Anna's Reviews > Phantom and Rook: When An Immortal Falls In Love With A Witch

I kind of want to withhold a review because I genuinely think this is one that I'm going to love on the second read but the first read was very difficult for me. I'm not sure if that's necessarily the books fault or my own for not being in the right headspace or taking too long to listen etc, but I struggled to finish this. It took me over a week to get through this audiobook which is pretty much unheard of for me. It is a long book but even that is wild. I actually think part of my issue was with the narrator. Well I like Kirt Graves, something about his narration for these two characters didn't work for me.

I also am absolutely begging audiobook producers to include everything that is in the book in the audiobook. This includes introductions, prologues, character lists, maps or access to maps etc. This audiobook is not complete. I legitimately had to go and buy the e-book so I could double check and make sure that I wasn't missing things which it turned out I was, because I was so lost for the first half of this book.

I think another struggle I had with this book was just the sheer amount of characters. Because the audiobook is incomplete, all of these characters kept getting messed up in my head. Because not only do we have characters names to deal with but we have characters magical race to deal with as well. In the ebook, there is a glossary of magical race types with brief descriptions and that is missing from the audiobook. There is also a character guide in the e-book that the audiobook does not have. This makes the audiobook inaccessible.

I don't know how else to explain that your audiobook should have the same content as your ebook. It is ableist to not include all of the same content. People don't just listen to audiobooks because that's their preferred format, so many people listen to audiobooks because ebooks or physical books are inaccessible to them. So to then turn around and make audio books also inaccessible or incomplete is so annoying. And this is not the only book that this happens to. I just happen to be on a ranch right now so it's ending up in this review but for the love of everything, match your audiobooks to your physical content.

Anyway, the actual book content is very good. I think it's a really interesting story and town and concept but I feel like there's a lack of world building and build up that I personally needed to enjoy the story. Having finished it and knowing all of the background, I think that I would enjoy the story a lot more if I reread it.. I definitely understand why this book is on so many people's favorites list and look forward to reading the following books but I did struggle quite a bit with this one.