On the story:
I enjoyed it. The idea was, if not entirely new to me, at least not something I've encountered super often. When Titan admitted that he was a Level 4, I felt that I should have predicted it (as, it turned out, others did), given his escape from the prison planet and his knowledge of fours' existence. The fact that I didn't is simply testament to the fact that I don't generally engage with stories much when I'm reading/listening, but simply let them pull me along.
While that may be facile, I'm pretty sure I enjoy more stories than people who can't help but analyze them to within an inch of their lives. Like Scattercat, say.
On the reading:
Troll or not, I can see where Pooloniousmonk is coming from (and El Barto, too, who is obviously
not a troll). In my case, the narration gave me some difficulty in getting into this story. I have an MP3 player that allows me to change the track tempo by small increments; usually when listening to stories, I pump the speed a notch or two, to get in more story in the time I have for listening.
In this case, I had to listen at regular speed and even considered dropping the speed
down a notch. There were even a few places where I had to rewind a bit and re-listen ("Oh,
that's what he said."), though mostly at the beginning, so hopefully my ear attuned to his rhythm, tempo and, yes, accent somewhat.
So, I think that Alasdair could have gone just a touch more slowly (not too much, though; I'm generally more frustrated by readers that go too slow than too fast).
All that said, I enjoyed all the
other aspects of the reading immensely; the vocal characterization and character differentiation were excellent. I love that different British accents can convey a sense of social class/education/breeding without coming off as being cartoonish. There are North American accents that can convey similar information, but they tend to evoke eye-rolls rather than simple recognition.
Also, I'd like to note that Al has gotten a new recording setup sometime in the past few months and that technically, the sound was less distorted than I've heard in the past as well.
And as Al himself said: the recording is done, and can't be unlistened. The difficulty I encountered was minor enough that it's nowhere near worth re-doing this story and I wouldn't expect it, but the concerns raised here may be something Al could keep in mind for the future. As a narrator myself, I always appreciate when people bring such concerns to my attention (preferably in a respectful way).