#10 Greatest Fantasy audiobooks – Destructoid

At any time when folks inform me, “I want I had time to learn extra books!” I all the time ask, “Have you considered entering into audiobooks?” I’m all the time on the lookout for an excuse to throw on my headphones and take heed to a great audiobook; most of the time, it’s a fantasy audiobook.

Fantasy is about shedding your self in a world that doesn’t play by the identical boring guidelines as ours. By including a layer of sound to the studying expertise, a fantasy audiobook can flip the folks and locations we’re studying about into respiratory, shifting footage that play out within the thoughts like a movie beamed onto a diamond display.

In the event you’re on the lookout for one thing to maintain your mind shifting whereas cooking, going out on a stroll, or killing time on the airport (that isn’t one other playlist of trivial movies on YouTube), listed below are the highest ten finest fantasy audiobooks.

10. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Each fantasy setting, even the one clinging to the again of a Kaiju-sized turtle swimming by area, has a legal underbelly. Most fantasy novels body their world’s legal ingredient as a collective of clear-cut villains destined to be bested by heroic knights, clever wizards, and the odd child from the “regular world.” Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows takes this custom and provides it a great flogging within the public sq..

Set in the identical universe as Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy, Six of Crows’ is a caper ebook the place magic matches into the identical instrument package as lock picks, crowbars, and firearms. Narrated by seven proficient readers, the Six of Crows audiobook fools you into considering you’re listening to an old-school radio serial, amplifying the suspense slithering by each scene.

9. The Night time Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Who doesn’t love the circus? Even when the true three-ring extravaganza stopping on the town falls wanting expectations, the idealized picture of the world below tarpaulin lives rent-free in most individuals’s brains. {That a} ebook like The Night time Circus exists is proof of this, as is the standard of its audiobook.

The Night time Circus audiobook is a present that may maintain your headphones glued to your head for hours. The velvety voice of Jim Dale, the identical reader who lent his voice to the Harry Potter audiobooks, tells the rivalry-turned-romance of apprentice magicians Celia and Marco like a fairy story, injecting the right dose of caprice and melancholy into each step of the 2’s preordained contest. Step by the curtains and let your self go on a journey you received’t hear elsewhere.

8. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

With Valentine’s Day simply across the nook, now’s the right time to lose your self in a great romantic fantasy audiobook. There are lots of of “romantasy” novels, most of which have improbable audiobooks. If I needed to decide one, although, I’d give the crown to Fourth Wing, the primary installment of the ever-expanding Emperyan collection.

BookTok’s newest obsession has numerous good issues going for it: stable chemistry between its leads, a sweeping kingdom stuffed with marvel and intrigue, and extra dragons than you’ll be able to shake a sword at. The audiobook, narrated by Rebecca Soler and Teddy Hamilton, pulls you out of actuality and plops you within the saddle, making you reside and breathe the hazard and marvel of Navarre with out risking getting incinerated by an offended dragon.

7. The Darkish Tower: The Gunslinger

All through his profession, Steven King has woven an internet of interconnected tales so huge that it’s barely conceivable. Pinning down a great place to start out inside King’s mammoth physique of labor is difficult, however most followers (myself included) agree that the primary entry in his Darkish Tower saga, The Gunslinger, is the most secure guess.

The Gunslinger audiobook reads like an previous man’s relocation of “the previous days,” one which drowns you in King’s desolate, post-apocalyptic world. George Guidall’s chiseled, fry voice completely matches the Gunslinger, a traditional anti-hero keen to do something to catch his elusive quarry, the Man in Black. Can’t determine if you wish to learn a Western or a fantasy ebook? Learn this and expertise the very best of each worlds.

6. A Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

I feel it’s secure to say that my expertise with A Court docket of Thorns and Rose performed out the identical approach it did for most individuals. Mates pressed the ebook into my face, telling me, “Drew, you’ve acquired to learn this; it’ll blow your thoughts!” Ultimately, I caved in, and my life changed into a race to show the pages as quick as doable. After I was performed with it, the primary thought to emerge from the soup that was as soon as my mind was, “Glad that’s over; now I must take heed to the audiobook!”

