Two of the loudest voices on this listing belong to writers who are not Tamora Pierce. Sarah J. Maas calls her a pillar, an icon, and an inspiration. Leigh Bardugo says her heroines cut a swath through the fantasy world with wit, strength, and savvy. Both blurbs are testimonials to a career; neither one mentions Bloodhound, or Beka Cooper, or the eighteen hours and six minutes of audiobook this page is actually selling. That gap is worth noticing before you commit, because it sets the pattern for the rest of the page: a great deal of enthusiasm aimed at the author, and very little aimed at this particular recording.
The Review
Beka Cooper is five months into full membership of the Provost's Guard when this volume opens, and the description is blunt about her problem: she has already gone through four partners. The fix is equally blunt. She is teamed with Goodwin, whom the copy calls renowned, and with a scent hound named Achoo, whom the copy calls even more famous. The assignment sends the three of them to Port Caynn, where the rot turns out to reach past the Rogue's Court and into rooms the Guard would rather not enter. The stakes are stated without euphemism: keep pulling and the career ends, permanently.
What the copy will not tell you is how the book is built, and in audio that matters more than it does in print. The second entry on this page gives it away by accident. Its author opens by admitting a dislike of first-person narratives and a habit of avoiding them wherever possible, then describes being talked into Terrier anyway and finding Bloodhound equally absorbing. Eighteen hours of one character talking is a different proposition from eighteen hours of third-person storytelling, and nothing in the publisher's description flags which one you are buying.
Pierce built this trilogy backward from a character her longtime readers already knew, and the description says so outright: Beka is the ancestor of George Cooper. That is a generous gift for returning readers and a small obstacle for everyone else, and the page never settles which group it is addressing. The metadata calls the sequence Beka Cooper and numbers this volume two. The description calls it the Beka Cooper Trilogy. The second reviewer files it as Book 2 in the Legend of Beka Cooper series. Three names for one shelf, all of them on the same screen.
What Makes Bloodhound Worth Hearing
Susan Denaker is the only reader credited across eighteen hours and six minutes, which means one voice carries Beka, Goodwin, the Lower City, the Port Caynn underworld, and whatever noises a scent hound is entitled to make. Listening Library issued the recording on April 14, 2009. A solo credit on a book this long is information in itself: no cast, no alternating readers, no production trick held in reserve for the scenes where four characters argue at once. The whole thing rests on one performer's range, and eighteen hours is a long stretch in which to find out.
Tortall is why most people arrive, and the copy leans on it hard: the Lower City, the Provost's Guard, the Rogue's Court, a criminal economy with its own ranks and its own etiquette. What this particular sequence adds to the world is procedure. Beka works a case with a partner, a dog, a jurisdiction, and a chain of command, which is rarer in teen fantasy than magic swords are. Port Caynn is where the copy says procedure stops being enough, because the corruption reaches beyond the criminals the Guard is paid to chase.
Eighteen hours and six minutes is a genuine commitment for a middle volume, and the description at least accounts for where the time goes: the failed partnerships, the new team, the road to Port Caynn, and then the city, which is where the case stops being simple. If you already know Terrier, that shape reads as a promotion for a character who has only just stopped being new. If you do not know Terrier, the same shape reads as a wall, and the people who wrote in here say so more directly than the publisher does.
The Caveats
Listeners who scroll down for guidance will find five signed entries and a star badge that cannot be reconciled with them. The badge reads 4.8. The counter underneath it reads 1. Five grades are visible and every one of them is a 5.0, which means a single whole-star vote cannot produce 4.8 under any rounding convention you care to apply. Something upstream is counting one thing and displaying another. Treat the number as ornament and read the text instead.
If you do read the text, notice what it is grading. One entry is written in German and concerns the parcel: no damage from storage, none in transit, quick delivery, uninterrupted reading. Another, posted from Australia in January 2026, advises you to set aside three days of serious reading. A third, from Canada, praises several decades of Pierce's output without touching this book at all. Four of the five describe buying, unwrapping, or reading a printed copy, and two of them break off mid-sentence where the page truncates the body.
My other flag is the shelf. This page files an eighteen-hour Tortall fantasy under History and Culture, which serves nobody browsing that category and nobody who would actually want the book. The teen classification lands closer, though Bloodhound is a corruption procedural with a mounting body count, and the copy is candid that Beka's career and rather more than her career are on the table. Anyone buying for a younger listener on the strength of the scent hound in the description should know that the Lower City is not a cozy place.
The Right Listener for Bloodhound
Give this one to anyone who finished Terrier and wants the case to get bigger, and to listeners who like their fantasy with paperwork attached: partners, informants, jurisdiction, a chain of command that can be leaned on. Pierce is writing for people who enjoy watching a competent young professional get better at a difficult job, and Port Caynn exists in the plot to test exactly that. Readers who came to fantasy through Maas or Bardugo will find the blurbs here honest about lineage, if silent on this volume.
Pass on it unless Terrier is already behind you: every entry here that engages with the story says so, and the description itself opens by naming this the second book in the trilogy. Pass on it as well if you want a star rating you can act on, because this badge is arithmetically broken and all five written grades sit above it anyway. What survives that mess is a long, specific, densely populated investigation carried by a single performer. Eighteen hours is a long way to travel on the strength of a blurb about somebody's career.
The Short Version
- Performance: Susan Denaker is the only reader credited across 18 hours and 6 minutes, with no second voice held back for the crowded scenes.
- What it covers: police procedure inside a fantasy underworld, corruption that outranks the criminals, a young investigator earning her permanent partner.
- Feel: Dogged and street-level, closer to a case file than to a quest.
- Our call: Strong for anyone who finished Terrier, obstructive for anyone who did not, and worth ignoring the broken star badge either way.
Do I need to read Terrier before starting the Bloodhound audiobook?
Yes, and the page agrees. The description opens by naming this the second book of the Beka Cooper Trilogy, and the reviewer who liked it most spends a paragraph explaining how Terrier won them over first. Beka's four failed partnerships and her standing in the Guard are all carried forward without recap.
How long is the Bloodhound audiobook and who reads it?
Eighteen hours and six minutes, with Susan Denaker as the only credited reader. Listening Library released the recording on April 14, 2009. One performer covers Beka, Goodwin, the Lower City voices, and the Port Caynn underworld, so the range on display has to stretch a very long way.
Why does the star badge say 4.8 when the counter shows a single vote?
Because the two numbers come from different places. One whole-star vote cannot average to 4.8 under any rounding rule, and five written grades are visible on the page, all of them 5.0. The display and the tally disagree, so the written entries are the only usable signal here.
Is this suitable for a younger teen listener?
Use judgment. The category says teen, but the plot is a corruption investigation set in a criminal district, and the description is candid that Beka risks ending her career permanently. Violence and the machinery of organized crime are central rather than incidental, so preview it before handing it over.
