Thursday, July 31, 2014

Euphoria by Lily King narrated by, Simon Vance & Xe Sands


Euphoria by Lily King narrated by, Simon Vance & Xe Sands

I know that Margaret Mead inspired this story but I still wanted Nell to be a real person that I could research and learn even more about. This was a fascinating book made all the better by the fabulous narration of Xe Sands & Simon Vance.

This book kept me completely enthralled from beginning to end, not only from the descriptions of the tribes, their customs, taboos and superstitions but from the relationships between the three main characters. Also this book is so well written that it was easy to picture the village and tribes people. If you search Margaret Mead New Guinea in Images you’ll see some pictures that could easily be the three main characters ,also see narrator Xe Sands Pintrest Page below for some other pictures she used for inspiration.

I really enjoyed the characters of Nell & Bankson and even though Fen is not a very likeable chap he is an interesting character he is so jealous of Nell’s success and her relationship with not only Bankson but with the tribe themselves, Nell has a rapport with the tribe that Fen can only dream of which he kind of does he imagines a relationship that really isn’t there. He hides things from Nell to make himself look better and is a very insecure man. Where Bankson sees Nell in all her glory and is impressed and awed by her ability to get the tribes people to talk to her about things no one else seems to be able to get at. He learns from her and respects her and I think that is the key in their friendship.

 Obviously the narration of this book was superb Xe Sands as Nell was fabulous and all her different accents from American, to British to Australian were all spot on and when she voiced Bankson I felt like she did a good job of channeling Simon Vance!  Simon Vance as always does a great job and did well even when speaking as Nell and I thought he also did a great job channeling Xe; also both narrations of Fen and his Australian accent sounded the same so you knew that it was him. I thought this was a fantastic collaboration and hope to have more books with these two working together!

If you can’t already tell I loved this book, it is different book and hard to categorize, but I found it fascinating and even went back and re-listened to the last hour because I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I have never read anything by Lily King before but I will be remedying that as I loved the way the writing in this books flowed and how she kept me so interested from page one to the end.

5 stars


Full Disclosure I received this book from the Audiobookjukebox and the Publisher Blackstone Audio for a fair and honest review


Narrator Xe Sands has put together a Pintrest page with some images that helped her realize more clearly the place and time.

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