The audiobook of A Court docket of Thorns and Roses is likely one of the smoothest listens I’ve heard. Jennifer Akeda’s tempered, confidant narration breathes life into the phrases, including a number of drops of shade and depth to the fae-touched world of Prythian, shining a lightweight on emotional beats and refined drops of foreshadowing I didn’t discover my first time studying. In the event you can’t appear to get sufficient ACOTAR in your life, give this a pay attention.

5. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Okay. Le Guin

Ursula Okay. Le Guin is my favourite writer, and I return to the realm of Earthsea yearly. There’s one thing magnetic about Le Guin’s world-building, a heat that melts all consciousness of the world outdoors her pages. A Wizard of Earthsea does a improbable job of building Le Guin’s world of islands, linguistic magic, and dragons, and it’s acquired a superb audiobook.

Rob Inglis, the narrator of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit audiobooks, tells the bittersweet story of Sparrowhawk with an aura of tender knowledge that may linger in your ears lengthy after you’ve stopped listening. Like each different work of fiction penned by Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea is as a lot a journey into the human situation as it’s an exploration of a fictional world, and it’s a kind of uncommon books that nearly works higher as an audiobook. Nearly.

4. A Sport of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

A Track of Ice and Fireplace is all about voice. The chaos burning inside the borders of the Seven Kingdoms isn’t the work of a looming Darkish Lord; it’s the product of power-hungry lords, women, and factions preventing for a two-tone throne value its weight in blood and tears. In Westeros, everybody thinks they’re the hero of their story, and the audiobook A Sport of Thrones makes that clear from the primary sentence.

Roy Dotrice narrates the opening act of George R. R. Martin’s epic saga, and the vary of his voice permits him to step into the footwear of many characters. There’s ever a second the place it looks like he isn’t giving a line of dialogue or size of description the eye it deserves, propelling each emotional intestine punch and knife twist the story throws at you into “properly, that’s staying with me for some time.

3. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Some name Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga a shameless rip-off of Tolkien, one other in a protracted listing of copy-cats attempting to leech off his legacy. These individuals are foolish. Tolkien might have influenced Jordan, however his saga does greater than sufficient to construct a singular id for itself. You don’t grow to be considered one of Brandon Sanderson’s main inspirations by dwelling off one other writer’s fumes. 

The audiobook for The Eye of the World, the primary Wheel of Time ebook, is a improbable solution to introduce your self to the collection. Kate Studying and Michael Kramer are an amazing crew of narrators. Every brings one thing distinctive, from Studying’s refined confidence to Kramer’s bombastic supply. Their teamwork is, ‌in a way, a mirrored image of the collection’ overarching theme of duality and steadiness.

2. Mistborn: The Closing Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson’s work is a must-read for any fantasy fan. His novels have improbable character-driven prose, and creating particular voices for each character is scarily simple as you learn. The audiobook of The Means of Kings, the primary installment of Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive, does that for you. One more audiobook narrated by the Studying-Kramer duo, The Means of Kings is each bit the epic journey you’d count on. The 2 narrators give each character a definite voice, to the place it feels much less like an audiobook and extra like a radio drama.

1. The Identify of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss is a improbable author. His empathetic, poetic prose permits readers to step into the hearts and minds of his characters, nearly all of whom have distinctive views on the world and life. The Identify of the Wind, the primary ebook in The Kingkiller Chronicle, is a improbable instance.

The audiobook for The Identify of the Wind, narrated by Nick Podehl, is every part a Rothfuss audiobook needs to be. Podehl’s delicate voice matches the story of the titular, worn-out adventurer like a glove. In the event you’re on the lookout for an audiobook that may encourage, terrify, delight, and infuriate you, look no additional.