Three star review, originally posted here on December 21, 2020 during a mass-review of pandemic audiobooks.
[DISCLAIMER: I’m catching up on months worth of Audiobook reviews, so writing this quickly.]
I had a very uneven experience with this book. On one hand, this should be perfect as an audiobook. On the other hand, this is terrible as an audiobook.
PROS:
– Stephen Fry is, as always, a fantastic narrator, and a charming storyteller
– Greek mythology is CRAZY!!!!! Especially the early bits. So that’s very entertaining good stuff.
– The myths tend to be short stories, which is ideal for audibook listening.
CONS:
– There are SO many stories, and some are just SO non-sequiturial, that it was very hard to tell when something didn’t make sense because the story just didn’t make sense, when something didn’t make sense because I’d zoned out, and when something didn’t make sense because the new story had started.
– You’d think that if you were lost, you could just zone back in for the next story. But there were subchapters within the same story, so you’d think you’re starting up in a new chapter, but it turns out it’s the middle of the previous story.
So overall, I really loved the very beginning (because stuff is CRAZY), then I kinda was just zoned out for most of the middle, and then I zoned back in and started enjoying it again towards the end when the stories seemed a bit more cohesive and thought out. Origin stories seemed to work really well in this format.
Helga without the H 