- Book Title: Romanus
- Book Series: standalone
- Author: Mary Calmes
- Narrator: Greg Tremblay
- Publisher: Dreamspinner Press LLC
- Book Length: 1 hour and 57 minutes
- Genre: Paranormal, Shifter, Romance
- Reviewed by: Diane
- Rating:
- Story 3.5 Star
- Narration: 4.5 Star
This is my first audiobook review and I will admit to being a tad gun shy about how to go about the process. What do I “look for”, or listen for, how was the story impacted by the narration, how would hearing erotica spoken rather than seeing it on the page influence my appreciation for, understanding of, and enjoyment of spoken smut.
Oh, don’t look at me that way.
The story itself is predictable although the paranormal characters—gargoyles—aren’t exactly mainstream. I think written or spoken, the introduction of such medieval, downright scary ugly creatures, might have been helped along with flash cards… or something to help me translate cold stone figures adorning Notre Dame into drop dead handsome dudes with leathery wings. At least that’s how the hapless Mason James sees Luc Toussaint.
In fact, both men are smitten with insta-mate-love-lust intoxication and it doesn’t take long for one thing to lead to another. And here’s where hearing a… um… … scene of quite graphic affection played out via my noise reduction Bose headphones all came down to the skills of the narrator (and no, there ain’t no way that’s gonna read innuendo-free).
Mr. Tremblay’s voice talent (oh dearie me) was quite accomplished, in the “I’ll be in my bunk” way of things. His rendering was quite… enthusiastic. I paid attention. And I was smitten. Not with the characters because… not feeling gargoyles, but that’s probably just me… but definitely
enjoying how the narrator gave each character a unique voice so you never had to guess who said what, when.
The narration was also at normal speaking speed so I didn’t have to chew my nails waiting for the next word. Almost all the audio-fiction-books I’ve heard were interminably sloooow and booooring.
Romanus absolutely benefitted from having an exceptional voice talent bring a mundane erotic story to life. Overall, it suffered from being too short, from having truncated world-building, underdeveloped mythology, and run-of the-mill characters.
I’m giving Romanus 3.5 Stars and the narration 4.5 Stars.
FYI: I tried to stream the audiobook to my iPhone so I wouldn’t be tethered to the laptop. I think Apple-slash-iTunes doesn’t want to dance with Audible-slash-Amazon because they made the process uninviting to the point I gave up in disgust. Romanus was less than a two hour commitment to my recliner. Typical audiobooks can run ten hours. Not sure I’d be happy with being stuck in one spot for that long. I’m sure there’s an app to fix that, but right at the moment I’m not motivated to seek one out.
