Nice to see, painful to listen ?

Where does The Guns of Navarone rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Having seen the movie and listened to the abridged cassette (?), read by Patrick Allen, in my teens it was a pleasant surprise to find a full unabridged version available on Audible. The story, although written in 1957 is still a great roller coaster ride and thoroughly enjoyable. A great piece of WWII fiction.

Would you be willing to try another one of Jonathan Oliver’s performances?

Oliver is good at the straight forward narrative parts. He struggles with accents and it really shows here. For example, Andrea, pronounced as An-drey-ah to me and most greeks is pronounced as And-rea, much like your great aunt, and I found myselt constantly correcting him!
Some of the german and greek accents are cringeworthy and the New Zealander, Mallory, comes across as rather.... wet. Miller was equally painful and Brown tolerable.

Oliver also struggles with moving between the accents and there are a number of overly long pauses in the diagloue. and also one horrendous edit (or my download glitched) within the first couple of hours. I think the director/producers have something to answer to here, and they let MacLean down here.

I nearly put it down (and that would have been the first time for any audible book) because of the accents in the narration, but persevered to the end. It would appear that Oliver is going to be the voice for this round of releases on MacLean's stories and therefore works like, When Eight Bells Toll, could play more to his strengths, rather than accentuate (bad pun) his weaknesses.

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BRILLIANT much better than the film by far.

excellectly read.voices charaterised superbly ... Could not stop listening. Cant wait to hrar gorce 10, my next download

1 person found this helpful

An all time classic.

Arguably the best work from the Thriller Writers Thriller Writer! The pace, detail and suspense never falter!

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A gripping listen.

Watched the movie first. Loved the movie. There's quite a few differences between the movie and the book. For me the differences make both versions outstanding.

One weak point

A good read it there is a single hut large weak point and that is the character of the lead saboteur, Mallory, which does not convince. Too weak, too indecisive. Time and again he is saved by the men he has been sent to lead. Ironically Maclean is just recreating the character of Capt Valery from his first novel HMS Ulysses who was altogether more realistic.

Horrible Listen

Good story spoilt by the narration. Would have preferred it just read rather then all the attempted accents. Gave up on it in the end.

Didn’t live up to the memories

Perhaps it is a mistake to revisit books I enjoyed in my uncritical teens.

I read a lot of MacLean way back then but now I find his style cloying in its over-use of superlatives. Now, too, I find the attitudes and responses of the wartime soldiers quite incredible - for example, the character who, hearing his team leader plan an ambush of an approaching group of enemies in a kill-or-be-killed situation, protests “You can’t do that. It would be murder!”

The only characters that really came to life for me were Andrea and the fearful young Lieutenant, with Louki as a good runner-up. Mallory, the principal character, was given to too much maundering introspection for a man leading a dangerous act of sabotage.

I wasn’t enamoured of the narrator on this occasion. At times there seems to be over long gaps followed by a gabble of words, which was distracting. I disliked intensely the accent given to Miller, the American, and like another reviewer I found myself constantly correcting the narrator’s pronunciation of Andrea’s name.

Overall this recording of this book failed to draw me in.

Still one of the best

Great storyline with a narrator who always brings the tales of wartime exploits to vivid life.

High tension adventure story'.

A very good adventure story, well written and expertly told a very pleasant way to have the full range of the books secrets read out while relaxing. At 80. I find it better than the TV.
Please keep these storied coming

Excellent Listen

I watched the film a few days ago and enjoyed it. Then I purchased the unabridged book and throughly enjoyed much more than the film.