The Year Santa Claus Gave Gold

By: Dale Stubbart

Narrated by: Kane Prestenback

Facilitator LadeBack of the All Cosmos Vehicle Extra-Prize encounters a Solar Magnetic Storm which sends his ship crashing into what appears to be his home planet Terry. There he meets a jolly old elf who claims to be Santa.

Santa tries to give everybody something better than he gave them last year. And this year he plans to give everybody gold. But somebody is bollixing up his plan.

©2018 Dale Stubbart (P)2018 Dale Stubbart

Short story

This isn’t your regular Christmas story, it’s sci if based. The story was good even though it was really short. The narrator was awful. I cringed as he read it and only liked the one voice he did. He distracted from the story itself and I just finished it and can’t remember much of it because the narrator was so bad.

Why is the narrator trying to be Shatner?

I received a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

There's not much to say about a half hour audiobook, but I'll try.

It's written like a TV show or play, with dialog listed instead of written in. Like
Character A: bla bla bla
Character B: bla bla bla, etc
Characters have no back stories or depth, which is to be expected. Setting is a cave, so no real immersion. Story is simple, straightforward.

Honestly, it's not bad, if written kind of awkwardly.

The issue is the narration. It's like the narrator is doing a bad Captain Kirk impression, with halting speech and unnatural pauses. The voices are charing worthy and one is so off putting I wanted to stop listening. However, as there is little dialog, this isn't a big deal.

I'm not sure (being an audio book) if the mispronounced words were on purpose, or narrator. But like devil becomes de ville, human is hum an, earth is referred to as Terry, not Terra. If it was on purpose, then I have to give the narrator credit, as he managed to get all of them, none slipped through the crack.

All in all, it's not the worst thing I've read, but the voice narration makes it pretty close. With a good narrator, with some comedic timing, it could have been alright. But as it stands, it's not worth your time.