Chad Harrison

https://www.goodreads.com/cah242

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Chad is Currently Reading

Chad Harrison is currently reading

This Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #7)

by Matt Dinniman (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in March 2025

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Mar 28, 2025 09:02AM

Chad Harrison is currently reading

Pawn of Prophecy (The Belgariad, #1)

by David Eddings

bookshelves: fantasy-favorites, nostalgia, currently-reading

Reading for the 3rd time

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Chad Harrison said: " There's a lot for me to unpack on this one. As far as I can remember it's the first fantasy book I ever read, sometime in middle school. And it blew my mind. The idea of magic, obviously, was familiar to me, but there was a simplicity and a structure There's a lot for me to unpack on this one. As far as I can remember it's the first fantasy book I ever read, sometime in middle school. And it blew my mind. The idea of magic, obviously, was familiar to me, but there was a simplicity and a structure to "the will and the word" that made the magic come to life for me. The characters were sarcastic and hilarious, but all of them had depth, and they felt like real people who I desperately wanted to spend time with. I read and reread this series probably a dozen times before I turned 18, but have only reread them once in the 15 years since. I'm reading them all again, this time via audiobook from my local library.

Honestly, reading this one now, the book still really holds up, which I wasn't totally expecting. Looking forward, I recognize a lot of the issues that people complain about: repetitiveness, a little too quippy, stereotyping whole countries to act in exactly the same way, etc. But the book is so dang enjoyable that I can easily overlook all of that. It might just be my nostalgia, but I loved this reread, and am excited to continue it.

With one huge exception.

The narration was one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with an audiobook. The characters' voices don't line up with how i hear them in my head, but of course that's going to happen, and I'm not mad at that. It's the parts that are objectively bad that drove me crazy.

It's like the narrator (Cameron Beierle) was actively trying to make things terrible. Individual characters, in individual sentences would change accents. Durnik is either from York, London, or (most frequently) Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof. Silk is either a posh Englishman or Eastern European (he literally changed mid-word in one instance). Words were also pronounced inconsistently, which I understand happening from one narrator to another, but this was the same narrator two sentences later.

I'm not taking any stars off for the narration, but only because it wasn't quite bad enough to make me switch back to print. I'm hoping it improves as the series goes on...we'll see. ...more "

progress:

(77%)
— Apr 04, 2020 10:12PM

Apr 07, 2020 10:50AM · see review