The dregs:

Here is a dynamic list my least favorite audiobooks so far. I’m not sure why anyone would want to see this, but it was easy to generate, so why not. As you might expect, it was created in much the same way as my previous list of favorite audiobooks. Ranking is based on average of book and performance score in ascending order, meaning that number 1 is the worst.

Enjoy, I suppose 🤷

No. 1: Dune by Frank Herbert

• Series: Dune (part 1)
• Narrators:
  • Scott Brick
  • Orlagh Cassidy
  • Euan Morton
  • Simon Vance
  • Ilyana Kadushin
• Running time: 21h 2m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I remember reading this in paper form as a teenager and being blown away by it. What was I thinking?! Certainly there’s some iconic stuff in here—the spice, the sandworms, fear is the mind killer, etc.—but the writing is crap and there is absolutely no tension. Paul is in no real danger at any point during the novel. He starts to display prodigious talents right away, and by the halfway point, he’s a mentat, a military genius, a master duelist, messiah to the Fremen, chosen one to the Bene Gesserit, and can see into the bloody future! There are some enormous plot holes I missed the first time. For instance, if the spice is necessary for creating mentats and therefore interstellar travel, how did anybody get to Arrakis in the first place? Is it just me, or is Yueh’s assassination plot the dumbest ever devised? Surely it would’ve been simpler to shoot/blow-up/poison the guy himself rather than drag poor old Leto into it. Or maybe just not kill Leto in the first place! 4/10.
• Performance review: The production value is higher than normal, but switching from performer to performer is bizarrely inconsistent. They sort of just give up doing it and have Vance read everything for chunks at a time. When they do switch, there are noticeable differences in the timbre of the recordings, making it sound like a teleconference. Vance should have narrated the whole book. 1/10.

No. 2: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

• Series:
  • Dune (part 2)
  • Dune Universe (part 12)
• Narrators:
  • Scott Brick
  • Katherine Kellgren
  • Euan Morton
  • Simon Vance
• Running time: 8h 57m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I tried as a teenager and again as an adult. I got about four chapters in both times. 1/10.
• Performance review: Not enough exposure to form an opinion, so just putting 5. 5/10.

No. 3: I Am Legend and Other Stories by Richard Matheson

• Narrators:
  • Robertson Dean
  • Yuri Rasovsky
• Running time: 10h 52m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: The titular story is lauded by sci-fi fans, mainly for its ending. In my opinion, the whole thing actually quite dumb (though I admit, not as dumb as the Will Smith movie). The other stories in the collection range from forgettable to cringeworthy; I could not get through them all. 1/10.
• Performance review: I think I listened to an older edition of this (cover was different). If this is a new narrator, they would need to do an incredible job to make this worth a listen. 5/10.

No. 4: A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

• Narrator: Joy Osmanski
• Running time: 8h 49m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I found the voice of the main character—as in narrative voice, not the audiobook—excruciatingly irritating. I gave up. 1/10.
• Performance review: I don't recall. 5/10.

No. 5: Duma Key by Stephen King

• Narrator: John Slattery
• Running time: 21h 0m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: My second attempt at a more recent King novel. I was going with it for a while, but then the protagonist started reading an article in The Journal of Parapsychology. At that point, I knew exactly where we were headed, and bailed. 2/10.
• Performance review: I didn’t hear enough to form a strong opinion. 5/10.

No. 6: Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry

• Series: Thalia, Texas (part 1)
• Narrator: Kerin McCue
• Running time: 7h 33m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: Well written and interesting characters but it just didn’t grab me for whatever reason. 6/10.
• Performance review: Taped in the ‘80s or ‘90s. The digitization is a complete mess; the bit rate seemingly drops around halfway through and they couldn’t be bothered to chop out the “this concludes disk X” bits. Hands down my worst listening experience so far, from a purely aural perspective. Narration is also a little flat. 1/10.

No. 7: Revival by Stephen King

• Narrator: David Morse
• Running time: 13h 24m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I think it’s very easy to be snobbish about King. I did like some of his early horrors as a teenager and in my view On Writing is one of the finest books about writing ever written. Some online reviews suggest that Revival is a partial return to form, but I thought it was rubbish. It’s not badly written or anything, it’s just so clear that King didn’t do any research whatsoever. For instance, one of the characters gets into a motor accident that renders him totally mute, yet without any other physical or neurological problems. What on earth would cause this? “Schlocky” is a good word for it. 1/10.
• Performance review: Morse is actually very good! Shame about the content. 7/10.

No. 8: Wilder Girls by Rory Power

• Narrators:
  • Eileen Stevens
  • Jesse Vilinsky
• Running time: 8h 49m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: Lazily and inaccurately compared to Lord of the Flies, a bunch of nothing characters quarantined in an all-girl’s school gradually succumb to a sci-fi disease with seemingly completely random symptoms. The body-horror elements were mildly interesting at first, but the dull writing and lack of anything close to an interesting relationship between any of the characters meant I could only get through about half before giving up. 4/10.
• Performance review: The rather somber narration doesn’t help matters. 4/10.

