The Price of Blood

Emma of Normandy, Book 2

By: Patricia Bracewell

Narrated by: Heather Wilds

Unwillingly thrust into marriage to England's King Æthelred, Emma has given the king a son and heir, but theirs has never been a happy marriage. In The Price of Blood, Bracewell returns to 1006 when a beleaguered Æthelred, still haunted by his brother's ghost, governs with an iron fist and a royal policy that embraces murder.

As tensions escalate and enmities solidify, Emma forges alliances to protect her young son from ambitious men-even from the man she loves. In the north there is treachery brewing, and when Viking armies ravage England, loyalties are shattered and no one is safe from the sword.

©2015 Patricia Bracewell (P)2015 Tantor

Good story narration annoying

I love the story and the previous book as well. I was disappointed in the narration. The inflections and accents are not consistent. It could be that the mother language of the author is not English. She inflected upward at the end of each sentence which is not the way English is spoken. I didn’t care for her accents and change of characters but admittedly she performed much better than I would have. It must be hard to try to be different characters in a book. The narrator of the first book was a master. If I had known the narration would be so lacking I would not have purchased this audio version.

Maybe a different narrator??

This is the second in a series about Queen Emma and her life as England’s Queen. I was looking forward to learn more about her, but this book was hard to follow due to the monotone narrator.

Narrator needed to do her homework!

The narrator needed to do some more homework of correct pronunciation. If I hadn’t liked the story and already invested in the first book I may not have continued. Book 1 narrator is far superior!

like the story but not crazy about the performance

The narrator had a very strange cadence to her speech and most of the time was very monotonous and droning. her voices were good but the listening became very boring. also this one had way more dialogue and less action than the previous one. I'm not sure if I'm going to read the third one.

Bad cadence

Whereas I liked the story very much, I did not enjoy the cadence or intonation of the reader. They were without variation no matter the character or circumstance. I found it quite distracting.