Mispronunciations Abound in the Audio Book.
583313
With limited time on my hands, I bought the audio book. Ugh.
The mispronunciations abound.  I had to stop listening. Names, foreign languages, mathematics, and even English words.
I've turned to the book.
3772370
I thought book would show pronunciations better
3460953
This particular recording was poorly made.  Each chapter features a different reader.  Each reader has a different pronunciation for the names of the native American characters, thus leaving you to try to figure out, to whom they are referring. Further more, some of the readers sound as though English is their second language.  They have accents so strong that it becomes difficult to understand what they are saying.  This leaves one in the position of trying so hard to listen to what the reader is saying that it is difficult to follow the story.

Also, with this recording it sounds as if each reader was left to make the recording on their own on a laptop.  The sound level on several chapters/readers was clipping (overloading/distorted).  Another problem was that some readers seemed to lean into the mic causing the volume to be very loud and then leaned back away from the mic causing the volume to be very quiet.  This ever changing audio level requires the listener to constantly change the volume on the stereo.  Further more, The volume levels between chapters/readers did not match, again some more quiet than others.

All in all I like the story but the amateur recording was such that I could not get through the book. My recommendation would be to purchase a different audio book, as I will be doing.
254948
The book itself is probably very good, but the audible version has a narrator that has the most irritating, raspy voice. It sounds like she has laryngitis. It's called vocal fry, and it isn't very pleasant to listen to. I've rarely heard an audio book with someone using such poor vocal control except free, volunteer works from the Gutenburg Project. I couldn't keep listening to people wheezing while they read, or sounding like their voice was about to give out. But they're just volunteers. This is supposed to be a professional, and it's entirely getting in the way of being able to listen and follow the story. Maybe some people get used to listening to women talk that way in school, but out in the real world, it's bad manners, and horribly hard on one's voice. I don't imagine she'll have much of a voice in five or ten years if she keeps sounding like she's trying to fry eggs on her vocal cords.
3463194
I'm only a third of the way through the book.  I bought the audio version and the book version.  DO NOT BUY THE AUDIO VERSION.  The voice..... OMG... makes me not want to listen to it!  Completely ruins the book!
1428737
The audio version is awful. The "chapters" make no sense and often end in mid sentence or in the middle of a scene?!  This is extremely frustrating and it disrupts the flow of the book. Its a shame because the voices are very nice.
1735729
I love John Saul, but the narrator for the audio narration, Angela Dawes, sounded like Forrest Gump.  She slowly made all one syllable words sound like two syllable words.  It was so annoying that I couldn't finish listening to the book.
1280806
These remarks are about the audible version. The story is simple and, well, fine as a guilty pleasure. The only thing that really drove me mad was the way the guy reading the story was unable to pronounce the word, 'solder'. He kept pronouncing it phonetically, and UGH. After all, he's a professional reader, you'd think he would look up any words he wasn't sure of, or that they would catch it in some kind of testing... anyways. It was fine other than that.
4858189
i really would have enjoyed the book if it weren't for the narrator. CJ (the narrator) does an excellent job on the voices and getting into the characters but she pauses after every single sentence- even those that aren't the characters. It got so annoying before i finished the second chapter that I still haven't finished the book yet!
4782991
If you're thinking about getting the audiobook - don't. I was surprised to learn that this book was narrated by a human! After hours of listening, I was convinced the book was being read by text-to-speech software. It sounds a lot like an automated telephone voice you'd expect to hear when "experiencing long wait times" on hold with customer service.  The complete lack of any natural inflection makes every word a distraction from its meaning. It's nearly impossible to focus on the material once you've realized the reader sounds EXACTLY like a Speak-N-Spell. I would welcome a thick French or  Austrian accent, or even a pronounced stutter, rather than listen to this robot voice. Unacceptable.
2248850
I've listened to quite a few of Patterson's books on Audio, and I enjoy the little background scenarios that are sometimes created with music, or various sound effects; the stories are solid and I feel something is lost by dissecting them or their characters. We enjoy and return to Patterson's books because we know they are reliable and we won't be let down. That said, I have one issue which relates ONLY to the audio versions and not the books themselves: PLEASE make sure your pronunciations of unusual-sounding names or places is correct! The Long Island town of Ronkonkoma, for example; to see it in print is no problem, but to hear it repeatedly mispronounced made me crazy and truly detracted from the moment. (The accent belongs on the 2nd syllable, not the 3rd...)
2942988
This is really two reviews in one.  James Kaplan's book is fascinating and the 18-disc recording the aural version of a page turner.  But I wish they had given reader Rob Shapiro lessons on how to pronounce certain names and places.  Key figures like Jule (should be pronounced "Jul-ee") is called Jule (as in "jewel").  Estes Kefauver, the politician who investigated organized crime, gets a totally weird pronunciation.  Designer Jean Louis gets an Americanize name.  The famed Via Veneto in Rome gets a very un-Italian pronunciation.  These are just a few I recall.  The CD set retails for $50.  Couldn't they have paid to make it right?  It least Shapiro is consistent.  His mispronounces the great composer Jule Styne's name at least 40 times.
4247561
I don't generally write reviews, but I was quite disappointed with this audiobook. Audible recommended this title because of my previous purchases and I'm familiar with Mises and Hayek and an admirer of their philosophy. Having said that, I found the narrator's fake accents when representing people from different nationalities quite obnoxious and, at times, hard to understand.
4803730
The Reader talks too haltingly.  Buy it if this doesn't bother you.  Possibly, listen to a sample at AUDIBLE.COM before buying this story on audiobook.
285456
Why, oh why, didn't someone vet the reading of the narrator in the audiobook version? Although Susan Ericksen does a nice job in interpreting the text, she delivers a cringe-worthy number of mispronunciations that most listeners will undoubtedly catch. Every time one of these faux pas pops up, it's distracting -- and unnecessary. Hear that, whoever publishes audiobooks?
4760081
I wish the narrator (great actor) had checked on some of the German and Swiss pronunciation of places and book titles before reading the book. He is now dead and cannot be told about it.
4644355
This review is for the Audible version. How did this narrator get picked for this? How did it get passed to release? The narrator is constantly speaking in an excited and urgent voice, which is great for the action scenes but because he's always at 110%, it really ruins the pace.

The book itself is a good read, and I went back to the Kindle version that luckily came with my purchase, but I have to give a score of the terrible Audible narration.