Darkwind, who is a young but mature and powerful mage, woodsman and fighter, started out with a somewhat thin, wavery voice it got stronger over the course of the book (18.5hrs), but he never sounded decisive or strong. Elspeth, the young female heir to the throne of Valdemar, has a sort-of snobbish upper-class British accent, and is probably the closest in reflecting the character, but it isn't used consistently. Skif, a young man who spent most of his early life as a thief and scrounger, but who has become a reliable, effective member of an elite group, has a sort-of lower-class British accent but sounds rather like a hick. So, starting from the beginning of the book, Kerowyn, a very strong, active, decisive woman, who has a background as a successful mercenary soldier, got an unsure, sort-of Irish accent that doesn't reflect her character. Instead she chose to use differing accents for the characters, and she not only made some odd choices but wasn't able to do the accents consistently for each character. What she doesn't show in _Winds of Fate_ is a good repertoire of voices for different characters. She got most of the character and place names right, including some very odd made-up-language words and phrases full of glottal stops. She uses inflections, pauses, emphasis, all good. Ms White has a very nice basic voice - the one she uses for the background, the narrative parts. She narrated _The Hemingses of Monticello_, but those reviews reflect comments about the same sort of disappointing performance that I've been listening to.

Karen White has a lot of books listed at Audible, but many aren't well-known, at least not to me. Now that one has been released, I'm so disappointed. I have been hoping for an audiobook version of this series for years. Very disappointing could have been so much better

Winds of Fate by Mercedes Lackey