No. 9: Dreams of Steel by Glen Cook

• Series:
  • The Chronicles of the Black Company (part 5)
  • The Books of the South (part 2)
• Narrator: Rachel Butera
• Running time: 9h 37m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: The dullest book of The Black Company so far, but there is a good twist at the end. 6/10.
• Performance review: Butera gets a lot of stick for her performance from Audible reviewers. Most of the criticisms are valid, unfortunately. 3/10.

No. 10: The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin

• Series: The Broken Earth (part 3)
• Narrator: Robin Miles
• Running time: 14h 16m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I liked the first one, but I don’t understand the praise for the rest of this series. By the end, I was straight-up annoyed. The writing was so plodding it felt like I was turning to stone myself. Numerous aspects of the plot simply didn’t make sense to me. For example: why is Hoa so attached to Essun initially? Who made the guardians exactly? Why does Nassun decide to destroy the world in the first place, then why does she change her mind? Who the hell was that guy right at the beginning of the first novel and what did that scene have to do with anything that followed? 4/10.
• Performance review: Same narrator as the previous books. 5/10.

No. 11: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

• Series:
  • Warbreaker (part 1)
  • The Cosmere
• Narrator: Alyssa Bresnahan
• Running time: 24h 56m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I found this to be a painful slog. It is the least interesting of Sanderson’s worlds—I don’t know why, but the color stuff just doesn’t land for me—and the characters are excruciatingly generic. Gave up about halfway through. 4/10.
• Performance review: Can’t recall the performance and I was surprised it wasn’t Kate Reading when I looked it up. 5/10.

No. 12: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin

• Series: The Broken Earth (part 2)
• Narrator: Robin Miles
• Running time: 13h 19m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: Second book of The Broken Earth series. It’s OK, not as good as the first one. The plot moves forward but not by much. I started to get irritated by the long-winded writing style, and felt that a frustrating amount of plot was being held back for the finale. 5/10.
• Performance review: OK. 5/10.

No. 13: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

• Series:
  • Mistborn (part 3)
  • The Cosmere
• Narrator: Michael Kramer
• Running time: 27h 25m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I was really disappointed. Vin and Eland’s relationship is neither convincing nor interesting. I don’t understand why Sanderson decided to turn Eland into a mistborn, the fact that he WASN’T a great fighter was one of the only moderately interesting things about him. Sazed spends the whole book moping about and whinging. Finally, to top it off, he delivers possibly the worst final line ever ever written. 4/10.
• Performance review: Kramer again. 6/10.

No. 14: Holes by Louis Sachar

• Series: Holes (part 1)
• Narrator: Kerry Beyer
• Running time: 4h 30m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I didn’t dislike this but didn’t enjoy myself either. I think it was supposed to be funny. 5/10.
• Performance review: Fine. 5/10.

No. 15: Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu

• Narrator: Feodor Chin
• Running time: 12h 12m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: So impressively thought-out that the theory and experiments feel authentic despite the outlandish premise. But I can’t say I enjoyed it, probably because of the dull characters. 5/10.
• Performance review: Fine. 5/10.

No. 16: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

• Series: L’amica geniale/The Neapolitan Novels (part 3)
• Narrator: Hillary Huber
• Running time: 16h 43m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I'm not saying it’s bad, but I was disappointed. I don’t think the quality of writing declined, I just found Elena’s current circumstances bland and uninteresting compared to the earlier books and her character quite annoying. Also, I don’t know if something was lost in translation or what, but chunks of Those Who Leave are devoted to characters engaged in bafflingly generic political discourse, contributing to the overall dullness. 6/10.
• Performance review: Same as the previous books. 5/10.

No. 17: Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

• Narrator: Eilidh L. Beaton
• Running time: 9h 32m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: I was underwhelmed. The survivalism stuff didn’t seem authentic at all and the twist at the end was dumb. Had the feel of a three-part drama on ITV. 5/10.
• Performance review: Fine. 6/10.

No. 18: Rosewater by Tade Thompson

• Series: The Wormwood Trilogy (part 1)
• Narrator: Bayo Gbadamosi
• Running time: 13h 37m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: The story had some very interesting elements but the main character was rather two-dimensional and ultimately I didn’t care about him. Can’t get excited about the rest of the series. 5/10.
• Performance review: Performance was fine. 6/10.

No. 19: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

• Series: Hainish Cycle (part 4)
• Narrators:
  • full cast
  • Toby Jones
  • James McArdle
• Running time: 1h 53m
• Abridgement or dramatization: Yes.
• Book review: Felt a bit empty. I’m sure the unabridged version is better. 5/10.
• Performance review: I feel like I missed lots of important things due to the abridgment/dramatization. 6/10.

No. 20: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

• Narrator: Adepero Oduye
• Running time: 4h 15m
• Abridgement or dramatization: No.
• Book review: It’s fine. 5/10.
• Performance review: Decent. 6/10.

Version history

• Originally posted June 25, 2020.

Related posts

• “Every audiobook review,” Jun 25, 2020.
• “Recommended listens: My favorite audiobooks so far,” Jun 25, 2020.
• All posts filed under audiobooks, lists.