Better start with a link to where you can buy it!
Now for why you should...!
Thieves and Liars and more oh my...
Of Liars and Thieves is the first installment of the Chronicles of Raymara, a new series from Gabriela Lavarello. Book 1 and 2 are published already, and the first full draft of book 3 is finished. It is an epic fantasy tale centering around a mission given to a group of unlikely companions to return 5 beasts back to the magical pages from which they were created by the mysterious Storyteller. The first book charts their efforts to return these beasts to their pages and to unravel the mystery of why they were released, and on whose orders this dark deed was done.
As suspicion of their own comrades and perils of their dangerous journey envelopes the new companions, they find themselves wrapped up in a conflict greater than they expected, and the loyalties they have held for years are tested. The prophecy of keys is set in motion, and the companions wrestle with the notion that they are destined to be bigger players in the grand game than they could have imagined.
A Thrilling Challenge
Perhaps the best reason to listen to a fantasy audiobook, and especially this one(!), is for the brilliantly varied and colourful cast of characters, penned by Gabriela, which I've brought to life with my voice. Right from the beginning of the book, the listener is whisked away to the fantastical realm of Raymara, home to fairies, elves, mermaids and more, with each of the three characters that speak in the Prologue possessing a varied set of voices chosen to indicate the other-world-ness of this place, while retaining pieces of dialect from our world. It was important for me to ground each of the kingdom's characters in a rough geographical dialect. It helps to bring a sense of organisation and believability to the world; something which was important to Gabriela when we first discussed the production of 'Of Liars and Thieves' as an audiobook.
Aside from the 5 companions who form the core voices of the audiobook, there is a cast of 10-15 other characters who get enough 'booth-time' for me to have thought very deliberately about their voices. Having the opportunity to create a voice from scant direction from the text is one of my favourite challenges in audiobook narration. Crafting voices for the Red King, Green Dragon, Shapeshifter, Nian, King Drohan (of the Gnomes), King Sorren (of the Fairies) and a mermaid of Lake Lagdranule (to name a few) that are distinct enough to be able to told apart when in the same scene, but with enough subtlety in those differences to not think them outlandish and cartoonish, requires me to play around a lot with my voice before finally settling on a tone that resonates with some kind of truth in my head. I hope you can appreciate the fun in that process - it floats my
boat!
Promote, promote, promote
A whole new type of work starts once an audiobook is finished, and especially once its published. Promotion! Making facts about my life known to people I'm acquainted with is something I generally do not relish and avoid doing as much as is avoidable. When considering how to promote this audiobook however, I decided I would throw caution to the wind and also throw myself into shamelessly plugging it in as many ways as I could think of. And I think I've...enjoyed it? Well, I've not felt the soul-dragging shame and hypocrisy I feared I might when regaling the internet about an accomplishment I'm proud of anyway. I hope you might even have seen some of it. Of particular enjoyment was my interview with Gabriela, the author of the very book I narrated, where we quizzed each other on our writing/narrating processes and answered some of our audience's questions about our crafts. You can watch the full version here, and I intend to chop it up into bitesize shorts at some point in the next couple of weeks for some extra audience engagement. I've got lots to learn about the best ways to engage new listeners on each of the social media platforms, and I hope to give this learning a good go come September and my 1-day a week devoted to voice acting schedule - something I'm very excited for!
Let me know if you've bought or intend to buy (once that sweet audible credit rolls in) Of Liars and Thieves in the comments! I'd love to hear your impressions of it so far!
Of Liars and Thieves released on 14th August 2023, and is Toby's 5th audiobook.
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