Frostbite

the story is great the narrator not so much

when the narrator started to call Mia Maya my stomach turned.. it was hard to hear it every time.
but the book is great, i have read it like 4 times already, 1st time listening. i hope they will re do it with a different narrator.

5 people found this helpful

Great story terrible reading

I loved the story line and the 2nd chapter to the series. Howevern the reader did not convey the proper emotions for the story. For example, something would be said in an excited voice when it was supposed to be mumbled. It was completely off from what it should be

5 people found this helpful

Hvam is a downgrade from the narration of book 1

Despite the horrible voicing and distracting over-diction of this narrator; i still managed to enjoy this audible. It is nice to listen to books I have already read the old fashioned way.

4 people found this helpful

Occasional mistakes

Narrator confused Mia Rinaldi's name and called her MAYA. Starting when Rose meets Adrienne Ivashkov.

1 person found this helpful

the reader really soured the experience

the readers voice was so different than that of the first book and it was really hard to get over at first. also, she made rose sound like a braty 12 year old and Dimitri suddenly didnt have a Russian accent

1 person found this helpful

Great

I loved this book and the narrator does a great job of getting the emotions of the characters across. I only wish sh had at least tried with the accents Dimitri and Adrian feel only half themselves without it.

1 person found this helpful

I love the Vampire Academy series

I have read the books multiple times, this is my first time listening to them on audible. I thought the narrator on the first book (Stephanie Wolf) was amazing. The narrator on the second book was huge let down. She changed a characters name (Mia to Mya) and messed up Dimitri’s accent. I have never seen something like that happen on audible.

Eh

Love the books but she really butchered the names! It’s like she forgot that she was saying them one way and went in the opposite direction...

Better story than narration

I used to jokingly say those who designed the covers for Richelle Mead’s VA books had it against her, now I have to add that so did whoever produced these audiobooks.

I’ve been revisiting books I read in my teenage years to see how they hold up now I’m an adult and thought a gentler vehicle for that excursion would be trying the audio versions. I was expecting to cringe at some of the story lines, but did not expect my biggest problem with these to be the narration.

I’ve listened to Vampire Academy and Frostbite so far, they have different narrators and while I believe they were doing their best, neither managed to capture the characters. The first one felt a bit too old, the second one a bit too young. I see a third narrator was brought in for the latter books, will see how that went.

However, I think the biggest failure was of whoever produced or directed them. I’m sorry, I had to laugh, these are comical but not intentionally so and that’s a problem. On this book the narrator dropped the [again, unintentionally comical] accents the original narrator used in the first book, that was definitely an improvement. They also gave this narrator the proper pronunciation of dhampir, Moroi, etc., so good on that too. But then the oddest thing happened when halfway Mia becomes Maya. I was like ‘wow, I forgot more than I thought about these books, I don’t remember a character named Maya,’ then laughed out loud when it quickly became apparent that was supposed to be Mia. She’d already been introduced introduced as Mia a few chapters earlier, so how did that even happen??

Anyway, I’m still battling with the over the top mean girl-ness of the story that is so present in the first two books of this series, but I think I can already see the depths to the plot that captured my imagination over a decade ago. If I remember correctly, book three is where things really heat up, so I’m looking forward to that one at least, even though this narrator is coming back again and the juvenile tone may ruin it.

If nothing else, though, it’s an enjoyable time capsule. The bits about shopping and fashion feel sooo dated, but it’s fun to be transported back, the whole thing has a late 90s/early 2000s vibe. I really just wish the narrations were a lot less distracting.

Crossing my fingers, on to the next.

honestly, enjoyed the book but the narrator...

i enjoyed the book quite a bit! i even cried at one point... however, it took me a bit to get through this book simply because of the narrator. 🤷🏻‍♀️