Rent Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter)

First Listen to this book if you are listening to the series to keep current with some key things that come up in later books but keep your expectations low.EASILY the worst of the series. To give you an idea of my personal ratings:Im rating an audio book so reading quality of the reader is 50 of the rating at least. Book itself is 50. Ive listened to the entire series as audio books.No others are 1 or 2 stars.Three or four others would be 3 stars.The rest are 4 stars mostly.The first 2 or 3 are 5 stars because of the high quality reading. The book would be a low to mid range 4 star with the reading a 5.Note that books dont get 5 stars ever from me really unless they can compete with Shakespeare, War & Peace, Wuthering Heights and other true literary giants.However, Im rating an audio book and the quality of the reader makes a big difference. So previous books with the other reader get a lot of points for that high quality and this one loses a lot of points. Top that with a weak book over all and you get a 1 star on this one.I listen to this series as audio books and the first few are amazingly well done I dont normally read by author but I might start listening based on reader. This is a very different reader though and Cynthia Holloway is absolutely horrible. Cynthia doesnt read in a monotone or anything, but she only has one voice. Anita, Richard, Jean Claude and all the supporting cast sound exactly the same for the first half of the book. She eventually makes them a tiny bit different. So Richards deep baritone is a very high pitched womans voice. In the previous novels, Kimberly Alexis does different voices for each character and accents and about everything you can hope for.The reader also pronounces it werewolf as in we are. Its a book almost entirely populated by lycanthropes and I have to hear werewolf, wereleopard and so on repeatedly. When you arent listening to werethings you have to listen to JeanClaude speak without any accent at all. Some dictionaries say that werewolf is technically accurate but Ive never heard anyone pronounce it this way. Maybe there are a few people in the audience that prefer this pronunciation but I would guess the majority of people are not going to like that at all.To top it off, as the other low reviews state, the book just isnt as good as the others. I wont go into the various other issues as the other negative reviews cover that just fine. the comment about my review on amazon points out that this is an abridged book, and perhaps that is the issue with the content itself too much chopped that should not have been. Its a reason for a 1 star review though and not an excuse.

Did not like the reader her Jean Claude was terrible. She was boring. I am not a fan of abridged versions either if there was an unabridge I would have gotten it. I can usually listen to books in this series over and over again this one I could not and now I am confused. I will have to get the book to understand. I want Kimberly Alexis back as the reader her Jean Claude is great.