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[fontype]

Yup, for me the narrator is the one that makes the audiobook entertaining, and while there are many that do a decent job (or excellent job) at it, there are a few that, let's just say, destroy an authors work.

I have had the whiny, nasally female narrators, and the monotonous plodders. Both of these are page stoppers.

I was listening to the Honor Harrington books, and really enjoying them, then the narrator (Madelyn Buzzard) was changed to some female idiot (Allyson Johnson) at about book eight, and it was game over.  Don't know where they dredged her up from, but couldn't even pronounce Manticore properly. It was like going from a rich, milky chocolate to Carob alternative - it leaves a bad taste in the mouth

[Justme]

The narrators you are referring to are not paid professionals with a major book company.  They work for NLS which is the National Library Service for the Handicapped and Blind. 

Madeline Buzzard is one of there long-time readers.  A couple others good ones are Jack Fox and Jill Ferris.  Jill Tanner, Corrie James  and Michael Kramer who are pros also read for NLS.

[meredith]

Yes, there are so many books damaged by poor narration.

My current peeve is narrators for historical(?) romances, most of them women.

As Gweilo mentioned, I hate women doing low male voices--awfully artificial. Men doing higher-pitched female voices are much better, probably because there are women with lower pitch?

IMHO, the worst is Heather Wilds, who has a quirky way to raise intonation at the end of a declarative sentence, like in a question.

For some reason, I can tolerate Kate Reading, who has her own quirk.

The best is Mary Jane Wells! Superb and great at humor!

[FraeuleinWunder]

Sorry, I know, only one pet peeve a day, but I have to get two out there ;-)

1) I like it when you have a tandem of a female and a male narrator when you have a book with changing POVs. BUT: What I don't like is when the dialogue is cut together, meaning that when SHE narrates, everything HE says is done by the male narrator. It often makes no sense because the male narrator doesn't do all the male voices but only the male MCs one (and vice versa, obviously). I LOVE radio plays with many voices a sound and music and noises and all, but a narration with some weird hopping around between the narrator voices... totally throws me off the book.

2) YES!!! Why do author use google translate for their phrases in foreign languages??? I'm German, speak a little French and Italian and a lot of English and I often go nuts reading (and listening) to that stuff. There are so many forums online for authors, so why not ask for a mother tongue to look over what you want to write? And for narrators: There is software that speaks the words in foreign languages to you, if you have not the first beginning of a clue how to pronounce it. Mariana Zapata has a German football player in one of her books and it took me like four hours to realize what his pet name for the girl was. I honestly thought it was an English word I didn't know. Took me some time to realize that it actually was an attempt of the narrator's at German...

3) Ah, sorry, third pet peeve, but well, accents where mentioned beforehand. I adore narrators that can do accents. Gary Furlong especially often blows my mind with his range of British and European accents. I believe it if a Scotsman speaks in the book and even the French accent doesn't make me itchy. But I DNF'ed audiobooks and read them instead the classic way because I couldn't do it, listening to the narrator a moment longer...

But all in all I love audiobooks and am happy when foreign accents are decent. But when their are real good, then I'm simply in heaven :-)

[dimarymc]

Totally agree with the whole accent thing.  In Hannah Howell's Wherlocke series the Welsh accent of one character is so bad its grating and then when the character gets his own book he's all English aristocracy!! I'm not Welsh and its bad, I'd hate to be Welsh cause I'd be cringing!!!

But if someone could please enlighten me as to why Audible decides to start in the middle of a series?  WTF is going on! With Mina Carter they are hopping around all over the place and then there is Zoe Chant (Another one with a truly terrible welsh accent) who start on one series, stops in the middle and starts with the next series linked to the first (parents/children).

[Romanaii]

The mangling of foreign languages is also a pet peeve of mine. Cris Dukeheart does a wonderful job narrating Annette Marie's "Guild Codex" books, but in the books where Kai's Japanese family is around, you can tell she did zero research on how to pronounce bloody anything. I went to the .epubs and found the author did write everything properly, so all fault falls on the narrator.

