Worm Audiobook - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I do not much write reviews but this “super hero soap opera” has totally captured my heart. The breadth of knowledge the authors exhibit casually is quite impressive, the anti-hero is so endearing that I was actually brought to tears. The greatest binge experience I have had in quite some time. I really hope these people are rewarded for their effort and I thank them for the hundreds, yes I think it may be in the hundreds (as I’m now on “Ward”), of hours I have enjoyed.

This is now one of my favorite stories. Thank you for creating an audiobook that I could listen to during commutes and neighborhood walks. I fear the story length would have been too daunting for me to pick up an manually read, so thank you for creating an audio format that’s more palatable and allowing me to fall in love with such an incredible story. I cannot rate this high enough and I recommend this to any of my friends that I’m able to get to listen to me.

Worm has been on my radar for ages, but its a huge commitment to sit down and read - one that I knew I couldn’t make. This podcast series allowed me to experience the incredible story of Taylor and I’m beyond grateful. Some of the chapters aren’t the best quality and there are some mispronunciations of non-English derived words (as a Boston native, we pronounce it Mar-kees, despite what Wildbow has gone on record saying LOL), but honestly all of the little things make the love for Worm shine through. I’m deeply grateful to everyone that worked on this project, and I definitely recommend this to folks who are interested in the series but can only listen while working their desk job or walking their dog.

I’ll probably check their Ward podcast series, but I need a bit of a break from superheroes first - 174 hours and a year of listening has me needing something more lighthearted first :)

I heard about this on a suggestions feed for audiobooks on Reddit actually. I had never heard of it before but it was mentioned over and over as the best web serial/audiobook a lot of people had ever read or heard. Podcast format is so readily accessible that I jumped right in to it and I haven’t stopped listening since. I have tried other things but just keep going back to this. I won’t be able to stop until there is no more to listen to.

I read this epic in 2013. Hearing it now, seven years later, I’ve come to realize how much better the story is than what I remember. Whether Hindsight, life experience or just plain wisdom- this story has so much depth that I failed to grasp at my younger age.

That being said, it’s becoming more and more apparent as I listen that the narrators (of which there are multiple) have not agreed on the pronunciation of any odd words, cape names or foreign monikers. The narrators fail to pronounce things as obvious as ‘panacea’ and ‘parian’, pronouncing them ‘pan-ees-sia’ and ‘parry-ann’. Some narrators mispronounce the most common words, or misread an entire sentence.

All of this is the work of amateurs that’ve not put enough learning in place in terms of ‘how to produce an audiobook’. They have not agreed on the format of chapter introduction. They have not determined a standard volume of intro and outro music, resulting in wildly varying volumes depending on narrator. The earlier chapter readings-which are of obviously lower quality- have not yet been replaced with something better. Meg, who has a strong (Irish?) accent, pronounced words occasionally such that I need to relisten three times to understand which word she’s trying to say. NSBP (whoever that is) either has a complicated understanding with syllabic pacing or doesn’t understand the words he reads as he reads them. A side chapter (a thirty-six minute read) was read entirely by someone with an exceptionally strong lisp. This same side chapter was written from the perspective of a previously-read-by-someone-else character.