A Taste of Gold and Iron

Well, this was unexpected.

So, despite the inauspicious beginning, I wound up really loving this book. (Edited to add: And, for one, the X meets Y marketing wasn't totally off, because it does remind me quit a bit of The Goblin Emperor in odd ways.)

When it starts off, I really didn't like Kadou and pretty much hated Tadek - the later to such a degree that I had to go refresh my memory on the synopsis and make sure that he was not the second lead/love interest because...that would have been a dnf right there. (Somewhere around this time I also discovered that I had attempted this author before and had quickly dnf'd that book. So I was a little...worried going into this book.)

Thankfully, he wasn't and shortly thereafter, Evemer was introduced - who I liked right from the start but I couldn't see how a relationship between him and Kadou would form. But it worked out because Kadou grows both on me and on Evemer by leaps and bounds. He also grows as a character, in all honesty. (Tadek to a degree as well, but not enough to actually want to read the sequel novella that seems to be all about Tadek.)

While this is predominantly a slow burn romance, there's also a complementary side story that is an investigation into coin forgery that works surprisingly well alongside the romance. I never felt bored by either or like one was just passing time for the other. Also, they do kind of tie together so they don't feel like two separate stories.

Finally, a note as to why, exactly, it took me this long to read this book. I was listening to the audiobook. This is a solid book - over 500 pages - and the audiobook is equally as solid at over 18 hours.

Usually when I ‘read' audiobooks I either talk about the amazing narrator (like Joel Leslie who I think is amazing) or pretty much ignore the fact that it was an audiobook because the narration...doesn't actually do much.

This, however, is one of the unfortunate situations that I have to say, if you can get a print copy of the book, do it!

The narrator was not bad, like I've unfortunately come across books where simple words are mispronounced, but there was a technical lacking to the audio, I think.

There were times when the narrator would read a dialogue line and then there would be a dialogue tag - for example (Note, this is not the actually lines used, only an example.): “I wold like to know where that idea came from,” she said evenly. And the narrator read the line like a strident harpy, so because you hear the words before the dialogue tag, you have to quickly re-register the tone in your mind as the conversation continues. This happens several times - more often than not, with the non-male characters. (Which is a whole other subject about the strident harpy-ness of non-male character voices in this book quite often when it is not needed.) (And I could likely get into how some narrators struggle with voicing those that are not their gender. But I won't.)

Second problem with the narration is how the speaking volume changes wildly and without notice. I've seldom come across this problem in any other audiobooks. But in this book, I actually couldn't just set the volume and leave it there. Conversations would often raise to such a degree that it was hurting my head before I got my volume turned down. And then there would be scenes that the volume would start out at a normal level, but then it would just start dropping - or a few words would be said so low - that I had to turn the volume back up. Until the next time that the volume rose drastically. Over all, not earbuds friendly. Bear that in mind, folks.

Finally, I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but sometimes in animated shows, there's a person talking while their off screen and their voice sounds funny. It almost sounds like they are being recorded in a slightly echoing room. It sounds like there's no richness to their voice. I don't like it when shows/movies do that, but I can kind of understand why they do - because that person is off screen, likely at a distance, so they would likely sound different. However, this book does it a few times, totally randomly. The first time it happened, I actually checked my headphones jack to make sure that it hadn't come partially unplugged - and then I was worried that one of my earbuds quit working. But it cleared up to just do it again later, for no reason that I could discover.

Now, all that to say, I do not blame the narrator. His voice sounds good - when he's not harpy-ing it - but I think he was not directed appropriately. To me whoever was in charge of the recording really fell down on their job, and then the quality control didn't...control it well.

So, yeah, this is definitely a case of if you can get the print version - do it!