Opening slide from a presentation I gave at VICFA 2023.
Probably. I might just get tired of it, and something I love might become something I'm bored with. Anyway, this time wasn't to reread. I wanted to finally listen to the audiobook all the way through.
This is the review I posted for All Systems Red on Audible UK:
I've reread the Murderbot Diaries several times. I love the whole series. And I just forced myself to listen to the whole audiobook of All Systems Red. Audible often has one of the books in the series available for free, and I've listened to most of them, but always quit and returned the book after the first 10-15 minutes because the narrator, Kevin Free, is (warning: personal opinion ahead that will anger some people) one of the worst audiobook narrators I've ever heard. (And I've heard a lot. I do a LOT of audiobooks, as I spend 3 or so hours a day walking.) Seriously, I would prefer auto-voice-to-text over Kevin Free. I'm not kidding. He's so bad at his job that it literally makes me angry.
But this time, All Systems Red was available free, and hey, it's just over 3 hours, so I decided to grit my teeth and do the whole thing, and try to see why so many people love his narration. Because many do, and that's OK, but...why?
Sorry, Free fans (and Mr Free, if you are reading this), but I still can't see it. His tone is off. He doesn't have a connection with the characters. Some narrators do voices for different characters, some don't, and Free definitely should not, especially women's voices. He makes them sound like a 1980s standup comic doing a "women are different from men" bit, all lispy. He's also inconsistent: the voices he was using for a character change over time--that's something new I noticed, by listening to the whole thing. So instead of improving my appreciation for Free by listening to the whole thing, I actually lowered my opinion.
After about 30 minutes in, I upped the playback speed to x1.2, then a few minutes later to x1.5. I normally never speed up an audiobook--I have a thing about wanting to listen to it as the narrator recorded it. I have to really want to get it over with fast, to do that. (And reminder: this is only 3 hours and 17 minutes long, and I still couldn't be done with it fast enough.)
I'm really hoping that the Netflix adaptation will be successful and that Tor or Netflix or someone will spring for a new audio adaptation, maybe with the star or even a full-cast reading (not dramatized, just a straight reading but maybe with each actor doing their characters' voices). Or, really, just with someone good as the reader. Murderbot deserves better.
I gave it Overall: 3 stars, Narration: 1 star, Story: 5 stars.
Expanding on the "doing voices" thing: I've thought about it more since I posted that review. Like, I listened to Rivers of London narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith recently. He does voices. He has a much deeper voice than Kevin Free, and yet he manages to very effectively do women's voices without sounding like a joke. (The only voice he seems to have trouble with is Dr Walid, a Scotsman who converted to Islam and changed his name but still speaks with a strong Scottish accent, which apparently Holdbrook-Smith has trouble doing--fair enough, not many non-Scots people can do one without sounding ridiculous, so he's wise not to try.)
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