Not completed, but….

Tldr: the narration is crap, but I’m enjoying the book. Pick up the physical copy.

I picked this up because it seemed like a fun read and aligned well with my typical interests. Three chapters in, and I can confirm all of that of true, the book is actually fantastic so far. The writing, characterization, set up… all fine.. Except: the narration is atrocious. The sample does a so so job portraying that, but I just thought it was a character bit that was sampled and it wouldn’t be the whole book. Nope.

It’s the whole thing.

The stained, off, overdone tone for both protagonists is painful. When reading for Deangelo, his voice is muddy and belabored to sound macho and aloof. Worst is that every curse word or phrase is handled so poorly, it sounds labored and butchered and out of place; every time you do hear one, it seems the narrator doesn’t like swearing personally and doesn’t know how to handle the swearing at all, thus the VERY obvious and popped-out-of-the-sentence they are. Angel is consistently narrated as this frightened, on edge, breathy, stained garbled mess.

It’s untenable. I don’t understand the intentions for these narration choices and completely derailed my listening experience.

I’m probably returning this to simply read a physical copy of it instead. I don’t know how any of these other listeners could stomach the audio.