As opposed to Lyssa Kay Adams' "Bromance Club". I was sure the narrator had messed up the few Spanish lines in the book, but the .epub showed that no, it was all the author's fault. The Japanese used in the "Guild Codex" books is justified, as they are narrated from a Canadian woman's POV who suddenly finds herself in a hostile Japanese household. The Spanish in the "Bromance Club" is gratuitous and only used for the sake of a single joke, and it is horribly mangled Spanish, at that. I mean there's only 3 Spanish phrases in the whole book and they're all badly written. Freaking why!

[CatsB]

1.A mix of author audiobook annoyance but I hate stat/skill/item description reading in litrpgs, especially if the list is reread 3 or more times through the book. Its mostly just padding and while you can just glance over it in a paperback, with audio you are stuck, especially if you cant get to the controls.

2.A mild variation on the narrator change is a sudden dual pov. bonus points if the first book was single pov. you get used to pronunciations of all the character names, magical words,etc and suddenly a second voice pops in (likely the male love interest) and he is getting all the words wrong. In other cases you might get used to the change and just role with it but since its a dual pov, you will often switch back and hear the "correct"  pronunciations again, so you are stuck in some kind of audio limbo.

[winters]

a bit late, but i got to say, peeve of mine is when author clearly told narrator to read veeeryyy sloooowly, to pad length of book.
Its one of the reasons I started torrenting these books as personal players had 2x playback speed, pitch changer, skip silence.

[MicaMica]

1. I'm kinda the opposite, I think female narrators going low to simulate male voices sounds much better, generally, than male narrators going high for female voices. There are some male narrators who have done the voice training stuff that trans women do to make their voice sound like women and they sound pretty good, but the vast majority of male narrators shouldn't attempt it, imho.

2. I love when a narrator has an actual immersive accent that matches the character and the setting (for example when Bahni Turpin does AAVE in books like The Hate U Give) but I hate hate *hate* when a narrator does a racist caricature. Too many white narrators who like to slip into Mickey Rooney impressions whenever their book has a chinese (or chinese-coded for a secondary world fantasy novel) character.

3. When an audiobook has background noises. I understand that not every narrator can afford a proper soundproofed studio to record in and many are doing it out of their bedrooms, but come on, DO ANOTHER TAKE! This one pisses me off so much it'll actually make me drop an audiobook I was otherwise enjoying and read it through TTS instead. At least the robo-voice doesn't have random sirens in the background.

[Raccoonfacts]

Speaking too fast. The most unlistenable audiobook I think in existence is "In the Dream House
by Carmen Maria Machado" the writer for some reason is the narrator and she's the worst ever. Its a 300+ page book and she reads it so fast and without breathing that it's only 5 hours.

[Gweilo]

Speaking too fast. The most unlistenable audiobook I think in existence is "In the Dream House
by Carmen Maria Machado" the writer for some reason is the narrator and she's the worst ever. Its a 300+ page book and she reads it so fast and without breathing that it's only 5 hours.

Most Audiobook reading apps, like Smart, have a speed function. I've only ever used it to speed them up, 120-140% usually, but it can also slow them down, and the tone is preserved. (Youtube videos have the same option if you want to see how it works.)

If the narration isn't good for other reasons it won't help though.

[roaky]

OOoooh yeah do I have some complaints! I'll keep it to one right now though:

Narrators who cannot do other gendered voices. Most commonly men who can't do women's voices, but I've heard the reverse a few times, really breaks immersion.

I've got plenty of examples but the first most frustrating one I remember was listening to A Song of Ice and Fire, which has a few different narrated versions, but the most acclaimed one was on old british guy who made every female character sound like an old cockney lady (think monty python women's voices). Arya Stark sounded like a 75 year old cackling chrone. There was a version read with almost no voices or inflection that seemed to be universally hated that I liked waaaay better just because I was so sick of hearing all the Monty Python ladies.

... alright one more complaint, this one for my kid: How come so British? Almost all the kids audiobooks I download for my kid are narrated by very british readers and he says he can't understand them. Sometimes Irish too. I know this is because audiobooks are real big in the UK, but still I can think of some british readers who found a much more middle-of-the-road reading style that actually works.