Great story, hard to listen to.

It isn't the accent so much as the woodenness of the narration that makes this a little frustrating to listen to. The story is great, but the reading really detracts from it.

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The Narrator?!

The setting, pacing, world building and character development are all well and fine. It gets off to a bit of a slow start, but if you can make it through the first couple chapters you get some real tension, encounter a mystery that needs solving, and it draws you in.

But the narrator.

The story is told from the perspective of the main character, who (apparently) speaks with a moderately heavy accent. Something like a cross between Spanish middle class and Russian businesswoman. The enunciation, tone, and the hard stops between sentences, gives the impression of someone reading a shopping list. It's bizarre and extremely distracting from the story itself.

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A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (With Terrifying Trees)

"Uprooted" feels like a forgotten fairy tale that somehow slipped out of our common culture, but would be right at home next to Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and all the rest. There's magic, wizards, princes, and evil forests. (WOW, the evil trees are AWESOME. But we'll come back to those later.) But despite that sense of familiarity, I can't think of too many other books like it. In some ways it reminds of Neil Gaiman's "Stardust," and in other ways of Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." Maybe a dash of Katherine Addison's "The Goblin Emperor." It's charming like those books, and yet it's also very much its own story.

Agnieszka is a fantasy heroine for the ages. She's messy, kind, stubborn, bumbling yet brilliant when it comes to magic. I loved how devoted she is to her friend Kasia (and how loyal Kasia is to her). Her relationship with the Dragon could've felt like a revamped Beauty & the Beast, or Pygmalion, and maybe there are hints of all that here. But Novik twists all those tropes and stories and comes up with a relationship and storyline that feels fresh. At it's heart, this is a story of love (not only the romantic kind, although there is that too) and friendship.

Can we talk about the forest and the trees? Because Novik has created some of the most horrifying evil trees I think I've ever read, and it's kind of delightful how vile and terrifying they are. The bark, the sap, the branches...the descriptions and details were terrifying (and delicious).

Julia Emelin's narration has come under a lot of criticism, which baffles me. Because of the Russian accent? Honestly, I cannot figure it out. After reading the reviews, I previewed the narration before I purchased the book, and remained puzzled -- Emelin's voice and accent helped ground tone for the story. I was captivated by every minute of her performance. Novik spun an incredible tale, and Emelin's narration complimented it to perfection.

"Uprooted" is one of my favorite listens in the last year. It feels like a story we've known our whole lives, even if we're just hearing it for the first time. And it's one I'll want to hear again and again and again.

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Narration is a Serious Issue

Trying to engage with the story and overlook the difficulties with the narration but audiobooks by their nature, make this an obstacle.

It isn't the accent that's at issue but the expression. Like other reviewers before me, I'm experiencing a challenge with the intonation and sentence cadence. It is similar to using an enabled audio feature on a webpage where an automated voice reads the words but doesn't impart any meaning. Comprehension is harder because one has to reconcile the odd cadence (pauses and emphasis are unexpected), discern the sentence structure, and figure out the story.

I want to finish the book but not sure if I can endure the automaton narration. :(

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this may be the worst performance by a reader ever

this was a struggle to listen to - I really wanted to like it but the narrator was just so bad. I thought her accent was fake at first because I just didn't believe it could be real. she had no ability to put any nuance into her sentences and every character had more or less the same voice. do yourself a favor and listen to a sample before buying this because I didn't and I strongly regret it.

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Tedious Task

I don't usually like to post bad reviews. Maybe its just the narration, but this just feels like I'm trying to finish a tedious chore instead of engaging in an enchanted escape. I am not usually that hard to please but the last few audios have not worked out for me and this book has been my least favorite so far.

The accent is making it hard for me to get lost in the story because I end up focusing on the task of trying to understand what most of the sentences are that she is speaking. I don't think I am going to finish. I am on chapter five and it has taken way to long for me to get that far. I will sleep on the decision of finishing it not. However, if I don't read further, I will ask for a refund of my credit.

I suggest that potential readers of this book should listen to the sample before buying. If the narrators accent doesn't bother you, then perhaps you will enjoy the story as well.

Thank you and good luck!!

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Don't put yourself through this listen

This is the worst narrator I've listened to, bar none. Buy this book in paperback and save your ears.

The narrator's voice is so heavily accented that I was frequently unsure of what word it was that she was attempting to pronounce (was that "clothing," "clawing," or "clearing"? "feeling" or "filing"? "onion," "oven," or "open"?) and at some points literally couldn't understand her at all. If this had been a personal memoir narrated by the author or something, this sort of narration style could serve an interesting purpose, but this is fantasy; there's no "real" way of pronouncing the non-English words.

The worst bit, though, was that she had the cadence and emotion of a robot. Words that are italicized or followed with exclamation points in the book sound no different coming from the narrator's mouth as words without emphasis. Her timing was bizarrely off as well; it was impossible to tell when half the sentences ended and new ones began.

I could also understand why you'd want the narrator to pronounce the few words in the book's invented language with a realistic sounding accent, but the entirety of the rest of the book was sacrificed to this aim.

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Wonderful story TERRIBLE narrator

It is a testament to how great the story is that I enjoyed it even though the narrator is absolutely the worst. I loved the story. I love it so much I’m buying it on kindle to read smoothly. I’m astounded that someone let her read this book aloud for money. I get that an accent can make this type of story interesting, and the other audible book from this author is WONDERFUL. But this one? The narrator’s words are so choppy and her pronunciation is just awful. The narrator doesn’t bother to try to change her voice to differentiate characters- or maybe she tried but was unsuccessful. She. Enunciates. Or. Pauses. After. Every. Word. Or sometimes she. Pauses after. A. Couple of. Words. But she just does not read well or tell the story. She. Just. Reads. With. Lots. Of breaks. If this were re-done with someone who speaks smoothly, even with a heavy accent, I would re-purchase because the story is just that delightful.

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narrator sounds

Story was ok but the narrator is terrible. They sound similar to a robot saying what you tell it to. Siri would have been better

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If you go out into the woods tonight...

What made the experience of listening to Uprooted the most enjoyable?

I loved the story. I thought it was a nice dark fairytale set in creepy woods.

What didn’t you like about Julia Emelin’s performance?

I couldn't stand it. I truly couldn't. She has a thick almost Russian accept and after a while it gave me a headache. I don't think she did a bad job reading the book itself. The accent was simply way thick and, after a while, even the pronunciations of the words bothered me. Like saying 'rivah' instead of 'river.'I've listened to hundreds of audio books and I can say that this is the only one that I hated simply for the accent. It feels odd to say that too. There've been bad readers. The little better than a robot kind and even the American readers who decide to narrator in an English accent but this was different. I feel really bad down rating a book simply because of an accent. I think I'm rambling because of that guilt,

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. But I couldn't. The reader gave me a headache.

Any additional comments?

I listen to books on tape at work so I listen to them in large chunks of time. Perhaps that's my issue with the reader. Preview the book and ask yourself if you can stand 17 hours of it before you buy it. The book is good enough that I'd reread it again if it was redone.

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