Audiobook Review: Ancient Echoes by Joanne Pence, read by Tim Paige
Ancient Echoes is the first book in the Ancient Secrets series of adventures by award-winning and best-selling author Joanne Pence. I am a big fan of this kind of stories and, after spending a few hours daily this week with Ancient Echoes, I thought to post a review because I liked it a lot.
The book opens with a tour de force that introduces the main characters and, at the same time, moves the action swiftly from Mongolia, to Jerusalem, to Paris, back again through all locations so that in the end we stop in the United States. Here, all involved, a group of students with their teacher, two special agents, one with Immigration and US Customs Enforcement and one from the Central Inteligence Agency, a renowned archaeologist, like a younger version of Indiana Jones, a local sheriff and a group of special operators want to discover a secret buried for thousands of years. They all travel to a remote mountain range in Idaho where bad things start to happen.
The students get lost, the authorities alongside with the archaeologist are looking for them, but at the same time, the special ops team is up to no good, as their mission is very important to a powerful individual and they can use all means necessary to ensure success.
The novel is very well written, with strong characters, a vividly portrayed world and a story that manages to combine perfectly this exciting adventure with the thrilling supernatural aspect that will give you goosebumps… I won’t say anything more, as I don’t want to spoil any of this great plot for you, but I will add that I can’t wait to listen to more audiobooks by Joanne Pence.
The audiobook version of Ancient Ecoes is narrated by Tim Paige, a voiceover artist that is relatively new to this industry, but he does an excellent job. This is the first time I experienced his narration and I can say that I liked it very much. He brings all the characters to life with ease, sounding natural, and keeps them differentiated in the listener’s mind with different voices, accents and subtle tone modulations. He has a pleasant voice, reminds me of Vikas Adam, which I think is a good thing, as Vikas is a great narrator.
There are a few problems with the quality of the recording in the sense that sometimes, between chapters there are areas of white noise that can be annoying. I passed this on to the author and she assures me that it will be taken care of as soon as possible…
I hope to be able to bring you more reviews for books written by Joanne Pence and performed by Tim Paige as I enjoyed Ancient Echoes tremendously. Fans of Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Clive Cussler and James Rollins will find Ancient Echoes very satisfying. Also, those who like the Uncharted series of video games or the Indiana Jones movies will feel right at home with this novel.
The following two books in this series, Ancient Shadows and Ancient Illusions, are available also as audiobooks and I’ll leave links to them below, in case you want to check them out.
Victor Dima
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