Mammoth and magnificent. Superb narration

I've been waiting for this audiobook for a long time, but after hearing the sample I refuse to listen to it with the absolutely horrible narration.

Thomas Pynchon is a genius and Mason and Dixon tells the story of the astronomer (Charles Mason) and the surveyor (Jeremiah Dixon) via the not always reliable memories of the Reverend Cherrycoke as the two Englishmen traveled the world together providing astronomical (the transit of Venus) and boundary surveys (the eponymous east west border between Pennsylvania and Maryland) for the Royal Academy and the his Majesty’s land grantees, respectively. Their duties for the crown were certainly represented in the text, but that part of the narrative, though serving as a vehicle to move the story forward, does not come close to define the imaginative adventure that these two common gentlemen encountered during their years together. There were talking dogs, a highly sexed mechanical duck who can fly at the speed of light and has fallen head over heels for a French Chef who had been banished to the hinterlands of America. There was a plot for world domination via advanced communication methods by a combined Jesuit/Chinese cabal. Dr Franklin (Benjamin), Colonel Washington (George) make appearances and the magical realism develops in such a natural and believable way that it all seems plausible. I literally did not want the book to end. The narrator, Stephen Crossley, did a fabulous job. His portrayal of each of the main characters was brilliant down to what seemed to me authentic accents of the areas of England where they were from. There are a lot of characters in the book, but Crossley kept them all straight and his brilliance made the tale that was told easy to follow and hilarious in all the right places. Thomas Pynchon is a national treasure and listening to Mason and Dixon is a good way to begin journey through the world of Thomas Pynchon, which is not like any other world your likely to encounter.