Wheel of the Infinite

By: Martha Wells

Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts

Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Every year in the great Temple City of Duvalpore, the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. Every hundred years the sacred rite takes on added significance. For it is then that the very fabric of the world must be rewoven. Linked by the mystic energies of the Infinite, the Wheel and world are one. Should the holy image be marred, the world will suffer a similar injury. But a black storm is spreading across the Wheel. Every night the Voices of the Ancestors - the Wheel's constructors and caretakers - brush the darkness away and repair the damage with brightly colored sands and potent magic. Each morning the storm reappears, bigger and darker than before, unraveling the beautiful and orderly patterns. With chaos in the wind, a woman with a shadowy past has returned to Duvalpore.

A murderer and traitor - an exile disgraced, hated, and feared, and haunted by her own guilty conscience - Maskelle has been summoned back to help put the world right. Once she was the most revered of the Voices, until cursed by her own actions. Now, in the company of Rian - a skilled and dangerously alluring swordsman - she must confront dread enemies old and new and a cold, stalking malevolence unlike any she has ever encountered.

©2000 Martha Wells (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Superior fantasy work from one of the best in the field." (Kirkus Starred Review)

Very vivid world building

The story is great and very involving. The narration took a little getting used to, and at times the story seemed to stall a bit and then recover the thread.

wonderful

I loved the story and narrator. I noticed some criticism of the narrator, which is nonsense. She does speak more slowly and deliberately than my preference but sped up to 1.10 fixed that without distortion. I highly recommend the book.

A lot of fun

This story breaks some of the norms of fantasy. It adopts some tropes from private detective noir. It’s a fun listen, moved quickly. Readers who know Martha Wells murder bot stories might miss the sci fi setting but they will recognize the story teller.

Good Story, poor narration

What did you love best about Wheel of the Infinite?

The world was creative and the characters distinctive

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I don't usually pay much attention to the narration when it works. This narrator had the accent of the American south. Completely at odds with an exotic location. In addition, she mispronounced words. I cringed a lot listening to her.

Any additional comments?

Martha Wells creates interesting worlds and characters. She needs a different narrator for this one.

it's not bad...

The story isn't bad at all. It takes a while to get rolling but is enjoyable. I personally couldn't get past the narrator. Her speech pattern is too distracting to me. Let me try that in her words.....Her Speech....Pattern....Is Too................Distracting.....To Me.

It's like if Christopher Walken and Captain Kirk had a love child.

Disappointing narration

I loved The Wheel of the Infinite. It’s a wonderful epic tale that deals (well!) with the intersection of the material and spiritual realms. Characters are well drawn and engaging. But the narrator doesn’t come close to doing justice to the material. Her reading is stiff, the character voices are not very well differentiated, and often don’t fit the personality the author portrays.

I would love to have this re-recorded with a more skilled narrator. The story is certainly worth it!

Awesome

This has been one of my favorite books for a long time now. In fact every few years I re-read it! The protagonist is unique and very well written. I love all of the characters actually. The plot is gripping and very well thought out.

I give it the highest of recommendations!

Great Story, Not Keen on Narrator

This is absolutely one of my favorite fantasy novels. Wells does a great job in creating her worlds and populating them with interesting characters and creatures. I've read it repeatedly over the years since it first came out with may be my problem with the narrator, but more about that below.

This book is set mainly in the City of Duvalpore although it starts outside the boundaries that protect the city with a band of actors accompanied by a woman named Maskelle travel toward the great festival that accompanies the remaking of the Wheel of the Infinite. Maskelle has been summoned by the spiritual leader of Duvalpore. She would not be returning otherwise, having been branded a traitor and murderer by the temporal powers. As the Voice of Adversary, she has also lost her ability to communicate with that powerful force that is also the source of her power.

But all is not well in Duvalpore and Maskelle accompanied by the troop of players and Rian, a Swordsman from the Sitane is going to shortly find out that there is much to be done.

Wells writes with real talent and wit. This book is highly recommended even with a few caveats about the narration.

OK, the narration. I've never listened to anything else read by Pitts, but I thought that she read too slowly and deliberately. I tried increasing the speed to 1.25 x but that ended up making it too fast. Also the accent she used is clearly from the United States, which jarred. I've always heard this book in my head with a trace of an Indian accent due to the names and the descriptions of the city and people. I would have enjoyed something just a little more exotic.

Great story, tho the narrator wasn't my favorite

Love the story and the characters, the southern accent along with over dramatic pauses done by the narrator made it a little hard to listen to. Maybe I just don't like heavy southern accent so if you do decide for yourself, but I hate it when a good story gets mangled by a bad narration and this one could have been so much nicer to listen too had they gotten someone else. If I didn't love the story and Author so much I wouldn't have made it past the first chapter.

Good book, awful narration.

I enjoyed the book— enough that I think I’m going to get the text version— but the narration was just awful. Pitts’s reading was full of awkward pauses, inappropriate uptalk, and misplaced emphasis that actually obscured the meaning of the sentences. I found myself having to mentally “transcribe” back into text to make sense of some passages. And she gave a couple of important characters comical voices, which was entirely out of keeping with the tone of the story and the characters’ role in it.

I’d love to see this one re-recorded by Robin Miles, who’s read some of Jemisin’s work. Till then, I recommend you buy the text and get a friend to read it to you.