Some of y’all may have seen me gushing about this on the social networks over the weekend, but in case you didn’t: Audible finally let me have my free copy of the audiobook for Valor of the Healer!
I started listening to it, and I’m here to tell you, Internets–goddamn, it’s weird and wonderful to be hearing somebody else reading words that came out of my very own brain. I didn’t even have to do anything to make this audiobook happen, other than fork over a pronunciation guide. And then magic happened and suddenly OH HEY I HAVE AN AUDIOBOOK.
I’ve listened to it up to partway through Chapter 5, and am really impressed by Gia St. Claire’s reading. She doesn’t nail everything–some of the pronunciations of this or that name are occasionally wrong. And she’s making most of the male characters sound too old and gruff by comparison to how they sound in my head. She’s better with Rab and Kestar, possibly because they’re younger males, and Rab especially should sound young.
But that said? She is very good at at least giving the different male characters distinguishable voices. She’s also a very expressive and engaging reader in general.
And oh god you guys, she’s amazing doing Faanshi. When I got to a particular very tense scene in Chapter 5, I actually teared up a bit listening to it. And I wrote these words. It’s not like I didn’t know what was coming!
I’m going to listen to the rest of it, all the way through, despite the strong urge to jump ahead to more of my favorite bits. Because my having written all of these words does not in the slightest diminish the childlike glee of hearing somebody else tell my own story to me!
So highly, highly recommended for those of you who may not find ebooks to your tastes, since this is the other means of getting a copy of Valor until such time as Carina decides to print it! And I’m not even just saying this because Audible will fork over a buck for every copy of the audiobook they sell (because they will!). I’m saying it mostly because Gia St. Claire is doing a fantastic job and I encourage you all to go check out what she did with my book!
And I can’t wait to see what she did with Chapter 14. 😀
