The Gates of Sleep cover art

The Gates of Sleep

Elemental Masters

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The Gates of Sleep

By: Mercedes Lackey
Narrated by: Kayla Fell
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About this listen

 In the tradition of her acclaimed fairy-tale-inspired novel, The Serpent's Shadow, best-selling author Mercedes Lackey re-imagines Sleeping Beauty-as a dark and enchanting Edwardian fantasy. Marina is the cherished daughter of the wealthy Roeswood family, practioners of Elemental Magic. But evil portents have warned her parents that Marina will be killed before her 18th birthday-by the hand of her own aunt.©2003 Mercedes Lackey (P)2009 Audible, Inc. Classics Fantasy Fiction Historical Magic Paranormal

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I tried very hard with this book, but it fell short of the the previous book for me. I wonder if it was the book or myself? But I would recommend that all the reviews are read and the preview listened to several times. I will keep an open mind with the next in the series, but will take my own advice and listen to the preview a couple of times before I take any action.

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This kept me happily amused, as the arts and crafts background is fun, the Sleeping Beauty parallels don't make the plot too obvious and the narrators voice is plesant and well paced.
There were a lot of 'retakes' left in, so that you heard the sentance read incorrectly, then a pause followed by the corrected version. There were also a lot of words pronounced in a non-standard way- 'sere' as 'sir', 'mulish'as 'mullish', as if no-one had bothered to check the recording before they published it.
This was odd, but didn't really stop me enjoying the suspense or the romance and I'll probably buy the rest of this series.

A delightful fantasy

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Terrible pronunciation, it's not the narrators fault, this book should have been edited. For example the pronunciation of 'gaol' as 'gayowel' (phonetic sound), is just one small example of a teeth gratingly awful listen. Not helped as this is a dull story, laboured, and wandering. So bad, I couldn’t finish it.

Bad narration with no evidence of editing!

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I quite enjoyed the first book but this fantasy based on sleeping beauty was quite dreadful.

Firstly, I didn't like the narrator, emphasis was frequently in the wrong place as though she didn't understand what she was reading and some of the pronunciations and accents were eccentric at best.

Secondly, the pacing was slow. Four hours in nothing has happened until you get to chapter 9, and what I was expecting to be a fantasy devolved into a virtue signalling exposition of social history. YAWN!!

Thirdly, characterisation. Marina was a whining child in a time a girl of her age would be expected to be an adult. I couldn't stand her and had zero sympathy, which is a tremendous fail in a heroine.

Awfully slow

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