A Game of Thrones discussion

Hmm, ive read the books, and now listened to the audio books too, glad i read the books first, the narration isnt good, its barely English. Given that the narrator is 93 and GRR Martins writing pace,im now hopeful for a rerecording of the series, maybe they could use a horn rather than ahoooing, given the budget the can surely make available a few sound effects would be preferable, and a cast of more than one is needed to distinguish the many characters. Maybe men could voice the men, women the women, and the only lisp will be where its written they have a lisp or vocal defect. Very disapointing, but great books with poor narration sum it up.

Am I the only one who liked Roy Dotrice's narration? I thought it sounded very "high fantasy."

They got a new guy in for Book Four-- and he or the director actually thought "Damphair" should be pronounced "Damfair" not "Damp hair". That was pretty memorable.

Even I have to admit, though, that by book five-- it's sounding a little less... polished. Some of the voices blur together and get switched. No longer tip-top, but this is how I feel about the stories in general. Book Three was the apex, imho, these last two have been heavily padded.

I've (almost) read all the books, but they're full of so much information I probably missed. Would anyone recommend just listening to the audio books? I've never listened to one before, so I don't know what to expect.

James wrote: "Hmm, ive read the books, and now listened to the audio books too, glad i read the books first, the narration isnt good, its barely English. Given that the narrator is 93 and GRR Martins writing pac..."

Casting additional narrators for an audiobook is very expensive; I've only run across one so far and that's Dune, and it was done inconsistently for the first half and then just faded to a single narrator in the remainder. Roy Dotrice does have limitations, but that's who they hired. John Lee did book 4 when Roy was sick, but later Roy recorded it as well. Due to the massive number of speaking parts in the series, it would be difficult to find a narrator who can create so many voices. I would nominate the guy who narrated To Hell And Back.

Emma wrote: "I've (almost) read all the books, but they're full of so much information I probably missed. Would anyone recommend just listening to the audio books? I've never listened to one before, so I don't ..."

I love audiobooks, and have listened to this entire series as well as read it. Roy Dotrice is the narrator for the series, and he is very old, and a lifelong smoker, you can hear it in his voice. Some characters, like Tyrion, I think he nails quite well. He has a great deal of trouble with female characters. Give it a try, it can't hurt, you can get it on audio from your library for no cost.

drowningmermaid wrote: "Am I the only one who liked Roy Dotrice's narration? I thought it sounded very "high fantasy."

They got a new guy in for Book Four-- and he or the director actually thought "Damphair" should be p..."

That might just be John Lee's Scottish shining through a little bit. I like John Lee a lot, and he's pretty tough to avoid if you listen to a lot of audiobooks, but he's better at non fiction than novels.

I tried listening to the A Game of Thrones audiobook again, and realized that I just can’t stand to listen to Dotrice. His gruff reading and overindulgent accenting seems to be from an all-too-modern viewpoint: The world of A Song of Ice and Fire is medieval, therefore less educated than ours, so everyone, no matter how smart in that world, must be made to sound stupid to the listener. The most educated sometimes have rough, hard speech, and he reads “dumb commoner” parts so well that it hurts.

I understand that the story is placed in a hard, harsh, medieval realm where most of the populace has barely any education (i.e., none at all) but there is truly no need to read those parts so realistically as to make them nigh unintelligible. Most of the book is exceptional, some parts merely great, but the distraction comes with how he reads the character dialogue. When two commoners speak, it should be abridged to “a conversation happened between commoners” instead of having Mr. Dotrice “spi’ i’ u’ wi’ a bi’ of an a’cent t’ma’ me un’e’stan’ tha’ th’people aren’ tha’ smar’”.

When the mood and tone of the book is appropriately set, I can simply be told, informed, or in other ways described to what someone’s social, political, economic, and educational standings are, and I will take it from there. Pull me into the world, and I will figure it out!

John Lee seemed to understand that when he read A Feast for Crows. He raised the dialogue above the “noise floor”, if you will, apparently armed with the knowledge that the people listening to the book are probably much, much more educated than the most enlightened maester (excepting those who’ve forged their Valyrian steel links; sorcery isn’t too commonplace in the 21st century) so his “commoner” reading was done using a day-to-day cadence and rhythm of speech. His approach to describing the setting was so well done that even though a commoner was talking the way you or I would to each other on the street, I understood that it was a person talking the way they would have talked to any other commoner in the streets of a tough medieval town.

Lee performs equally well when dealing with other areas of that world, too. The courtly dialogue has a styled manner that conveys it’s happening at an upper echelon of that society. Those who do not speak the common tongue, when speaking to each other, are not using halting, broken speech to convey their messages to each other because—get this!—they probably speak the same language and do understand each other. George R.R. Martin didn’t pull an Avatar here and hire someone so the Dothraki dialogue in his book would cho kop to mak’ mak’ khalitak’ nareesi e’lava’a. He just had them speak to each other.

When Lee has to read the dialogue between people of disparate nationalities, castes, or languages, he just uses the tool that Martin already gave the reader—the dialogue is normalized around the point-of-view character. If you’re reading a Cersei chapter, Lee makes the commoners sound a little less comfortable, less educated around her, and why not? They’re out of their depth and element. Reading about Dany? She’s surrounded by a language she doesn’t know, so it’s equally difficult for the reader to understand people, apart from those who speak Daenarys’s language. But Martin made all the chapters from the point of view of the character, so no matter what the social standing or language barriers the character might experience in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, the reader is intended to understand a character’s point of view.

Leslie wrote: "I loved Dotrice's narration until about 1/6th the way into book 3 when one of his characters always sounded like he had a mouth full of spit and he totally lost me. I appreciate his character diffe..."

Was it Varys? I love most of Dotrice's voices and am not even bothered by the timber of the female voices, because, to be fair...he's an elderly man. I can suspend disbelief pretty easily on most of them. But his Varys and his Missandei drive me a little nuts. I'm just finishing up A Storm of Swords.

I have just finished it in my audiobook. I loved it. It took me to some other world and left me in my fantasies. I enjoyed hearing it more then reading. I found the audiobook on ennymedia.com
Happy with the quality.

In book 5 everyone sounds Irish or like a pirate. Arya sounded like an old Irish woman. I wish someone else would read them as I can no longer listen to his voice.