of problems, especially since each company had its chosen narrators that it like to use, so in the end we opted to let each company operate independently. (At least this way, if you don't like one narrator, you've got a lot of alternative choices.) But it definitely wasn't that the narrators weren't following each other's leads and trying to maintain continuity with previous narration, because there literally *wasn't* any previous narration when they started!
This has been your Behind the Scenes Business Moment at Paizo! :D
I've had a really hard time with Blood Bound. I've tried listening to it twice but can't get past Ilyana Kadushin's narration. I an't seem to tell the characters apart and the voice itself is sort of high pitched and i don't know.. gravelly? Sucks because the book seems awesome.
I've loved Ray Porters work. I just finished a Deadlands novel that he did, Ghostwalkers.
I really liked Liar's Blade. When I went to listen to the next Liar's book, it was a different narrator. I decided not to buy the next audio books because of his voice and mono tones, along with all the characters sounding the same.
So I skipped the rest of that series hoping that paizo would have it re-recorded after all the negative feedback.
The next series I picked up was Dave Gross 's Prince of Wolves. The narrator was really great. I am on King of Choas now, and enjoying the entire series a lot.
Sadly to my dismay, I looked at the next book. What I saw horrified me...yup it was Steve West as narrator.
Now I can only hope amd pray that this series also gets a redo, original narrators prefered.
If Paizo is not the one that can make these choices, whose forums/emails should I send my sadness filled statements to?
Thanks
Narrator choices on the Tor novels are made by Macmillan Audio, while all the others are chosen by Audible themselves. I'm not sure how either prefer to get feedback.
That said, while I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I'd bet that the odds of any of the books being rerecord are basically zero. It costs a fair amount of money to get a book recorded, and I'd be shocked if either company decided to take on the extra expense of a rerelease. Sorry Steve's narration wasn't working for you. :\
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I've been working my way through the Pathfinder Tales Audible selection and I just reached Lord of Chaos. After listening to Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Queen of Thorns and King of Chaos as well as the short story The Lost Pathfinder, all by Paul Boehmer, I had developed an ear for how Varian & Radovan sound and speak.
So, now that I have stated Lord of Chaos with a Steve West, it doesn't feel right.
This is not an indictment on Mr West's ability as a narrator, rather that I was used to Boehmer's style for those characters. And, as person, I am resistant to change.
My only request is for more consistency when selecting narrators for future audiobooks for pre-established characters. i.e. Paul Boehmer for Varian & Radovan, John Pruden for Stargazer, Ray Porter for Salim Ghadafar, etc...
On that last one, Ray Porter's read of Death's Heretic and Redemption Engine was fantastic. To me, he's the best person to read for future Salim Ghadafar stories.
Incidentally, it seems like Audible are doing a better job picking the narrators than Macmillan Audio.