Magician
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction. A fact, not a factor: it plays no part in our call.
Read it
The recording is the weak half here, not the book. Peter Joyce’s reading sits in the bottom 4% of our shelf of books for how far a reading beats the book it is reading, and −1.16 against what the book’s own readers made of it (two different crowds, each measured against its own crowd’s middle before we compare them), on 4,287 ratings of the narration. A different reading would change our answer; until there is one, give the first encounter to the page.
Length does not decide this
36h 14m to listen, at 1×28h 59m to listen, at 1.25×24h 09m to listen, at 1.5×20h 42m to listen, at 1.75×18h 07m to listen, at 2×about 23 hours to readabout 17 hours to readabout 14 hours to readabout 10 hours to readabout 9 hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 681 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a floor on this one: this one runs 3.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so there is more on each page than our 300-word average assumes and it will take you longer than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 681 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a floor on this one: this one runs 3.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so there is more on each page than our 300-word average assumes and it will take you longer than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 681 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a floor on this one: this one runs 3.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so there is more on each page than our 300-word average assumes and it will take you longer than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 681 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a floor on this one: this one runs 3.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so there is more on each page than our 300-word average assumes and it will take you longer than we say.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 681 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. Treat the reading estimate as a floor on this one: this one runs 3.2 minutes of narration a page against a shelf median of 1.9, so there is more on each page than our 300-word average assumes and it will take you longer than we say.
If you must listen → commute-safe
About as demanding in audio as Slaughterhouse-Five.
About as much work in audio as most of the books we hold.
About as much work in audio as most of the fiction we hold.
Easier to hear than 80% of the doorstoppers we hold.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books on both counts (effort on the page and effort in your ears). The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- −1.13It sits in the bottom 14% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the page. It is not what decided this one, though: the recording sits far enough behind its book to reach Read it on its own, which is the line drawn on the row below. When the narration is that far behind, the call is about the recording rather than about the format, and a different one would change the answer.
- Narration payoff
- −1.40Peter Joyce’s reading is less well received than the book it came from: in the bottom 2% of our shelf of books, on 4,287 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out −1.16. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- 0.54It sits in the top 32% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: well enough regarded that a wasted first encounter costs more, so we lean towards protecting the page. Blended across 73,436 Goodreads ratings and 222 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- The voice lets the book down
- The print crowds think highly of it
For the recording
- Audio is neither helping nor fighting this one
- 4,287 listeners behind it
So the case for the page won it, on this recording and not on the book itself.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 0.98How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading4,287 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 222 readers there: enough to lean onThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 35 of the reviews we read said they listened to it. So we are not drawing this one.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
4,686 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly3.5% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. More than most recordings here. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
149 of 4,287 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United
- Warm, this one
- Split
- Lukewarm
A warm room: most listeners are happy with the performance, and a small group are not.
4,287 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
4,290 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
73,436 ratings
The series
The Riftwar Saga
Finished
4 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. The last one came out in 1986 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- Peter Joyceour pick36h 14m28h 59m24h 09m20h 42m18h 07m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Performance 4.50 · Story 4.69 · 4,287 rated the reading · 3.5% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
Peter Joyce’s reading is named in our Hall of Shame, and that page carries the same call as above, with the whole working, what it does not claim, and what listeners give the reading out of five.
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 36h 14m at 1×
- Read by
- Peter Joyce
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B00FGRAALG · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 3,697 + 590 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 4,287 ratings of the narration
- Published
- HarperCollins · 2013
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 36h 14m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.