good follow up book but narrator is horrific

If you enjoyed wizards first rule then you'll enjoy this follow up story in the series.
But seriously consider reading the story instead of listening to it.
There's a change of narrator, this is a bit jarring at first but ordinarily you could get used to it after a chapter or too (Dune changes narrator frequently and it's fine after a while). This narrator however is beyond terrible. He had a horrific, wooden voice and doesn't seem to have learnt how sentences are spoken. He pauses all over the place and never reads a sentence in full, his tones of voice used to represent certain characters are extremely off puting and don't seem to match the characters (Zed is particularly bad, Darken Rahl also ridiculous).
Thankfully they seem to have a new narrator for book 3.

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18 people found this helpful

Ignore the criticism

Yes Jim Bond the Narrator isn’t the same as book 1. Yes he starts off with pauses and an odd style of narrating. Yes, at first I kept thinking “why did they choose such a horrible narrator”, however Terry Goodkind’s actual written words left me wanting to listen more. Jim Bond’s voice improves somewhere along the line, I don’t know where but it does but does. At the end of the book I had completely forgotten the sound of the narrator from the first book Wizards first Rule.
Jim’s voice couldn’t have been that bad for me to have listened to it. I actually started to love the accents he put to the characters. Actually I had some deep respect for him, to read it his way. His voice definitely invokes emotions and feelings from the story.
Don’t let the other reviews stop you from enjoying one of the best stories out there!

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1 person found this helpful

Sword of Truth

I am following the Sword and I find the narrator extremely good. It is easy to listen too - even when I am falling asleep. Would recommend that you start with Book 1 however, to get the full subtleties of the plot as they do switch back and forth.

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Love the story but terrible narrator.

This is a good series and I’m very interested in the characters but I found it hard to listen to Jim Bond narration. He is about the worst narrator on audiobooks.

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Good story for wheel of time fans

Good story line. Tad predictable in many places . Especially if you’ve listened to wheel of time series by Jordan. Enjoyed it a lot though. A few shout out loud and something in my eye moments in the last few chapters!
Narrator was a bit Microsoft auto narrator sounding. Narrator for the first book was better. I got used to him though.

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Great book spoiled by poor narration.

The second book in the series develops the characters and the setting further and is a worthy sequel to the Wizard's First Rule. But the narrator reads it with very odd inflections and in an almost robotic manner. He does not change his pace or the expression in his voice (except in inappropriate places) so despite what is going on in the story, whether it be a horror scene, dialogue or a descriptive passage it is all read like it's a text book on particle physics. A text to voice app would likely do a far better job

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Good Follow On

After listening to the first book I was eager to get started on the second in the series. I was not disappointed. The book has some very good plots although at times it can get distracting following the many threads of story running through the book.



I founds some of the "sex scenes" a little cringe-worthy and slightly unnecessary to tell the story of the book. The characters get portrayed as base urge driven which although gives the characters more depth could make those of a less open disposition to be put off from continuing.



I also found this book to draw a great deal of parallels from the Wheel Of Time Series of book by Robert Jordan. In a way this is good because I enjoyed the wheel of time series and this book is in a very similar vein. The negative from this is that I find my self drawing too many parallels and hope the remaining of this series is no so closely linked. Only time will tell...



All in all... worth a read/listen.

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part 2 even better than the 1st!

What could have been a very generic fantasy novel was stylish, exciting and captivatingly original. Recommend!

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Great story wooden narrator

The story itself is of the usual high standard come on this author but the narrator isn't a patch on the one from the previous book. This one sounds like a speak & spell.

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Great book spoiled

I didn't think the narration could be any worse than that of Wizards First Rule but somehow this manages it. At time the narrator sounds computer generated though the character voices are better than the first.

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