The War of the Worlds

By: H. G. Wells

Narrated by: Daniel Avrahams, Steven Davis

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

The War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells (H. G. Wells) was published in 1898 at a time when he wrote a series of novels related to a number of historical events of the time. The most important of these was the unification and militarization of Germany. The story, written in a semi-documentary style, is told in the first person by an unnamed observer. It tells of the events which happen mostly in London and the county of Surrey, England, when a number of vessels manned by aliens are fired from Mars and land on Earth.

Public Domain (P)2011 ABN

So many narrators!

I was surprised to find different narrators for almost each chapter ranging from professional actor quality to what sounded like students in training. The story was good, but the varying quality was a distraction.

Terrrrrrrrrible narration.

The storyline is great. Highly recommend, but NOT this set of narrators. There were several different people reading, in no special order. The sound quality is pitiful and most of the readers stumbled over words. Even on high volume it was sometimes impossible to hear.

Surprising!

I was so excited to get this classic at such a cheap price, I did not follow my general rule of first reading over the reviews and listening to the sample. Had I read those reviews I would've known about the narration issues. Thankfully the last group of chapters were read well. Thanks for that. I didn't start keeping track of the worst chapters until chapter 9. So IMO chapters 9,11,12,18 had awful narration. Chapter 18 was unbelievably bad almost like a joke. In the end, the book is good, I paid for it, I finished it. I will never again bypass reading reviews and listening to the excerpt no matter how good the deal seems to me in the time.

Poor audio for a classic book

The book is written with one person as the narrator/hero yet each chapter is read by a randomly selected person and the quality is clearly different with each person reading. most of the sections are very poor quality indeed. Constant skips, noise and static make this classic book all but impossible to follow.

Great listen

What made the experience of listening to The War of the Worlds the most enjoyable?

I have always wanted to read this book

Who was your favorite character and why?

No favorite

Which character – as performed by Daniel Avrahams and Steven Davis – was your favorite?

No favorite

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes. I loved the way and the reason the Martians died.

Any additional comments?

I have heard the stories of how people thought this was real when it was first read on the radio, and they committed suicide. How strange things have been in the past

An ensemble reading, by readers who care

Where does The War of the Worlds rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I loved this audio book. It is not read by a professional but the story is so good that I couldn't wait to hear who was reading the next chapter. While some of the readers were better than others they were all wonderful.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The War of the Worlds?

I loved the ending when he finds his wife and also realizes that this is not the end. The martians will be back.

Which character – as performed by Daniel Avrahams and Steven Davis – was your favorite?

I liked the narrators brother. He went out of his way to help complete strangers when others did not.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

After the martians are dying the narrator goes into a fugue state and some kindly strangers take care of him. I love hearing about human compassion during great catastrophes.

Any additional comments?

I took a chance buying the $.98 version instead of the $4.95 version. I was not dissappointed. This is a great reading by amateurs and I felt I got more than my money's worth. I look forward to hearing it again.

Hard to get into

The book starts off very boring and hard to get into but then as you get into it it starts to get better

well....

I wasnt expecting different people to read every single chapter. To me, it was hard to follow because of that and I kept hearing them turn the page. I had to stop listening cause I couldn't follow it.