Why this huge pause? Continually during the course of ordinary dialogue, it was held up by an extra beat while we waited for what each character was going to say next. What began to drive me mad though after a while (once I'd noticed it) was his habit of a long pause after saying ' said'. Stephen Briggs is also brilliant in his readings of Terry Pratchett novels. Each character has their own 'voice', (a great achievement considering the number of characters), yet each one sounds completely natural. You only have to listen to Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter novels for an example of how it should be done. If a narrator is unable to think of a suitable accent, then it is better that he or she does nothing than something inappropriate. A good reader should distinguish between voices in a natural way. I can see that he's attempting a kind of sing song quality for the elves, but. And why did the voice he chose for the men have to be a rasping growl? How many people speak like that? It just sounds like somebody putting on a strange voice rather than the way someone would actually talk. The only times he deviates from this, he chooses inappropriate voices (particularly Martin and Father Tully). Then he seems to have decided not to distinguish between the various characters, just their races - most of the Midkemia men get more or less the same voices, as do the elves, the invaders from Kelewan etc. Nothing in the text or elsewhere suggests it. As another reviewer mentioned, I see no reason for his decision to pronounce 'Arutha' as 'Aruta'.

Mr Joyce makes incredibly strange choices in his reading. What didn’t you like about Peter Joyce’s performance? Is there anything you would change about this book?

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