I was looking for an audio book to enjoy and I thought a spy novel by a retired Major might be the thing to captivate me for a while. The first episode was short and not really enough to evaluate the novel and so I downloaded the next two episodes. On listening to the second episode I find myself getting annoyed with the reading of it as much as with the story.

The author Val Patti reads ‘The Onion Files’ himself and probably did the audio editing too. Far too often in the reading he doesn’t take a breath between one paragraph and the next. He probably edited out some of these natural pauses and perhaps forgot to listen to it himself after making the edits. Perhaps even waiting a day or two before listening with a critical ear.

As for the story, I am still unsure. I might get into if I can get past the slightly tedious setting of the scene in this first proper episode. There is a chance that I will listen to the next episode and reserve my judgment after that. I think that listening to other people reading their stories is a brilliant idea before really getting into narrating your own. Planning to do one of my short stories so I can only hope that being critical here will transpose into my own reading. Mind you I do have a major disadvantage to start with, as there is no getting around my Brummie accent.