I do a lot of reading, both for education and entertainment. Most of my entertainment reading I do for entertainment is in the form of audiobooks, which are perfect for me because my biggest chunk of reading time is while I’m driving. Not only are traditional books impractical in the car, my local library has a fairly decent selection of audiobooks to download and check out, so I can get most of my books for free. While there are many great advantages to having books read to you, there is one hidden danger that exists if you like to follow series that contains the same characters . . . narrator changes. Book series are very commonplace these days. Publishers like them because a good series will have an immediate audience. Readers like them because they know that they will probably enjoy the book since they are already familiar with the characters and the author. One thing that is important in a series is consistency. If characters suddenly change or storylines are altered or abandoned for no good reason, the reader may become confused or disappointed. This consistency is also important when it comes to audio productions of these series. I am currently listening to the second book of David Baldacci’s Amos Decker series. If those names mean nothing to you that’s okay. What you do need to know is that all of the Baldacci books I have listened to so far, including the first Amos Decker book, were narrated by Ron McLarty, a narrator with a strong, mildly gruff, exact delivery that fits with many of the military or government characters found in the author’s books. The Amos Decker character is a large, somewhat heavyset ex-cop who has a psychological condition that causes him to relate to others in a distant, impersonal manner. McLarty voices this perfectly. The book I’m reading now is being narrated by Kyf Brewer. Nothing against Brewer, he is a very capable narrator. However his voice and delivery of the Amos Decker character is a big departure from McLarty’s. For one, Brewer’s voice is a little higher pitched, making me envision a man much smaller than Decker is described. Next, his delivery is lighter and quicker paced than McLarty’s, which translates into a character that is a bit more cheerful, friendly and personable than what I believe the author originally had in mind. The biggest problem, however, is that the audio version of Amos Decker was already defined in my mind by McLarty and it’s really difficult to believe Brewer is the same character. It is this change of voice and narrative style that is the biggest obstacle an audiobook series has to overcome. I encountered this same problem when I listened to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. For three books out of the seven-book series (numbers 2, 3, and 4) I had been listening to the narrative talents of Frank Muller. Muller had a unique voice for each character; you knew who was speaking just by the tone or accent. His voices were the characters. Between the recording of books four and five, Muller was in an unfortunate motorcycle accident and had to be replaced. The publishers turned to George Guidall, who read the first book in the series, to finish out the final three installments. Once again, Guidall is a fine narrator, but his delivery and characterizations were very different from Muller. I finally adapted and became comfortable with the new voices about midway through the transitional book, but at the beginning it was jarring and I really missed Muller’s performance. Sometimes the problem isn’t a change of narrator at all. Sometimes the same narrator just starts doing things differently from one book to the next, for no apparent reason. Such was the case with George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, a.k.a. The Game of Thrones. I have listened to all five currently published books in the main series, narrated by Roy Dotrice. Dotrice’s narration and characterizations were pretty consistent through the first four books. Then suddenly with the fifth several things changed. First was name pronunciation. Pronunciations Dotrice used for four books were suddenly altered for the fifth. One such name was Petyr Baelish. For books one through four the name was pronounced “Pet-Arr”. In book five the pronunciation changed to “Peter”. No joke, for the first several times this new pronunciation was used I had no idea who this “Peter” was. I’m not sure why Dotrice used this new pronunciation, however, I suspect it might have something to do with remaining consistent with the television version. I’m not sure as I have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. Another change Dotrice made without warning is some of the voices, in particular, Daenerys Targaryen. For most of the series, Daenerys has the smooth voice of the young woman, consistent with the character. However, in book five Dotrice gives her more of a grating voice, better suited for Old Nan, another character’s grandmother. I have no idea why the change was made. It makes no sense. Even if Dotrice forgot how he voiced Daenerys in the past, why would he even think it may have been the voice of an old witch. As audiobook consumers, there is nothing we can really do to fix this. We have no control over publishers, narrators or their contracts. Even if we did, sometimes things happen that are out of our control (such as Muller’s motorcycle accident). In the end, we can only do one of two things if we still want to enjoy reading these series. We can adapt, or we can go back to reading print. Then we are the ones in control.