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A review by librovert
The Wooden Prince by John Claude Bemis
3.0
3 Stars for the Story - 0 Stars for the Audiobook.
I paid $3.95 for this audiobook during an Audible sale. It was not worth it. The narration itself was good, not in the kind of way that I would run out to buy every book ever narrated by Ralph Lister, but in the way that I wasn't bored listening to him.
However, this audiobook has sound effects. Awful, awful sound effects. At the very beginning of the book, Pinocchio is in a wooden crate and is hearing a discussion taking place outside the crate - the dialogue is muffled and I thought it was clever. But it was downhill from there. We meet Maestro (Bemis' shout out to Jiminy Cricket) who has a chittering cricket like echo imposed over the narrator every time he talks. We have Princess Lazuli, the blue fairy, who has a tinkling noise reverberating over her voice. When Pinocchio stands up there's the sound of gears whirring (he's an automaton instead of a marionette in this rendition). In some of the more action-packed scenes of fights and chaos I felt like I was listening through the sound effects to hear the narration. It was really distracting and took away from the story.
The story itself was a clever retelling of Pinocchio. Similar enough that many of the same ideas still stand, but different enough that Bemis made it his own. The Wooden Prince is a fun, insightful read for the intended age group - but it lacked some depth for me as an adult reader. We got to learn a lot about Pinnochio, but many of the other characters seemed lifeless. Definitely, recommend it for the middle grades, but probably won't pick up the next in the series (and definitely won't pick up the next audiobook).
I paid $3.95 for this audiobook during an Audible sale. It was not worth it. The narration itself was good, not in the kind of way that I would run out to buy every book ever narrated by Ralph Lister, but in the way that I wasn't bored listening to him.
However, this audiobook has sound effects. Awful, awful sound effects. At the very beginning of the book, Pinocchio is in a wooden crate and is hearing a discussion taking place outside the crate - the dialogue is muffled and I thought it was clever. But it was downhill from there. We meet Maestro (Bemis' shout out to Jiminy Cricket) who has a chittering cricket like echo imposed over the narrator every time he talks. We have Princess Lazuli, the blue fairy, who has a tinkling noise reverberating over her voice. When Pinocchio stands up there's the sound of gears whirring (he's an automaton instead of a marionette in this rendition). In some of the more action-packed scenes of fights and chaos I felt like I was listening through the sound effects to hear the narration. It was really distracting and took away from the story.
The story itself was a clever retelling of Pinocchio. Similar enough that many of the same ideas still stand, but different enough that Bemis made it his own. The Wooden Prince is a fun, insightful read for the intended age group - but it lacked some depth for me as an adult reader. We got to learn a lot about Pinnochio, but many of the other characters seemed lifeless. Definitely, recommend it for the middle grades, but probably won't pick up the next in the series (and definitely won't pick up the next audiobook).