The Wizard King of the North

Ranger Series, Book 4

By: Charles Lamb

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Newly crowned Wizard King of the North, Alex Rogers, has a real mess on his hands. The surprise successor to the vanquished Vassal King Ailmer, he inherits a kingdom in shambles. Bankrupt from the looted treasury and past mismanagement of the northern kingdom, he must find a way to restore prosperity in a place where almost no one seeks his involvement.

Besides the financial woes, he is besieged by the Lords of Gundor, all seeking a return to the days when there was no central kingdom and the Lords themselves ruled unchallenged on their holdings in the Gundor Valley. Undermined from his first day on the throne, Alex must put them in check with no army, no money, and few allies to draw upon.

As if a bankrupt kingdom and unruly Lords seeking his overthrow were not enough, his newly born child has become the focal point of interest to parties unknown. This unseen threat snatches the newborn child out from under the watchful eye of parents desperate to reclaim their heir.

It's now up to Cassie and Alex to move heaven and earth to reclaim their child and put an end to any plans to alter their heir's destiny.

©2022 CW Lamb (P)2022 Tantor

Great story, performed by much less talented voice actor.

Charles Lamb’s story was as excellent as the three before. Great characters, good plot, good pacing, great world building. But the performance was a huge disappointment. The previous three novels were performed by Travis Baldree, who is known for his excellent work. The new performer Todd McLaren unfortunately is not in the same league as Travis Baldree. He can pull off the narration (he sounds like a news caster or NPR radio host) and he can make male character voices (fair to middling), but his attempts at performing the female characters are abhorrent. Without considering the previous three performances in the series he changed pronunciation of names and places (you know you hate that too) as well as the character’s personalities, tone, and accents so much that a seductress with an melodic English accent becomes a husky woman with a Transvaal accent and the dignified and powerful Wood Elf King is transformed into a week sounding doddering old dodger. Strong and confident female characters now sound weak, pleading and hysterical. Audible or Tantor, or whoever the producer was, please don’t use this guy to perform books featuring female characters. He would be pretty good ready something like An audible tour of the Great Lakes or something like that. It is my recommendation, that if you are already completely dedicated to the story then can probably live through his butchering of the character performances. I made it through but was grumpy (and I’m usually pretty easy going about most performer’s shortcomings). But if you’re not already loving the story from the previous novels you will just get angry so I recommend reading this one in book form if you can instead of listening to this version. I hope that helps.

this narrator is just bad.

It's painful listening to this guy do female voices. he needs a female partner to narrate with him, it's just worse than bad.

i should have bought a physical book

This narrator kept putting me to sleep. I'm only attempting to finish it because I loved the story. I will say he's not the worst I've heard. But this pacing is so slow when on normal. where the emotion, where's the ability to not make all characters sound alike. I wanted to be drawn in and not be put to sleep listening to a good a story.

Good story well put together

All around a well imagined and well told story I would recommend reading this book

Good story terrible performance

Good story but this was the worst’s reading I’ve ever listened to. If this was book one I would have missed a great series.