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Do You Like The Audio Books By Roy Dotrice?


Dolorous Nedd

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think I am in the minority

- I thought he did a crappy job with the voices.  I listened to Game of Thrones on a 8 hour car ride.

Everyone sounds like a pirate, a leprechaun (in Tyrion's case), or Varys who sounded like he had a poop sandwich in his mouth while talking.  I also hated the way he pronounced some of the names.

 

I would still recommend it for a long ride to a fan of ASOIAF. 

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  • 5 weeks later...
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On 2013-01-31 at 7:59 PM, Dolorous Nedd said:

Instead of reading the ASoIaF books I have listened to them on the audio books narrated by Roy Dotrice. I'm rather curious what others think about the audio books.

 

For me the first three were incredibly enjoyable with the voices of Dolorous Edd, Sandor Clegane, Jorah Mormont, Drogo, Hodor, and Mormont's raven being huge highlights. Many of the voices Roy comes up with for these books are awesome and add a lot of depth to the characters. Unfortunately his voices on the next 2 books are disappointing by comparison with a common complaint being that Dany sounds like an old hag (a point I can't disagree with).

 

At any rate it's nice being able to listen to these books while I'm at work. It makes the day go much faster!

I'm definitely in the same boat as you as far as the audiobooks speeding along my day.

Have to say I have listened to books 1-3 waay more than the blander 4-5 installments.

I just learned yesterday that he actually plays the role of Pyromancer Hallyne!!! Boy was I howling when I went back and watched the pre blackwater episodes featuring him.

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I get to listen to audiobooks at work and I don't mind him as much as others I've heard. His weird accents don't bother me as much as when he is inconsistent with the weird accents. The worst I've heard so far is whoever does the wheel of time series. I was so excited to listen to them and the narrators voice was so high pitched I had to shut it off after a few minutes. 

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  • 9 months later...

swooping in years later just bc i gotta vent omg like sorry but this guy ignores lots of pronunciation rules, and I literally yell 'PETER' out loud whenever he reads Baelish's name as PEH-TIRE. There's so many other words like this that just set off my petpeeves like nothing else lmao but yeah. He overdoes some voices, pretty sure based on who is ugly vs anyone 'good' or attractive or a major role, and then even still the female voices are mostly bad either way if its not a major character, like i wish he'd just read those all normally instead....

and the shUN = SHONE. i know that one's probs an accent thing but he pronounces other long 'o's in similar grammatical arrangements so this is just annoying *sigh* but yeah he's ok i guess.

And of course like many others said...some of the voices i actually skip through bc its like nails on a chalkboard lol im so sorry im being so petty, just, i canT IGNORE THIS STUFF once i notice iT

 but his voice is very good tone for reading in general ~

 

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On 2013-02-01 at 4:59 AM, Dolorous Nedd said:

Instead of reading the ASoIaF books I have listened to them on the audio books narrated by Roy Dotrice. I'm rather curious what others think about the audio books.

 

For me the first three were incredibly enjoyable with the voices of Dolorous Edd, Sandor Clegane, Jorah Mormont, Drogo, Hodor, and Mormont's raven being huge highlights. Many of the voices Roy comes up with for these books are awesome and add a lot of depth to the characters. Unfortunately his voices on the next 2 books are disappointing by comparison with a common complaint being that Dany sounds like an old hag (a point I can't disagree with).

 

At any rate it's nice being able to listen to these books while I'm at work. It makes the day go much faster!

THANK YOU for this topic!

I have a big problem with his made-up-speech-impediments... Like why make Varys slobber worse than Vargo? And WHY does a naathi linguist wonder child come to have such a stupid thick accent? ("Yol Glace")

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Since there is no official alternative to Roy Dotrice, I'm very interested in fan-made audiobook-projects. Do you know of any?

Once I even considered starting a podcast myself, featuring different narrators for each character (native speakers of course, easy to find in Berlin). Only that would be awfully much work with limited chances ever to be uploaded somewhere for copyright matters.

Although I don't love the show, an audiobook featuring the actors chapterwise would be amazing and just what I'm looking for.

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On 1/31/2013 at 10:59 PM, Dolorous Nedd said:

Instead of reading the ASoIaF books I have listened to them on the audio books narrated by Roy Dotrice. I'm rather curious what others think about the audio books.

 

For me the first three were incredibly enjoyable with the voices of Dolorous Edd, Sandor Clegane, Jorah Mormont, Drogo, Hodor, and Mormont's raven being huge highlights. Many of the voices Roy comes up with for these books are awesome and add a lot of depth to the characters. Unfortunately his voices on the next 2 books are disappointing by comparison with a common complaint being that Dany sounds like an old hag (a point I can't disagree with).

 

At any rate it's nice being able to listen to these books while I'm at work. It makes the day go much faster!

Give Roy a break.  How can an elderly man make himself sound like a 15 year old girl!  He's doing a fine job. 

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The funny thing is, I have been listening to these audio books back and forth on the way to work over the last few months, and I agree, the first three were better. It is sometimes difficult to listen to, but not intolerable. He does a good job with the voice he is given.

:)

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  • 1 month later...
On 23. März 2017 at 3:34 PM, foxberlin said:

Since there is no official alternative to Roy Dotrice, I'm very interested in fan-made audiobook-projects. Do you know of any? (...)

To answer my own question, I recently stumbled upon this reader on

and really like his performance. 

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I think he does a good job. I can listen to stuff while I work and it has allowed me to complete the series 12 or so times. Sure it isn't perfect but overall I think he's good. Over 1000 characters to contend with. My only real problem is in AFFC and ADWD he seemed to forget the voices he used in the previous 3(all girls under 30 have this weird hag voice). That being said it's as good as I could expect from an audio book this long. I really don't know what more someone could want. Is he supposed to perfectly mimic the voice you (in your head) have for the characters? 

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I don't know how good he used to be and if he's better in the other books since I only got the Clash audiobook but I found him low key awful. My audio book generating app narrates better, and it's a freaking machine. I have listened to plenty of other audiobooks and their narrators are better by a long, long shot.

While a lot of it is the terrible voices, I actually think that what makes it difficult for me is that he's not a particularly captivating narrator. I didn't get any difference between sad scenes, happy scenes, important scenes or trivial scenes. Maybe it's because he was already relatively old when the books started so it's harder for his voice to have much range but I am baffled by people exalting his work on this particular series.

As for the voices, I don't even think that audiobook narrators even necessarily need to do voices, we are not children. It's not like they are radio dramas. I personally found all his voices to sound roughly the same except for one or two, which would not be a knock against him if there wasn't a clear objective of making them different. If the editors/publishers felt like voices were necessary for the characters, they should have at least hired a woman for the female voices and the young children's voices.

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I think he does a fine job. Given the amount of people and places, accents, ages, etc... It's like being asked to narrate War and Peace. My only complaints come in some of his pronunciations of various names. Tragaryen... ugh.... Danerius.... sigh.... viserius.... jeeeeez, at least he's consistent... Br-eye-EEN.... that's the worst....  My only real complaint with his character voices, is that any/all sea people, all sound identical to Davos. He has one pirate voice, and he uses it for all boat-loving folks. Oh, and his manly Melisandre voice.

 

I will say... if I had listened first, I might not have even noticed these things. But I already had the sounds set in my head.... And then the fact that Dawn and Dorne are identical pronounced to a British man.... gets confusing. But I tried to put myself in that position... He had a tall task, and stepped up to the plate. I give him credit.

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