So I finished listening to A Game of Thrones and am now getting well into A Clash of Kings. I thought the first book was marvelously read, and I doubt I would have had any good chance at following the plot if the narrator were not quite so talented. This second book is horribly read. The narrator while narrating sounds like proper "Queen's English" BBC1. He has a tendency to mispronounce things, like the names of Houses and simple words like lichen (he says "lich-en" not "liken"). The characters are voice-acted by the narrator, and he has a terrible range. Men and women alike are husky voiced, and all the Highborne sound like the mos' 'orribwe Cockney you evah 'eard. It's maddening, but I will suffer through the next 30 hours of this book... somehow. Book three goes back to the original narrator and I will welcome him with open ears.