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The Wizard Hunters

Fall of Ile-Rien Seriesm Book 1

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The Wizard Hunters

By: Martha Wells
Narrated by: Talmadge Ragan
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About this listen

Ile-Rien is in peril. A mysterious army known only as the Gardier has surrounded the country, attacking in ominous black airships. Hope is not lost though, for a magical sphere created by Ile-Rien's greatest sorcerer may hold the key to defeating the faceless enemy. But the sphere is unpredictable and has already claimed several lives. When a magical spell goes disastrously awry, young Tremaine Valiarde and a brave band are transported to another world-a world of rough magics, evil mages, honorable warriors, and a secret Gardier base.

©2003 Martha Wells (P)2013 Tantor Epic Fantasy

Critic reviews

"The subsequent story seems intended to combine elements of high fantasy and cross-time travel, as if it were a collaborative work by Andre Norton and S. M. Stirling. Thanks to Wells' narrative skill and considerably above-average characterization, it largely succeeds in those intentions." ( Booklist)
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A gripping book which follows on from the first two but also stands alone as the first of a trilogy
loving the characters, storyline and plot all really enjoyable
my only criticism is the stilted narration which detracts somewhat from the experience

First of an excellent trilogy

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Interesting story set some years after the death of the necromancer. Sets up well for the rest of the series.
Had a REALLY hard time with the narrator, odd emphasis on words, broke sentences in the wrong place and generally didn’t elevate the story.

Enjoyable story convinced the narrator was AI

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If you could sum up The Wizard Hunters in three words, what would they be?

Brilliant wonderful plot

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Wizard Hunters?

hard to say as its all good

Would you be willing to try another one of Talmadge Ragan’s performances?

The reader is rubbish - can't even speak English properly - i.e. bad pronunciation and no expression in the voice at all. Why do we have all these american speakers?

Story great reading awful

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I’ve been enjoying these early Wells fantasy series though I think she works best in short story/novella form as the writing is tighter — she certainly had an obsession with about half a dozen verbs which tire with repetition— eyebrows endlessly ‘quirk’, and people always ‘push’ or ‘shove’ to their feet, etc. Those quirks (see what I did there…) thankfully are not as irritating in her more polished current murderbot series, 20 years after these books. Nonetheless I enjoy her imaginative worlds and characters greatly. Agree with others on how unbelievably annoying the narrator is (though this was recorded in 2013 which is too early for the possibility of an AI!). Just weird weird weird pronunciations and sentence stresses. I couldn’t take another in the series read by this narrator.

Good fast paced story let down by awkward narration

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The story was so so. Each next step was always fairly obvious well before it happened.

Sorry to be rude but the reading was completely weird. Kept putting emphasis on the wrong words and also separating each word in a sentence in a clipped and artificial manner. Sounded like a robot. Was it one?

I googled Talmadge Ragan and she's an American actor who specialises in audio book readings. When I listened to some of these (briefly) she sounded perfectly ok so not sure what happened here. A mystery.

Was the reader a real person or an AI?

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This steampunk fantasy adventure is full of action and tension with a likeable and complicated main character. The world is vividly described and I enjoyed the magic system that gradually became clearer throughout the book – I liked the fact that different societies view it very differently. Altogether a cracking read and I’ll definitely be getting hold of more books in this series.
9/10

Gripping steampunk fantasy with a great narrator

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This is a great story but is absolutely ruined by the awful naration.
Other reviews mention AI but I think (based on when recorded) it's more a combination of text-to-speach supplemented by some actual human interaction, though the intonation and pronunciation is often all wrong blending sentences together and ending them when they should not. Based on the authors other books (of which I'm a huge fan) I doubt the writing is as poor as the naration makes it seem.

Absolutely awful naration

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Could not listen for more than 10 mins before I had to abandon the book. Cannot rate the story because I never got into it.

very poor reader

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