Whispering Wood

Elemental Blessings, Book 5

By: Sharon Shinn

Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella

Valentina Serlast has reluctantly traveled to the royal city to witness her brother Darien be crowned the king of Welce. A hunti woman with an affinity for the forest, Val is much more comfortable living in isolation on her country estates, almost forgotten by everyone. When Darien convinces her to extend her stay, she is drawn into an unfamiliar whirl of activity, meeting with ambassadors from other countries, becoming friends with the unpredictable Princess Corene, and trying to learn the secrets of a glamorous foreign visitor named Melissande.

But nothing makes Val more breathless than the reappearance of Sebastian Ardelay, a red-headed rogue who has been her best friend since childhood. She quickly learns that Sebastian has been risking his life in a dangerous venture that could get him banned from the kingdom—or even lead Welce to the brink of war.

©2023 Tom Canty (P)2024 Tantor Media

Enjoyable

This series is one of my "comfort" read series, and this latest installment doesn't disappoint. It's true that the book follows a somewhat predictable story arc, but that's a lot of the reason I like it. Val was a little tiresome at first, but she loosened up enough to be likeable. The biggest drawback is the new narrator. I don't dislike her, but she pronounces the places and names differently and it's distracting.

Love this Series

I love the continuation of the Element series, though this was quite different from the others. There was minimal insight into and flexing of elemental gifts/powers, until the end of the story. If someone started with this episode they would have no idea how the Prime’s powers have served them and those around them. This appeared to be written to suit the climate today, not as much fantastical fantasy and energy as the others, but I enjoyed hearing about previous characters etc. and getting to know Val and Sebastian. I hope there will be more episodes that are more like the original tone of the series.

happy to see new addition

The story was a little boring at first, but finally picked up a bit.

Biggest complaint was the narrator. She mispronounced some of the countries and character names. Did she not bother to do her research?

Altogether it was okay

Please replace this narrator!

The narrator miss pronounces most place and people names (it took me a while to figure out that the "sink" she kept talking about was the quarto "Ch-in-que - I mean, come on, it is the Italian word for 5, look it up"). Her pronunciation was also occasionally inconsistent. It really felt like she did absolutely no preparation for narrating this book and like no one on the production team had even listened to 5 minutes of any of the previous 4 books.
I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as the others, and I'm not sure how much of that was the narrator and how much was the personality of the main character.

Different, not as good and horrible narrator

I was disappointed with this book. It seemed a sad tack on to the elemental blessings series. Shinn overlooked previous characters who probably should have played a bigger part. Leah’s husband would have been more likely to provide assistance to his cousin than the blind sisters. She made Melissande look pathetic and stupid. The story was interesting but not as cohesive as the other works she has written. Normally her books pull me in and keep me captive but this one took a while to get me interested. Perhaps it was just too long between books in the series. And the narrator-UGH! Terrible job with the characters voices and she mispronounced most of the characters names and place names. She calls Hunti-Hoonti. Why? If you’re hired to narrate a series previously done by someone else successfully maybe try listening to one of the previous books to learn? It was painful and she isn’t very skilled as a narrator. Do yourself a favor and skip this audiobook. If you want to know what the book is about-read it, it’ll be more enjoyable. Tantor you suck.