The Six

This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com.

Unfortunately the only reason I even finished the book is because of the reason above.

First of all, the narration was excellent. Jeff Hays was great at distinguishing the different voices and accents so I never questioned which character was speaking. Though this was a bit ruined by the quality of the production - the volume was pretty variable depending on which character was speaking (it would suddenly become a lot quieter compared to the non-dialogue parts so that I'd have to turn the volume up to hear it).

The story is, simply put, that six young people (and a seventh who's not “officially” a part of them), most of them strangers to another at the start, have to go on a quest to obtain a crystal. But there are other forces also looking for it.

The problem for me is that the characters never became anything beyond “words on a page” (or “voices” in this case). Now that I finished it, I still have no idea who these characters are or how they're feeling about all this (It's touched upon, but very lightly). Actually, the one that distinguished itself the most might have been Blaidd (I had to look that up because in my mind I spelled it like “Blade”), even if he's technically the seventh of the Six. There's also two friends along on this mission, and we're told they're fairly close friends, but you wouldn't know that if it wasn't explicitly said. This happens with a few other parts, we're told something but we're never shown it.
I never got invested in the characters, and therefore I never got invested in the story. Though I don't know if this would have been a different experience if not for the audiobook.

The story and the execution of it were fine, and that might very well be enough for most people, but I just never cared about any of these characters and that's usually the biggest part of my enjoyment of a book.