Coming from the other side of this, I've had a good narrator sell me entire series in the past. The Grim Noir Chronicles is the first that comes to mind (idk if anyone remembers the terrible sitcom Perfect Strangers but he played Balki and in real life he has a buttery smooth baritone voice that I just adore) and anything that Soundbooth Theater touches, partly for Jeff Hays and partly because of the full-cast adaptations they do that feel like old school radio plays to me. I see no reason to use this over existing text to speech features. If i just want to mechanically turn patterns of light into patterns of vibration there's non-AI tech that will do that for free, and AI narration doesn't do what human narration does yet.

I recall one series where R. C. Bray had been doing the narration for several books, then for undisclosed reasons they replaced him with another narrator. The drop in quality was so bad I eventually gave up trying to finish the series (though admittedly the author(s) didn't seem to be helping much with the content).

Some narrators, like Wil Wheaton, are so entertaining to me I actively search by what they have voiced.

In general, I have to agree the narrator can make or break a series.

> I've stopped listening to plenty of audiobooks because I didn't like the narrator.

I'm with you on this, but my reaction is the opposite -- I'm wondering if there are some books I couldn't stand to listen to, that now I could with a nice neutral narration voice? Instead of the weird untrained voice with weird vocal tics that was the official narration?

What are some of your favorite audiobooks?