Buy the BOOK, skip the AUDIO

Any time Lincoln Rhyme is called into action, I can count on Jeffrey Deaver to deliver hours of enjoyable diversion, either in print or on audio. Any time, that is, until now.

In print, The Kill Room might equal Deaver's earlier works. I wouldn't know. I made the mistake of listening to the tale. And the new, multi-voiced narration of this work harms the story-telling so greatly, it surprises me that any audio producer would sacrifice his reputation by allowing it to reach listeners.

Audio casting is remarkably bad. Rhyme is presented in a weak, petulant voice, undermining the gravitas that our disabled forensic investigator presented in early audiobooks (and films). Sachs is even worse, portrayed with a voice that is not serious and is almost flitty. All this is even more disappointing since previous narrators, including the great George Guidall and Dennis Boutsikaris, performed so outstandingly that they enhanced Deaver's work.

Worse, something went wrong technically with the merging of these voices. You can hear that these two voices were not actually recorded at the same time and that Sachs was spliced into the overall audio. This is so jarring and so noticeable, it is unforgivable that professionals would not have corrected it before releasing the "finished" product.

There are worse narrations in the Audible catalog, but none for such a high-profile, popular novelist. How did this happen?

Narration aside, the plot is interesting and offers a few surprises. Rhyme continues to be developed nicely as a character, as does Sachs. This may not be Deaver's "A" game, but it isn't too far off the mark.

In short, The Kill Room is worth a READ, but not a listen. This time, buy the BOOK.

22 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Narration

What would have made The Kill Room better?

A different narrator!

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

The story was excellent, as usual.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

NO - awful!

Any additional comments?

Don't waste your money are the audio… just buy the book.

8 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

One narrator, please!!!

I absolutely hate multiple narrators...it is always jarring and irritating...not at all more "realistic". In fact, sometimes I thought the voice of Sachs was Siri talking to me. Other than that, the story was pretty good.

7 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Horrible Horrible Narration...did I mention HORRIB

What disappointed you about The Kill Room?

Audible version extremely disjointed!

Would you ever listen to anything by Jeffery Deaver again?

I will if it goes back to the previous narrators.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?

Just about any SINGLE narrator.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I don't know if the book will have redeeming qualities....I couldn't get past the audible part...only got a couple chapters in. No one else I know that likes to listen to books could listen either. The book might be great!

Any additional comments?

This is the first time I feel I wasted $$ getting an audio book... I listen to them a lot and have never been this disappointed. Apparently no one with any say in the matter listened to this book before they released it or it never would have made it to the market.

6 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Multiple narrators = multiple things to hate

Usually l love the diversion of a Lincoln Rhyme novel. The multiple narrators distracted from the story in this case. In particular I hated the voice for Amelia and the way her dialogue popped in and always sounded like it didn't flow.

Primary narrator was fine but multiple voices did a disservice to a story that was already not one of my favorite in the series.

19 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

How Bad Can it Get?

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Deaver should be a bit more diligent in picking the reader for his audio books. The latest "talent" left too much to be desired. His past readers/performers did a great job instilling the characters in my mind. This new genre of 3 readers is a joke. It makes it hard to listen to and hard to visualize. Rymes sounds like a grade school teacher and Sachs is a joke. Go back to one reader, preferably one you used in the past and dump the triplets. They are horrible.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Not yet

How did the narrator detract from the book?

They were horrible

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

?????

9 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Woman narrator emphasizes how little Amelia counts

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

One good narrator can make you believe you are listening to a vast cast of characters with subtle nuances of tone and voice. Listening to the female narrator jump in occasionally with Amelia's lines makes you realize Amelia's window dressing for the story. "Send?" "Now?" "What do you mean by that?" ARGH!

Deaver is too good a writer for this crappy recording.

3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Awful audiobook!

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

I've read all the other Lincoln Rhyme books so far, and liked all of them. With this one, I decided to go with an audiobook, and I couldn't be sorrier. Any one of the 3 narrators alone might have been all right, but having 3 of them reading the same book turned it into a mess. They sound as if they all recorded their parts separately and had them spliced together afterwards. It was especially disconcerting to have a woman voicing only one character - Amelia Sachs - and everything else, including other female characters, were read by males. Amelia's dialog went something like this: (female voice) "Blah, blah, blah" (male voice) "said Amelia.". I listened to it while commuting, and couldn't focus on the story, since I was spending so much time grinding my teeth over the disjointed narration. I've listened to books that have had different narrators for chapters written from different points of view and they were fine. But changing narrator mid-sentence is ridiculous. It's not a play or a movie, it's a book!

11 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Pronunciation and multiple narrators terrible

Any additional comments?

First, the narrators need to learn that "conch" is pronounced with a hard "ch" like "conk". The repeated mis-pronunciation was distracting and got to be funny after a while. We could even make a drinking game of it. The narrator who voiced Amelia was terrible. It sounded like she read her lines all at one time with no inflection of any kind and then they were spliced in here and there. Also, the repeated reading of the evidence reports was both boring and time consuming. The book could have been 2 hours shorter without that. The characters Jacob and Shreve seemd to be channeled from Dean Koontz except Deaver can't keep it up throughout the book. The development of both characters falls apart at the end as neither fit the character which was developed.

6 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Few first comments

What did you like best about The Kill Room? What did you like least?

The book was only released a few hours ago and I am only one chapter four, so I can not comment on the story, only my first impressions of the narration.
This is the first of the Rhyme books that has used multiple narrators and, so far, I am not impressed. The voice chosen for Rhyme makes him sound weak and not at all in control. The female used for Amanda makes her sound like some valley girl not the in-control cop she is. Hopefully that will change as the book goes on. It almost sounds as if each of the narrators read their parts independently of each other and the parts were edited together. If anyone who makes these decisions reads these reviews, please stick with a single GOOD narrator. Deaver weaves a good story and the wrong narrator can destroy that.

16 personnes ont trouvé cela utile